toronto game expo 2024
Toronto Game Expo is a bi-annual games convention that takes place in Toronto. There are video games, arcade machines, board games, and most importantly: a place for indies to show their games. Tanuki, the artist for no signal, was able to showcase the game there last weekend at Exhibition Place on November 16th, 2024.
plays
At the expo, we had 17 people play the game. This more or less met my expectations as it was about as many plays as we got at STAPLE! Austin, but in a single day instead of over two days. There are things that were similar between the two events; at STAPLE! I also only demoed the game on one computer and I was also less prepared to show off the game at the time (as I assume Tanuki was, as it was her first time tabling at an event). However, STAPLE! Austin is not a games event so I expected attendees to be more interested.
| event | plays |
|---|---|
| STAPLE! Austin | 19 |
| Delta H Con | 3 |
| 2D Con | 39 |
| San Japan | 44 |
| Steam Next Fest | 434 |
| Fantastic Arcade | 33 |
| Toronto Game Expo | 17 |
We got 5 wishlists on the day of the event, with 26 wishlists coming in over the following week:
| Sa | Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 6 |
Wishlist activity on the day of the event was similar to STAPLE! Austin, though in STAPLE Austin’s case we had a spike of wishlists on the following Monday:
| Sa | Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 6 | 15 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
no signal now has an outstanding total of 1,413 wishlists.
overall notes
At first, we were unaware that Toronto Game Expo offered free tables and we paid for a vendor table, which costed a little over $250 CAD after tax and was quite an expensive price for us to pay. We later learned of free tables for indie developers and submitted our application, which was accepted. Our fee was refunded and we only had to worry about travel expenses to attend.
In general, I think it was worth going. However, I don’t think it would have been worth it if we had paid for the table as we originally did. STAPLE! Austin, in comparison, costed $100 and we were allowed to split the table with another vendor, halving the cost to $50. I was really happy that Tanuki was able to show the game in Toronto, and I’m a little sad that I wasn’t able to go as well. Hopefully we can show one of our games at an event together in the future.
As for the game’s development, it seems like we will miss our original release date of Q4 (especially considering Steam’s requirement to set a release date two weeks in advance) and it’s unlikely that development will conclude before the end of the year. However, I am hard at work doing as much as I can before the end of the year and I’m holding onto a foolish hope that I will finish development before 2024 is over. You can catch me streaming the development of the game on Twitch if you’d like to see how it’s going.