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Sunday, September 22, 2013

Magicians and Looters: Phoenix Art Museum

Morgopolis Studios was at the Phoenix Art Museum yesterday showing off our Magicians & Looters game along with virtually every indie dev in the entire metro area. The turnout was great, the people were fun, and I got to watch a lot of randoms walk up and play M&L cold turkey.

They had a Minecraft exhibit (A.K.A. LAN party) at the other end of the main exhibit hall, so there were about a million Minecraft-addicted millennials who trotted over to get a small fix of something else before returning to their voxels, and they were definitely the best crowd to have in front of the game.

I saw a seven-year-old master the dodging mechanic within seconds of picking up the controller and timed all of her attacks to the frame.

I saw another kid who was waging an inner struggle between playing video games and taking a piss. He spent the whole time dancing in front of the game, jerking the controller in every direction, leaning against the table and doing everything but sitting in the chair. I was worried he was going to knock over the TV, but then in the middle of a morg minion fight he dropped the controller and bolted out of the room.

I saw this one kid who was just terrible at the game, but his ineptitude was equally matched by his persistence. There was this one jump he absolutely could not make, but he kept climbing up and trying it, over and over and over. His poor mother just sat there and watched her son fail this one jump for about fifteen minutes with a blank look on her face.
On a related note, virtually all of the kids preferred the analog stick over the d-pad, which explained a lot of the difficulty some of them had with the jumps. Their stubby thumbs can't shift directions as easily, and fine-tuning their falls is almost impossible.

When you begin a new game in M&L, it asks for you to input your name. Some of my favorites that I found when looking through the files:

g dog


  1. Sounds like a good time!

    Regarding the sticks, were these kids playing with Xbox 360 pads? Even every adult I've seen always goes straight for the stick, even ones who I would think would prefer a D-pad. I don't get it, even with the 360's pad having a bad rep, I still prefer it for most 2D titles (honestly I've never really had a problem with it).

  2. Yup. 360 gamepad, and I paid less attention to the adults since they had less trouble with the controls; but that's probably just because they've got better thumb reach, and M&L's directional controls don't take advantage of the analog's range, so even with the stick it's either full speed or no speed.

    I use 360 d-pad all the freaking time and I've never found it to be that bad, either; but I did once try out a 360 d-pad with a piece of a Pringles can shoved underneath. It's supposed to improve the d-pad, make it feel snappier and more responsive, and it really, really does.