The SmuggleStation

The Happy Badgers crew had quite the kickass time at PlayStation Expo! Over 500 gamers lined up to race Hovercrafts and the responses were overall positive! It was awesome watching players who’ve never seen SmuggleCraft before have a blast drift boosting past another racer. We attended PSX last year, but this year was a lot more fun and involved. A few players even recognized us from last year, and were highly impressed at the games status!

Ben speaking to some Gamers about SmuggleCraft

PSX was WAY busier than last year. The whole convention took place on a single floor, unlike last year where PSX took place on two. The single floor layout helped traffic for all the indie games immensely (though the AAA booth lines were ungodly long which also helpped), and it was easier to navigate around the con in general. By the end, we were suuuper tired. We were constantly on our feet and chatting with other devs and players, so the plane ride back was full of Zzz’s.

The indie games showcased at PSX were some top-notch games. Earthnight has been high on our radar for a while, and it was amazing seeing the game in action, but Battleshift Brigade took home the Happy Badger Best Indie Game of PSX award! Published by adult swim

A big shoutout to all who came by the SmuggleCraft booth! Your limited edition SmuggleCraft PlayStation Theme will be ready very soon! Stay tuned on our twitter page to know when we’ve smuggled the theme online.

People love SmuggleCraft!

“It was cool as fuck.” – Joey Paniello

Surprise stop at Disneyland!

Piecing it together

You know that feeling you get when you put on that pair of pants that hasn’t been worn for a while and find a glorious $20 bill in one of the pockets you completely forgot about? That’s what it feels like when we find part designs that we buried in the backburner a while back so we could focus on the more crucial parts of the game. Probably one of the most exciting parts about developing SmuggleCraft is creating the hovercraft parts (Fun Fact: the engine titled BHF9 stands for “Butt Hole Factor 9”). New parts have been finding their way into the game with every week, and we’ve even added some PlayStation exclusive engines for those who will be playing SmuggleCraft on the PlayStation 4!

The O engine making some noise.

The Porcupine Engine

Got any ideas for ship parts you’d like to see? Let us know below in the comments!

Our lead developer, Joey, hovered over to Kentucky to team up with Goldentot to co-host the first ever live-stream of SmuggleCraft!!! We had a ton of viewers and fresh eyes who’ve never heard of SmuggleCraft before tune in, reaching a peak of 106 viewers!!! (none smuggled, all earned!)

We had a blast being able to connect with the community and answer some questions the viewers had about our game and being a game dev in general! Most of the major aspects of the game were showcased, including the main quests for the story mode, tow quests, and 4 Player Multiplayer mode!

We received some great feedback and suggestions. A HUGE THANK YOU to Goldentot for having Smugglecraft on his channel, and to all the viewers who tuned in! It was great to say hey and answer all your questions!

Stay tuned for more SmuggleCraft updates!

Did you miss the stream? Don’t fret! The stream is archived on Goldentot’s channel! Go check out his epic streams. Give him a like and a follow and a shoutout. He’s awesome. Click here to the watch Goldentot and friends play some SmuggleCraft!

We’ve never shown any of our games outside of our hometown of St. Louis, MO, though we do have the benefit of a few years of local convention experience. We felt PopCon would be a good first out-of-state event for us, based on the event’s relatively close proximity to St. Louis (4ish hours by car), the reasonable cost of booths, and the moderate (but not overwhelming) scale of attendance. We were also enticed by promises of guaranteed stage presentation time, opportunities to connect with press and Let’s Players, and automatic entry into the convention’s Indie Reboot Awards—all good opportunities to fulfill our ultimate goal of increasing awareness and finding new press contacts.

SmuggleCraft at Anime St. Louis. DEMOING IN THE LAP OF LUXURY.

We’d recently demoed SmuggleCraft at Anime St. Louis, a mid-sized local anime convention, where we had a huge 20’x10’ corner booth space, an abundance of booth volunteers (like, eight, because of reasons), and plenty of amenities (free internet, parking, expo furniture, and electric), so we knew we were going to have to lower our expectations a bit for our Indy PopCon booth plans. We needed to scale down and decide what was important from the previous setup, and what could stay behind, knowing we would only have a 10’x10’ space and three people at the PopCon booth.

Designing the booth space

Since one of the most appealing aspects of our demo is the local competitive multiplayer mode, we felt it was important to have our big comfy inflatable couch return to the booth. Since the couch would be a primary focus, we designed our booth space around the 6’x3’ seating area, which would face a 32” TV that players would use. We chose to use our short-throw projector against the back of the booth so that visitors coming from either direction could easily see gameplay. We didn’t consider until we got to the convention, however, that the demo computer would need to be hooked to both the television and our short-throw projector via HDMI, so we spent most of Friday morning driving around Indianapolis looking for an electronics store that carried HDMI splitters.

Indie Protip: Print your own t-shirts to save cash and cover yourself in paint!

