Over the past two weeks, we have participated in two of the biggest shows in the gaming industry, gamescom 2017 and PAX West. Organizing a booth for conferences like these is never easy, and it’s even harder when they are so close to each other. We showed Mothergunship at both, a double hitter very few indies manage to pull off, and something only logistically possible because Mothergunship’s team is so spread across the globe. Even then, we had to pull in the help of a lot of friends and call in a lot of favors.

At gamescom 2017, things were very busy from day one until the end of the show. Hundreds of visitors of all ages came at our booth to try the game and chat with our devs - lots of Tower of Guns fans among them. We were very happy to see that people were returning at our booth for playing the again and again. It’s something big considering the amount of games showcased at gamescom! As for the Nightmare mode competition that we organized, after many unsuccessful attempts by a lot of players, finally two of them managed to beat it just a few hours before the show ends on Saturday!

For PaxWest, I’m happy to say that a show appearance has never gone so smoothly. The days were long, our feet were tired, and by the end of the week we could barely form coherent sentences, but near as I can estimate about 400 people tried the game over the course of the show. We had three stations set up as keyboard and mouse and one set up as controller, and while we had the occasional console player stop by, the vast majority of players wanted to play on keyboard and mouse, which I think says something about the fans of Mothergunship.

Universally everyone who played came away smiling, regardless of whether they were game fans, press, youtubers, or even just older chaperones of younger conference goers. Ridiculous guns were built, bosses were destroyed, and many, many, bullets were fired.

The stand out feature of the game for many was the crafting system, which sucked in players for long stretches of time…occasionally too long as some players really dove into the depth of possibilities available...others just tried to fill up as much screen space as possible, which led to entertaining results.

MVP compliment from the shows goes to a young college student who said, “This game…it’s an FPS Contra and Starfox and Serious Sam and Rogue Legacy and..and all my favorite things. This game was built for me!”. After months and months of heads down development, you just can’t quite beat the feeling of seeing someone else “getting” everything you’ve been building.

Many thanks goes out to the Indie Arena Booth for hosting us at gamescom, as well as to both Epic Games and Origin PC for the sponsorship of the PAX booth and the booth’s computers. Also, a big THANKS goes to the small army of volunteer friends we recruited for help, including old coworkers, PAX enforcers, and IndieMEGABOOTH volunteers. Without them this show wouldn’t have been logistically possible.

That’s all for now. There is a lot of work to be done on our side for the coming months, so we should get back to action! If you haven't watched our new trailer, you can do so here. In the meantime, you can go to our forum and start discussing about the game. Or, if you are looking for other ways to follow the development, you can:

1: Wishlist the game on steam

2: Sign up for the Mothergunship mailing list

3: Follow @Mothergunship on twitter

4: “Like” the Mothergunship Facebook page

5: Tell two friends about Mothergunship

Thank you for reading!