Welcome to Pillow Castle’s 11teenth Newsletter!

So. Yeah. Halves happened.

The team is pretty beat up after our bout at GDC. We had a wonderful time and it was a great opportunity for everyone to learn about what these sorts of events were like, and to be able to be compared to games we consider to be well above our own was a real treat to everyone… but now it was time to get back to work and as we said last week, the gas tank was running a little low.

We pulled together the beginnings of a presentation for halves which followed the structure of what we had seen at GDC — lots of images, very few words. We rehearsed around the idea of being excited about our game and the opportunity we had and wanting to share that feeling with everyone else. In the end, we were focused on our progress as a group learning to work together and as our game as a possible product, and not so much on the school side of things.

Yuxi made a great video from the footage we had taken at GDC and Zhengyi and Xiao worked hard to distill their work into thoughts we could share with the crowd. We decided not to show a live playthrough of the game because we had lots of information we wanted to get out there, and instead opted for animated GIFs to quickly show the levels, because we had limited time.

The audience seemed to enjoy the presentation, but on Sunday we got Feedback that it was actually a mixed bag. We will find out more next week, but apparently some of the faculty and students considered our display of enthusiasm as boastful or even egotistical — going so far as to say we were “cocky.” The team is a little shaken up by the initial feedback of what we thought was a playful presentation, but we’ll know more after we have a chance to talk with faculty.

On top of all this, we have our second round pitch for the Fall next Wednesday. We have to prepare a new presentation and get the faculty back on our side. Wish us luck! I think we’ll be okay 🙂

Now if we could just get some sleep…

(“Sleep is for the weak!” – Yuxi)

Good thing we have her around to keep us moving!

-Pillow Castle