CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

Hello, I was one of the people who came in and played for about ten minutes. Given your first post in this thread and the questions you are asking, I'd like to give you a little bit of feedback about your booth itself, as that was something that my business partner and I discussed briefly at the time ( I'm an indie developer myself and so I understand how important this kind of feedback is). 

I would argue that the biggest advantage of your booth design was the fact that it was a bit mysterious.  At least that's what attracted me to it.  It was unique in that it was a small but completely enclosed booth, all black with only a strange archaic or alien looking symbol on the outside. 

The thing was, while this did eventually cause us to wonder what it was and go up to it (at which point we were very pleasantly welcomed inside), it definitely wasn't the first thing to get my attention on the show floor and I think one of the problems with it is that it only had that "curiosity factor" going for it and I don't think that was necessarily the most effective way of getting people's attention or drawing them in.

Now don't get me wrong, it was a unique setup and I commented to my business partner that I actually kind of like the way you did it, but I also mentioned that it may have been more appealing to someone like me than it may have been to larger portions of the general public (because I'm a huge fan of dark, weird and mysterious things).

The outside of your booth gave no real indication of what it was about at all and to be honest I wasn't entirely sure if it was even a game or what was going on when I first approached it. From the outside, it was impossible to really tell what was going on there and I honestly thought that maybe it was a tent or some sort of area for convention staff or something. It was only the placement of it and the strange symbol on the door flap that made me get closer to it and want to investigate.

However I will say that once inside, the experience was most memorable. I'm not sure if it was you or one of your cousins tending the booth at the time but whoever they were, they were very enthusiastic and helpful. If the person hadn't been so quick and so excited to invite us in, I don't think we would've ever found out what it was about. That is something that a lot of booths didn't do nearly as well as you guys did and you also explained things very well and thoroughly, taking us through step by step to show us how the game was played.

So in conclusion, I think there is some room for improvement in the physical setup you had and in some of your marketing (though putting your information on dollar bills was definitely an interesting touch, and worked especially well considering the type of game that you're making), but your enthusiasm and personal interaction was excellent. I can understand why you must be tired after three days of that, as I can see that you left it all out there.

If you do decide to attend another convention, my suggestion would be to try to find a way to better streamline the process of both getting people into the door and find a way to communicate how the game works without tiring yourself out quite as much. Maybe through additional signs or other graphics or something like that. Something to better summarize and briefly explain what it is that you're doing, even if it doesn't go into all the details.

I'll also say that despite not getting the kinds of numbers that you might get on the Internet, being physically there and having people play the game definitely left a greater impression which may just be very important for a game like this, without a lot of flashy graphics or screen shots that might normally get your attention online. If I'm being honest, this isn't the sort of thing that I would even give a second glance to, if I just happened to see it over the Internet, but it definitely made me take notice and appreciate it a lot more since I got to stand there and play it.  It's the kind of game that you really can't appreciate until you get into it and play it and getting people to do that is definitely a strength and so attending a convention like that may have been a good move.

Although I'm sure that you have a much better idea of what's going on with your marketing than I do, those are just my observations based on what I saw and experienced from the standpoint of someone attending the convention. I hope that this feedback helps and I wish you the best of luck!