Our First Festival

New Devlog! This time focused on our recent experience at the Corsica Games Week. The very first festival where we presented a demo of No Space For Salad.

In this devlog, I mainly want to talk about how we prepared for the festival, how things went once we were there, but also what this experience brings us in the end.

For us, this festival was an opportunity to let players of all ages and backgrounds try the game - meaning people outside of our circle of friends. It was a way for us to see whether the game appeals to people and to gather feedback.

To be completely transparent, this is still a relatively unknown festival mostly focused on retro games and board games. But that was actually perfect for us, because it gave us the chance to test things on a smaller scale and get a glimpse of what a bigger festival experience could look like. When you present a game at a huge event (like Paris Games Week), it’s easy to get drowned out by the competition. Here, we were in a smaller space with only a few indie games being showcased, which ultimately gave us much better visibility.

In any case, this was a very important date for us and something we absolutely didn’t want to miss. We spent months preparing in advance so we could show the very best version of our game.

Preparing for the festival

It all starts with a demo. And even though we already had a playable game, we were still far from having something I’d call “sexy,” if I can put it that way.

The game was missing a lot of context and polish.

So we worked a lot on adding a narrative intro and tutorials to make the game more accessible and introduce players to the game’s universe - or at least give them a glimpse of it.

We decided to focus more on polish rather than adding new features. Mostly because we already had enough gameplay content, and we wanted to make what we already had feel memorable. During a festival like this, the goal is around 20 minutes max of gameplay: short but intense.

That meant reworking a lot of the 3D and 2D art assets, as well as the FX. Even though some things are still missing right now, the current version of the game already does a much better job at showing the game’s potential.

We still allowed ourselves to add one new exploration feature: meteorites. Randomly, while exploring the planet, meteorites can now crash near the player and give random materials or oxygen.

But beyond the demo itself, we also needed to communicate a bit around the game. That meant launching the Steam Page before the festival and preparing a trailer (as well as flyers). And even though we expected Steam retention to be fairly low at this stage, we still wanted to do things properly and start gathering a few wishlists.

It took us quite a bit of time, and the trailer ended up being edited a little last minute, but we’re still pretty happy with this second version of the trailer.

The festival itself

This was actually our first time ever presenting a game at a festival. Neither of us had done anything like this before. So we were both excited and a little nervous :).

We had two setups with controllers so players could play together in co-op.

After a pretty quiet start, festival visitors slowly started arriving at the indie village (the area of the festival where we were located). A few shy players eventually picked up the controllers, and after that it became an almost constant flow of people playing the game. Some players dropped the controller pretty quickly, while others stayed so long that we had to (reluctantly) ask them to let someone else play.

It was such an amazing feeling to watch people play No Space! And especially to see them play for so long! The demo was designed to last around 20 minutes, but some players stayed for more than an hour and a half! A lot of people gave us really positive feedback and also shared some very good ideas for the future of the game. A huge thank you to everyone who tried the game during those two festival days - it honestly meant so much to us…

In the end, the festival was mostly about meeting people. We got to chat a lot with the developers around us and play each other’s games during breaks. I’d also like to share a few really talented developers we met there:

• D-Drift by BEC-Games, a high-speed racing game focus on drift mastery and precise driving. You can already play it here on Epic Games Store.
• Mystic Seals a coop twin stick shooter with action RPG elements and Arcana Mundi a fast-paced retro 2D platformer where bubbles, combos, co-op, and possession powers collide by Jean-André Santoni
• Broke Studio, they make and publish new games for old consoles
• Fantasia, Laboratoire d'idées, promotes video game culture across Corsica and beyond through workshops, education, prevention, and gaming events, with your support helping fund activities for all ages.

The results

We had anticipated wanting data from the festival, so we implemented a system that records certain gameplay metrics. Thanks to that, we were able to collect quite a lot of data related to player sessions during the event. It’s definitely something we’ll do again in the future (while improving it further).

We learned that nearly 100 players tried the game during the festival (even though I definitely saw some of you coming back multiple times - I see you 👀).

We also learned that despite a few sessions lasting more than 50 minutes, the average playtime was around 20 minutes - technically we’re talking about the median here, but we won’t get too deep into statistics. Still, it confirmed that the demo was actually very well timed for a festival experience.

We also found out that the game currently feels fairly balanced between the restaurant gameplay and exploration gameplay. Players spent on average about the same amount of time exploring as they did inside the restaurant, which is something we’re very happy about.

Beyond the gameplay metrics, we also noticed that the game seems to resonate a lot with parent-child duos and children in general, who were probably the most represented audience at our booth. That may lead us to rethink our target audience a bit. Although, to be fair, we also have to take into account the festival bias - this was a very family-oriented event with lots of kids and families attending. But even then, our observations clearly showed that children tended to stay on the game much longer, while adults were generally quicker to put the controller down.

So… what’s next?

After the intense rush that was the festival, we’re now entering a more reflective phase where we’ll continue moving the game forward. That includes both new mechanics and new content, but also improving what’s already in the game.

But before that, we have a very important appointment in Japan! Part of the team will be heading there for a residency program (Indie Game Lab Japan) to help evolve the project and learn from Japanese creators, both in terms of design and writing. A huge thank you to the , the Institut Français, the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée and Game Créalab for this incredible opportunity <3

During that time, the game will also be showcased at BitSummit in Kyoto from May 22nd to 24th, 2026! Another opportunity for us to gather more gameplay data, maybe collect a few more wishlists on Steam, but most importantly meet Japanese indie developers.

After the residency, I think we’ll finally be ready to reveal an official development roadmap for the game. You’ll learn a bit more at that point about the future direction of the project.

Feel free to join our Discord if you’d like to actively follow and support the project!

See you very soon ✨

Event pictures