As with the PAX 2015 Picture Gallery, I’m a bit late on this one, but Day of the Devs was a blast this (last?) year, and I took pictures!

My sentiments exactly.

Local elite SpyParty players cleetose and slappydavis helped out in the booth this year, and I just noticed they’re right next to each other on the leaderboard as well:

slappy and cleetose on the leaderboard

We were also joined by Ocean Quigley, his son, and my daughter, and of course John and Alice on sales duty! Ocean is working on Atomic Space Command, a new team-based space combat game with some friends from Maxis and elsewhere, so check that out. Also, I assume I’m going to be on booth duty for them at some point…quid pro quo.

See if you can spot other indie game developers in the gallery below. Our space wasn’t quite as insane as last year’s bank vault/cocktail lounge, but it was a lot cooler temperature-wise, and way less humid. Thanks again to Double Fine and iam8bit for inviting us, it was awesome and we really appreciate it!

In case you hadn’t noticed, it is no longer 2015, which means I’m extra late on this gallery of photos from PAX 2015. I also owe you the Part 2 to the SpyParty PAX Budget Numbers and Codecard Details, Part 1, which is actually a pretty interesting story, and there’s even a Part 3, but for now, here, have a zillion pictures.

Booth helpers from the community this year included krazycaley, warningtrack, sharper, kcmmmmm, and virifaux, with extra volunteer effort from canadianbacon, drawnonward (who actually did a twitch fund-raiser from the community to get to the show!), wodar, lthummus, cleetose, and theoselk. Let me know if I forgot anybody!

You can also read warningtrack‘s writeup here at spypartyfans.com: Shaking the Hand of Someone You’ve Shot

On to the pics! Post a comment if I caught you!

As anybody who follows SpyParty knows, I’m drowning in stuff to do making the game, so sometimes (often?)1 I drop the ball with organizing things, so it’s so amazing to have a super-supportive community that pick up the slack and do a lot of the organizing that’s necessary for competitive play!

Hardcore camping-sniper and in-spite-of-that all-around great person and competitive gamer krazycaley has organized a league for competitive SpyParty with the totally nonintuitive name: SpyParty Competitive League!

Each week, there will be a big cast every Sunday starting at 6:30pm US Pacific on http://twitch.tv/spyparty

magician1099 whipped up a quick logo for the SCL!

I have joined this league, and I am very out-of-practice at my own game, so come watch me lose my first match with elvisnake today, Friday, Nov 20, at 6pm US Pacific at http://twitch.tv/spyparty.

krazycaley is a lawyer in real life, and the list of league rules reads like he’s a lawyer in the game too, so I won’t reprint them all here, but it’s a normal tiered league with divisions and a season and then championships to see who advances and who doesn’t advance and who does the opposite-of-advance (ie. me). He’s got a big pool of acceptable maps and game types, and then there’s even a ban phase so you can get rid of your least favorite maps before you match. All of these rules have been debated endlessly in the beta forums, of course, so when I lose I have plenty of leeway to blame it on krazycaley‘s rules, an important characteristic for any competitive format.

Here are the divisions for the first season:

It’s great to see some old-timers return for the league, and it’s also great to see new players in the mix too!

Of course, all of these division names of precious stones and metals started a debate since apparently platinum is worth more than diamonds, gold is worth more than platinum, and then somebody suggested updating the names of the the divisions based on daily market prices…

If you’re in the SpyParty beta you can find the link to the results thread here. If you’re not in the beta and would like to be, sign up here. See you in-game and on stream!

1. usually? [↩]

If you live in or near the San Francisco Bay Area, come over to Day of the Devs tomorrow, Saturday, November 7th, 2015!

What is Day of the Devs you ask? It’s a really fun and free video game exhibition and show and circus and whatnot, kind of like a mini-PAX expo hall, but free and local. It’s put on by Double Fine and iam8bit and it’s a blast. There will be tons of cool games there this year, DJs, and it’s all-ages!

We’ve shown SpyParty at all of them so far, and it’s always been great. Last year, we transformed a small underground metal box into a cocktail lounge. What will happen this year? I have no idea, since it’s a whole new venue. Something magical, I’m sure.

We’ll have the latest build of the game with all the recent updates, like the Not-Strictly Ballroom Update and the Third Batch of New Art Characters, and this year both slappydavis and cleetose will be on hand to train people.

Of course, we’ll be selling SpyParty with the awesome codecards again, probably with a new discount for group purchases, but I still need to figure that out. That reminds me I also need to write up the Part 2 of the original codecards details post, oops!

Yes, this code is live. Well, it was, but it probably isn’t now, but maybe you’re the first one to read this and scan it?

So, come on down to the Dogpatch in SF to The Midway, 900 Marin St, San Francisco, CA 94124, from 3pm-9pm tomorrow and say hi!

Click me for interactive high-res slider goodness…

Okay, so that took a lot longer than I thought it would, but The Not-Strictly Ballroom Update is out and live in the world!  If you’re in the beta, just launch the game and hit Play at the main menu and it’ll auto-update. If you’re not in the beta, why aren’t you?

If you’d like to read more about the update, check out this post, which also includes the cool interactive sliders version of the animation above. The biggest new things are the new Ballroom map (pictured above), and the six new “group 3” characters (including the twins!).  There are also lots of smaller fixes and features, and I’ll be adding more curated replay sets in the next few days and fixing a few bugs I put in the update just for you but that you don’t appreciate because you’re ungrateful so I’m taking them out, so there.