Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer

This October 8th, Rio de Janeiro held the biggest Video Game convention in Brazil: Brasil Game Show. Inside it, a secondary event that held a contest in three gaming-related categories: Game Music Brasil, which awarded the best entries in Best Indie Game, Best Soundtrack and Best Band. I entered Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer at the first category.

The 3 category finalist would be selected among the top 10 voted games on the event's site (remember when I asked for votes?). BE:D was the fifth top voted game. Still, the jury selected it as one of the best three games, so I was invited to the finals that happened this saturday, all expenses covered.

The event was incredibly awesome. It was like a rock concert, but gaming themed, with indie games in it. Being at the other side of the stage (which is in it), interacting with a bunch of interesting people backstage, including some Brazilian celebrities was very surreal. There's this singer called Sandy who was there not to perform, but to watch her husband, who orchestrated a really awesome video game music medley you can watch here:



I was starpowered by her presence (yes, I took a picture with her) and all that "wow, it's her!" thing. But then I thought: today, she is in the audience, I'm on stage. Strange change of perspective. Yep, very cool.



Each finalist had a few minutes to speak about his game and show a video. I showed this trailer I made specifically for the contest. The crowd was pretty wild, so I knew I had to deliver some popstar kind of talk to keep them entertained. It's not really hard when you have a game about violence and all. According to some site that covered the event:

Nerdice.com
"The second candidate made a Dexter sort of game, in a gothic Pokémon-like setting where you control a character that talks to people on the street until you persuade them to take home with you and perform the most amazing tortures. This candidate made the crowd very euphoric."

Not only the crowd was indeed very euphoric, I got some pretty nice afterward reactions, including from the show host. Some people came talking to me after the event, commenting. There was a guy that works with research on gaming, he got me his card and all that. Overall, the event was like a dream come true. Being on stage, sharing space with famous people, meeting a lot of cool dudes and dudettes, talking about gaming and indie games, breathing all that... that's as awesome as it gets.

I won second place, by the way. Third place was a shooter game called Reflexor Zero, and first place was an adventure game called Talbot's Odyssey. I didn't care about winning that much, the best part was being there and being able to tell family and friends that the time I spend making games is serious/relevant stuff. When I tell people my games are getting popular, first reaction is always "can't you make money out of that?". I say "no", or "don't want to", and they immediately dismiss it all as irrelevant. It's not that I need that sort of approval from so much, but I guess it helps people understand how making games is an important part of my life.



If you have facebook, you can check some photos on my album here.