Promo Materials

As far as handouts and promotional materials go, we already had a 4’ x 2’ SmuggleCraft banner, a handful of 9”x17” posters, 2.25” Happy Badger Studio buttons, and 500ish business-card-sized flyers printed for prior events, so all we had to worry about for PopCon was our signature Happy Badger Studio t-shirts. We hand-print our own t-shirts in the studio using handmade custom screens, so it’s pretty easy for us to keep the cost low. We purchased about 40 blank t-shirts ($12 per pack of 4 at a big-box store), a big tub of white screenprinting paint ($25), enlisted our intern Mila for an extra hand, and got to printing. It took about $150 and a day’s work for 40 t-shirts.

See Mom? All those hours of Tetris DID come in handy.

Booth Setup

We arrived in Indianapolis on Thursday night with about an hour left to load in, so we got everything from the car and into the booth as quickly as possible (somehow it all fit in a wee Hyundai Elantra). We unloaded in one trip, blew up the couch, set up the TV and projector, and hung the SmuggleCraft banner (which we regretted getting without center grommets, only corner grommets). We decided we needed dowel rods to keep the bedsheet flat in place to act as the projector screen, so we held off on hanging it until we were able to make it to a local hardware store the next morning. We also used the extra time to take the sheet to the hotel to iron out the wrinkles as well as we could. In total, it took about two or three hours to set everything up over the two days.

Things we had that made setup way easier: large hooks (borrowed from the expo company), zip ties, tape (of various forms—two-sided, electrical, and duct are most useful), rubber bands, safety pins, binder clips, scissors, power strips, extension cords, scratch paper, pens/sharpies, and a tool set (mostly just for pliers and a screwdriver). We keep all the little stuff together with a handbag organizer, which helps a lot when it comes to finding small things.

Dana, left, warms up the couch as I preside over the swag.

Demo Day

We hoped to have two separate demos running at all times: one for players on the couch, and one for press and/or overflow, however we had framerate problems on our smaller laptops, so we stuck to the single demo station. We were at a high-traffic corner booth, so we discovered that having the television facing one pathway and the projection screen facing the other was a great way to draw people to the game. While the projection screen wasn’t perfectly flat or ideally lit (the lights in the expo hall were brii-iight), it was still visually interesting enough to get people intrigued enough to play.

Now, let’s get to the important part: everyone loved The Couch. In fact, the reason I’m writing this is because our booth neighbor, Willy Chyr, liked The Couch so much that he suggested we do a postmortem on having a Booth With A Couch (thanks, Willy). We added colorful throw pillows and a blanket because we felt it was important for our booth to feel like home; to hearken back to couch-centric local multiplayer days. It brought an element of comfort to gameplay that is uncommon at convention booths, and we had a number of visitors return all weekend to duke it out with their friends on The Couch. One thing to note about inflatable couches, however, is that they are NOT accessible for all body types, so we strongly recommend you offer alternative seating for people who are more comfortable in sturdier chairs (which is precisely why we brought extra folding chairs).

We gave t-shirts to especially enthusiastic players and friendly repeat visitors, and offered posters and buttons to anyone who played the demo or signed up for our mailing list. All of the freebies were very well received, and resulted in a lot of new friends and fans who couldn’t wait to proudly show off their shiny new SmuggleCraft poster.

YouTube Let’s Players Bobert with a B (Center) and Coolio McJoe (Right) recorded themselves playing SmuggleCraft at our booth. Somehow I didn’t even see Waldo while I spectated.

Let’s Play!

One thing that sets Indy PopCon apart from other comic and pop culture conventions is the sheer number of YouTubers and Let’s Players in attendance. PopCon did a great service to its exhibitors by sending a press list in advance, which we used to introduce ourselves, set up appointments, and start conversations before the convention. Through these conversations, we realized we wanted to be especially accommodating to on-site Let’s Players. We let them know that we had screen recording software and a Blue Snowball mic that they could use, as long as they brought their own storage device to save the video onto. It may not be as high quality as what they’re used to, but the few Let’s Players who took advantage of our recording tools were very grateful that we made it available to them.

Prior to the convention, I worked up a spreadsheet summarizing our press appointments and various panel, podcast, and presentation times. Having this printed out as a physical copy at the booth was very helpful to keep us all organized and aware of who was coming and going when, without having to worry about constantly checking our phones for calendar notifications.

