We are back from PAX Prime! We were showing as part of the Indie Megabooth. I think the show went very well. People seem really excited about the game. I am glad that the new graphics are making a ton of people curious about what the game is (Not sure why I didn’t notice the difference as much at PAX East). They were a lot of work but clearly worth it.
I tried to remember what the most frequently asked questions were, and I plan to write blog posts/ make videos about them. Questions were: is the fourth dimension time? (Nope!) How did you come up with the concept? How is this game even implemented?
If you have more questions that you would like me to answer please let me know (Excluding: when will the game be out?)
We had 4 stations initially but because the wait to play was getting too long, I added a fifth station saturday afternoon. Like last PAX, the main trailer was playing on a big screen, and the explanation trailer was playing on a smaller screen below that.
My favorite moment was witnessing a 9 year old girl play the game better than her father, giving him tips on how to solve the puzzles.
PC Gamer did an awesome preview of the game (they totally got it!).
For the first six or so levels, I did not get Miegakure at all. I was completing the early puzzles, but I had no idea how I was doing it.
I gathered some statistics about most of the playthroughs. It seems the game was played over 400 times, which gives an approximate average play time of around 23 minutes. That’s about how long it takes to play the first 13 “intro” levels. Many people played for one or two hours, but I have no trivial way of counting how many.
I am getting tired of waiting for this game. Can’t you get some more manpower by collecting some crowdsourcing money?
Adding more people won’t necessarily speed up the development process. Besides, 5 years isn’t that long for a game.
Dude. You do not rush art. You want good, or you want fast?
I want both. But even if the game released TODAY it is long past any reasonable concept of “fast”. I am willing to compromise for “as good as it is right now, and maybe we’ll throw out a few cool updates within a decent interval”.
What I am not willing to take is “ask me anything BUT when it’s coming out”. That is the sort of crap Valve does to people and we hate *them* for it too. But it’s tempered by the fact that they did publish a few really good games before dropping off the radar and failing to complete the series.
Here we have no previous awesome product to pine for, just a really cool gameplay mechanic and the vapory promise that it will be done eventually, sometime, maybe… come play this demo! Oh, PAX is 2000 miles out of your way? Sucks to be you, here’s some more videos to tease you though!
But ultimately, if Marc wants to take the “when it’s done” stance, there’s no amount of whining on the internet that can stop him. And when/if the game IS finally done, he will have as much of my money as it takes for me to have a copy. Because it IS a really cool concept and I want it badly enough to whine about it on the internet. End of rant. Return to lurking mode…
I am not sure if you are being serious.
Entitlement on the internet towards a game whose developer has no obligation to you, while still piling on straw men.
If it was intended, then that’s a very intriguing and cleverly well done brand of satire, for which I would like to apologize, only I realize it would be pointless to apologize, this being the intended result.
I suppose congratulations are in order, then?
Settle down Rob. Good things to those who wait.
Hello, I am deeply impressed by this game, and am excitedly waiting for this game.
However, I am concerned that this might not be really a difficult game. Since, if the main gimmick is that four dimensional navigation is difficult, certainly how difficult could the game get?
I don’t think the game is more difficult than say, Braid for example. The main gimmick is not that four dimensional navigation is difficult, but that it is interesting.
1) The concept of a fourth dimension might be hard to imagine, but you don’t have to imagine it, as it is displayed on the screen for you.
2) The concept of a fourth dimension relates a lot to concepts that we are familiar with in popular culture, such as parallel universes. The game’s achievement is that it leverages these concepts to become understandable.
Haven’t followed up on this game since I saw it at the recent PAX Prime. As the dad you mention in the post text (unless there are two people with the same circumstance!), I am really tickled to get the shout-out, and my daughter will certainly love to read this when I show it to her tonight.
As somebody who read Flatland at a formative age, and who generally loves sliding block, path finding, and deductive logic puzzles, the idea of a fully functional 4D explorable puzzle space is like a holy grail of game design to me. Thank you so much for this game, I count myself very lucky to get a chance to play it, and the care and attention to detail present in the game (you can make your count of people who played it for an hour or more at least 2!) really shone through. This game whenever it comes out will definitely in my judgement be worth the wait. Chatting with my daughter on the drive home from PAX14 weekend, Miegakure came up as easily in the top 5 of games for both of us across the whole show.
That 9 year old and her father are my daughter and husband. They came back from Pax saying Miegakure was “Awesome” and they can’t wait for the release! It was a highlight from their experience at Pax too!