This is the busiest time of the year for gamedevs in Portugal: there’s the GameDev Camp, MOCHE XL Games World, Lisbon Games Week, plus the submissions for the PlayStation Talents.
XL Games World took place on the Altice Arena, from 14 to 17th November. Of course we couldn’t miss the chance to be there, more specifically on the Indie X area.

Last year we won the award for the Best Portuguese Game on Indie X, so this year we were invited to be part of the jury for the 2019 awards.
It was quite an experience! We had to play 53 games and choose the best among them. The games were so good and so diverse in style that the task was extremely hard (and time consuming).
I took two and a half days to play all the games, and was only able to decide by the fourth day. The Best Game of the Show was “Haven”, the Best Portuguese Game was split between two contestants: “Decay of Logos” and “Outsider”, the Best Art Direction went for “Haven”, Best Multiplayer Game for “Hovershock”, Most Innovative Game for “Clocker” and People’s Choice for “Back Then”.

Besides being a juror, we also had the chance to exhibit Those Who Remain. We got amazing feedback and a lot of scares from the players.
Even though it’s not the ideal type of game to exhibit in such a noisy and lighted space, everyone who played got completely immersed as soon as the game started.
We can’t wait to put the game out there!

The community was awesome – there were devs from a lot of different countries there, and new Portuguese devs showing their games.
Everyone was exchanging contacts, knowledge, technical and business info, etc. This is one of the benefits of exhibiting a game in a show like this.

A shout-out to the retrogaming area – 80’s music playing in the room, arcades, Sinclair computers, Commodores and so much more. The feels.

Congrats to all the Indie X award winners, and of course, to the Indie X team for creating such an awesome event.