Summary / Cost Breakdown

• Booth: $420 (included extra exhibitor pass)
• Electric: $130
• Gasoline/Travel: $60
• Parking: $33 (4 days, included shuttle)
• Hotel: $540 (3 nights, last-minute Hotwire booking at a very nearby hotel. Would have been closer to $400 if our Airbnb hadn’t cancelled on us at the last minute.)
• Food: ≈$500 (three people, four days, includes meals, booth snacks, and drinks)
• Furniture/Equipment (reusable, most already owned): ≈$1000
• Promo Materials: ≈$400

Approx. Total Cost: $3500

We definitely could have cut back on costs for hotel and food, especially if our Airbnb hadn’t cancelled on us at the last minute or had we chosen to stay somewhere farther from the convention center. I should acknowledge that we like to indulge sometimes while traveling, which may be a bad habit, but we find the occasional drink and nice dinner helps relieve some of the stress of the convention. It would also be good to note that the $1000 for equipment was not all at once, as much of the equipment had already either been purchased for use in the studio (like the projector) or for previous events (like the couch); the total equipment cost in the breakdown is just to give you an idea of what you may expect to pay if you wanted to create a similar setup from scratch. The two main big-ticket items we bought specifically for PopCon were the 32” TV for $200 and the HDMI splitter for $100, both of which we intend to use regularly in the studio and at future conventions. The Couch only cost about $70, and has now valiantly survived six full days of considerable convention use.

Thank you for your service, brave couch.

I have a lot more detailed lists of expenses and equipment that I’m not including for the sake of avoiding information overload, but if you’re interested in a more detailed breakdown, feel free to email me.

Overall, we had a really excellent time at Indy PopCon, and while it resulted in a more costly demo than we were expecting, it ultimately felt like a successful event for us. We met a lot of great new friends and fans, and now have a number of new contacts who are excited to keep their subscribers up to date on SmuggleCraft’s development progress. We’re looking forward to bringing The Couch back to Indy PopCon next year.

Come see us at Booth 346 in the vendor room to kick back and play the latest demo of SmuggleCraft. We’ll have both single-player campaign mode and two-player competitive mode going all weekend, so come play solo or with a friend (and, of course, we’re happy to challenge you to a multiplayer match too)!

We’ll be hosting a SmuggleCraft mini-tournament on the Let’s Play stage from 4-4:45pm on Friday the 26th, so stop by our booth anytime Friday to sign up. Participants will get the opportunity to win a SmuggleCraft poster, a Happy Badger Studio t-shirt, or Happy Badger Studio buttons. And, of course, anyone who signs up gets to experience the excitement of participating in a tournament on the big screen!

As if that wasn’t enough activity to get you excited, our own Carol Mertz will be speaking on a few panels over the course of the weekend. If you’re interested in learning about User Testing, Kickstarter, or the differences between Indie and Corporate development cultures, come see what Carol and the other panelists have to say!

See you there!

If you’re looking for a chance to play SmuggleCraft, we’ll be demoing the game at a few upcoming events. We’ll be in attendance at the Saint Louis Science Center’s First Fridays event on Friday, June 5. We also just reserved game demo space at Indianapolis’ Indy PopCon from June 26-28. We hope to see you all there!

Dana oversees demoers as they play head-to-head mode from the cozy booth-couch

Last weekend we had the chance to demo SmuggleCraft to the public for the first time since announcing the game, which was quite a bit nerve-wracking since we had no idea what to expect from folks. I mean, WE like the game, but what would everyone else think? Turns out, they like it too! (Whew!)

We were invited to Anime St. Louis, a huge local anime convention where we managed to transform our booth space into a SmuggleCraft-themed game lounge, complete with a couch, pillows, and cozy chairs. It was definitely one of the comfiest spots in the con.

Carol commentates the final round of the tournament as Marceline the Vampire Queen, because why not?

As a last-minute surprise, we managed to show off the all-new multiplayer mode for the first time ever, which people immediately gravitated to (though folks still definitely enjoyed the single-player campaign mode quite a bit; some even played for well over an hour). We hosted the very first (of hopefully many) SmuggleCraft multiplayer tournament, which saw over a dozen competitors and some intense gameplay. The final round boiled down to a very heated sudden-death!

Brian (left, on the couch) won the tournament, which was cool, especially since he had some rad Stephen Universe cosplay going on.

We also had one of our very first demo reviews written, thanks to a writer from hardcoregamer.com who called it a “hovercraft joyride!” Consider us thoroughly flattered.

The SmuggleCraft development team from left: TJ, Carol, Joey, Ben, and Dana

All in all, it was an excellent event. Lots of people were glad to hear that not only is the game coming for Playstation 4, but also that the game is up on Steam Greenlight. A lot of folks promised to help us get the game some Greenlight votes, which gives us a lot of hope topped with some warm and fuzzy feelings.

Come see us at Booth 301-302 in the vendor room to kick back at the Badger Lounge while you play a shiny new build of SmuggleCraft. We’ll be debuting our two-player competitive mode for the first time ever, so bring a friend and come play!

We’ll have a free raffle to be drawn at 5pm on Saturday and 3pm on Sunday, so make sure you come see us for a chance to win some goodies, including a prize basket and SmuggleCraft posters.

We’ll also be hosting a SmuggleCraft multiplayer tournament at noon on Saturday, with a big prize basket for the winner!

See you all there!