in the last week of september, i exhibited at tokyo game show, the yearly big game event here. it was my first time exhibiting at a four-day event & to be incredibly honest i don't know that i want to do it again! four days is a very long time & i am absolutely exhausted.

that said, it was a very good experience & i would definitely recommend applying for the free indie exhibit option if you are anywhere near japan.

tgs-specific prep

a quick explanation: i exhibited at tgs through selected indie 80, which is tokyo game show's free indie exhibit option. up until last year the space was very small & there were no chairs. honestly, that sucked. (as a side note, i also exhibited at tgs just once before during the ill-fated online exhibit & it was absolutely useless. not knocking on other online exhibits, but tgs's rendition of it was pretty much pointless & a waste of my time.)

however, this year the free space was much larger, with two wide desks that you could arrange freely. the space came with two chairs for free & you could rent more for 500 yen each. i ended up with four chairs in total which i think was good! pc and monitor were also free to rent.

there were other options like paying money to print a logo or having a big image board thing on the back but honestly i think those aren't necessary - i think you're better off just printing off your own big poster at a much more economical price.

there are also like a bajillion forms you have to fill out online with varying deadlines because tgs management is weird. the manual is like 80 pages. it's too much.

booth layout

since the space is so big i thought a lot about how i wanted to organise it! this is what i brought:

• b0 poster & double-sided tape
• 200 business cards!
• 800 double-sided a5 flyers & 500 stickers
• little pop texts to stick to the monitor &c.
• tablecloths
• demo machine, headphones, monitor, &c.

poster & tape

thanks to a tip from detective nekko dev ara-san i ended up printing a huge b0 poster which fit perfectly on the back board. i think this was really useful because without the poster honestly the booth looks kind of sad! at other events usually i use a posterstand that i put behind my table, but at tgs since you have this gigantic black board you might as well fill it up. i also stuck a qr code with my steam page on it so people could scan from afar. i saw some other people decorate their boards with a bunch of flyers which was cute too.

i also bought double-sided tape specifically for the poster to make it easy to attach.

the big poster specifically was really good for me i think because a lot of people would walk by & say it looked cute which was a nice confidence booster haha 🐰

business cards

the first two days of tokyo game show are business days & you can go through a lot of business cards! i printed 200 & have under 50 left. i know some other people who ran out of business cards & that's a huge shame i think if you're going to an event where you'll have a chance to meet a lot of people you won't normally. make sure you have enough business cards!

i saw some people had business cards for themselves & then a separate one just showcasing their game which was cool! on my business card i have one side with my handle/main info & on the other has some art from my games along with more details.

flyers & stickers

i asked around about flyers & got varying responses from like 500-1000 so i ended up printing 800 double-sided a5 flyers. i went with a5 because it's a nice cute size & i can fit it on a table easily. in the end i ended up handing out over 700 flyers which is about perfect, since i wanted to save some flyers for digital games expo which i'm exhibiting at next month.

most of the flyers i handed out on saturday & sunday, the public days. on thursday & friday, i remember thinking "oh no i printed way too many flyers i'm going to have to carry them all home 😢" but then the public days came & the flyers just disappeared.

i also printed stickers as a bonus for people who played or wishlisted the game. i printed 500 of these & have about 200 left. for the stickers i did a kind of complicated-looking design but in the future i think i would go with a simpler one that looks cute from far away because that would be more eyecatching.

pop texts

i made sure to have a pop that said "PHOTOS OK" as well as "5 MINUTE PLAYTIME" because these are two things i feel like people passing by usually want to know. i think the PHOTOS OK is less important at tgs because unlike at doujin events a lot of the visitors already assume everything is ok to take photos of, but having it doesn't harm anything. for the playtime, i think a lot of people can be a bit hesitant to start playing when they don't know how long a demo will take, so knowing at a glance that it'll only take x minutes makes it easier for people to sit down.

i stuck a lot of the pops on the monitor because i thought it made it more visually interesting. (also since my game is like 4:3 resolution the black space on the sides of the monitor looked kind of sad.)

tablecloth

this isn't necessary but i think it just makes it look nicer!! i just reused the tablecloth i always use at doujin events. as a note i didn't see any fire-resistant requirement for tgs specifically, but many doujin events will have this requirement, so if you want to get a tablecloth printed, make sure to get a fire-resistant one.

also, the table is bigger than the size you usually see at doujin events so i had to use two. for last year (2023) one tablecloth would have been enough i think, but the table is bigger this year (which is a good thing because more space).

demo machine

since my demo is very short (only 5 minutes) i decided to only have one demo machine. that was enough for me but i think you might want more if you have a longer demo! if people came by while somebody else was playing what i did was hand them a flyer & redirect them to the steam page where the demo is also available.

i had headphones for people to listen to the music because the music (by sdhizumi!) is very cute & i wanted to make sure people heard it haha.

i also had a separate monitor behind the monitor that the players would see so that i could watch what the player did while sitting down 🙈

bonus: table layout

the tables were by default just two tables stuck together right by the back board. what i ended up doing was having one table by the back board which i hid all my cardboard boxes & bags under, while the other table was in the front with all the demo stuff.

also for chairs i put two on the player side & two on the exhibitor side. i saw some other exhibitors put all the chairs just on the player side so they had to stand, but don't torture yourself like this! you don't have to stand. at doujin events it's normal for exhibitors to sit while visitors stand so why are so many game events expecting exhibitors to stand?? let's all sit together!

some other layouts i saw:

• L-shapes were cool especially for people at the edges of the area
  • L with game/monitor facing the corridor so people walking by can see
  • L with game/monitor near the board & stuff for people to pick up (flyers, stickers, &c.) on the other table
• both tables out front for more accessible table space (good for people with multiple demo machines)

the demo itself

i always struggle with what to include in a demo since my games are usually narrative games & it can be hard to get across the best parts of a narrative game in a short demo. what i did this time was cutting out a bit of the main game & condensing it (there's a little quest where you help a townsperson find a fishing rod & go fishing). i include the very beginning of the game as an introduction then jump to the fishing quest.

i think this works well for events, but conversely a pared-down demo like this might be a bit short for steam, so you might want to have two separate demos: one for events & one for steam. but that's a lot of extra work too 😓 so i'm not sure what the best practice is here! but the tiny narrative demo is what worked for me.

other stuff i did

i brought a lot of water every day & it still wasn't enough! with all the talking your throat takes a beating. i also bought cough candy & salt tablets which were a great help.

i also requested for wifi & i'm glad i did because my mobile data was really spotty throughout the event! when i wasn't connected to wifi sometimes my messages wouldn't go through & my notifications were delayed.

also i had a lot of friends help me out at the booth as well & i wouldn't have been able to do it without them. i know some other people who can exhibit on their own but i definitely need the help of my friends & i'm very grateful for them! (tgs selected indie 80 gives you five exhibitor passes so you can have up to five people there.)

stuff i didn't do

you can order bento through tgs but i didn't because they didn't have anything i could eat but apparently this was the right choice because somebody who ordered the bento last year told me it didn't taste good anyway... 😅 & i remember it being quite expensive! i would recommend picking up something from a convenience store before going to the event if you plan to eat. (i usually actually skip lunch at events & just eat breakast & an early dinner, since i find it hard to find time to actually properly eat a lunch, but lots of people brought snacks & i survived with them! thanks everyone who brought me food for energy 🔥)

also as a note i didn't really actively hand out flyers because i find that very exhausting. i would hand out flyers to people passing by if they looked interested, but that's it. i personally don't really like it when people are pushy with flyers & it always gives me a negative impression, so i didn't want to do it myself.

separately on the public days it's super crowded so don't think you can just go out & find somewhere to eat for dinner! i was going to eat dinner with some people i met at the event on saturday but everywhere was way too full... (even taco bell our first choice haha)

for my sunday dinner plans somebody smarter than me had already booked seats at a restaurant so it was fine, but if you want to eat dinner with a group near the venue on public day booking a restaurant is your best bet. (but maybe this is obvious if you think about how many people are there on public day!)

stuff i wish i had done

after seeing other people do it i wish i had brought a separate monitor just to play a trailer of the game. having something moving at the booth looks nice!! & at other people's booths it definitely caught my attention when walking past.

a small thing also is that since the bottom of the poster is hard to see, i wish i'd put any text i wanted people to read higher on the poster. most people walking by probably only saw the top 3/4 of the poster so i'm going to keep that in mind for future designs.

tgs was good but...

so tgs itself was good! but i actually have a littany of complaints about the management. it could be a whole other post so i'm just going to make a very short summary here, but they were surprisingly disorganised for such a big event. the doujin events i've been at have raised my standards for what i expect (rented stuff already at the table at beginning of event/left for retrieval at end of event, staff who know what they're doing when you ask them questions, no wrong times & dates on the schedule!!!, announcements made clearly over speaker rather than having a staff member try their best to shout them while walking through the aisles...) though to be honest i think it's not that my standards are that high, but that tgs's bar was unusually low...

anyway i'm EXHAUSTED now so i will be quiet for the next little bit... 💀

...is what i'd say but i'm actually in this weekend's indie web only event on toranoana so check it out! & i'll also be at digital games expo at the beginning of next month. wish me luck...

also some game recs!

there were lots of cool games at tgs but here are a few recs:

super cool tower defence game! the pixel art is incredible as to be expected from the dev HACHINOS!

a detective game where nobody dies... i've been excited for this game ever since i heard about it a while back & can't wait to find out what happens in the full release.

the demo was showing off the new dlc & it had me laughing a lot while playing through. it's very cute!! 🐯

i did the english translation for the demo & honestly this game is just a delight. the art, music, story - it all goes together so well.

also did the english translation for this demo! i really enjoyed the first game, BOKURA, & i think fans of that will also enjoy this one.

and finally you should also wishlist my game to give me pressure to actually release within the year as i've put on the steam page! 🙏