Now that I’m back from showing off Project Lexa at EGX / MCM Comic Con, I wanted to take some time to reflect on what I learned from our first public demo.
As an exhibitor, game conventions generally serve two purposes: promotion and playtesting. You’re either trying to get the word out about your game, or you’re trying to get some feedback on your game. Or both! Project Lexa’s solidly in the “both” category — we took the game to EGX to start formally getting the word out about it, but we’re still fully in the throes of development, so exhibiting at conventions is a great opportunity to playtest with brand new players to unearth any unforeseen points of friction.
Fellow Leftfield Collection exhibitor and Stealth Crossword developer ComputerJames playing through Project Lexa!
And unearth we did! As a puzzle game, Lexa can be a challenge to demo at a convention: it expects a pretty high cognitive investment from players, many of whom just might not be in the right headspace for that type of experience on a noisy show floor. We attempted to alleviate this by making the demo be the very first puzzle sequence of the game — a relatively easy introduction to the game’s mechanics. But even then, I heard from more than one person that, while they were really interested in the game, they would prefer to check it out at home, where they’re more comfortable and could really sink their teeth into the puzzles. All the more reason to continue to work towards a more complete demo that we can release on Steam!
There were also some folks that bounced off due to solvable points of friction. Some of that was due to missing pieces of polish — players were overlooking puzzle cues due to animations or sound effects that have yet to be fully implemented, so adding in that polish has become high priority before conducting future playtests.
One of the most fascinating roadblocks that came up for people was the one of the game’s fonts. We have been using Fredoka as our primary UI font — utilizing it across all of our menus and prompts. These prompts are normally depicted as an icon indicating the action you’re taking alongside the assigned keyboard key or controller button. The “Inspect” prompt — which is used to view a specific terminal screen through Lex’s translator — is currently mapped to the “Q” key on the keyboard. This caused a fascinating issue for players when the prompt appeared on screen. Let’s see if you can tell what it is:
The issue is that the “Inspect” prompt, represented by a magnifying glass, and the letter “Q” look very similar, all because the uppercase “Q” in this particular font doesn’t have its tail pass all the way through it. Some players would come upon this prompt — which happened to be the first one of the demo — and not know what to do. David Gadelkarim, one of my Leftfield neighbors, insightfully pointed out this issue before the show even started, and I watched it play out many times over the course of the show. This all just goes to show the importance of putting your game out in front of people who have had no prior exposure to it; you can easily overlook things that seem self-explanatory to you but are unclear to new players.
So while the EGX demo uncovered some bumps in the build, it also highlighted plenty of folks that simply Got It™. They would sit with the game for a solid twenty minutes trying to suss out the meanings of each glyph to see everything the demo had to offer. Honestly, seeing how the game resonated with some players makes the whole game dev journey worth it. On top of that, almost every game dev that played it also came away raving about it, partially because I think it itches that latent game designer brain that many lateral thinking and deductive reasoning games do.
So all in all, an informative and revitalizing show experience for Lexa! We received tons of compliments on the game’s art and language design, but one of my favorite compliments was from David Hayward, the curator of the Leftfield Collection, saying how grounded and well-rounded the characters in the game were. That really made my day. I love every aspect of the game, but to hear that the character writing is believable really makes me feel like the game will stick with folks long after they put it down.
Project Lexa Rides Again at EGX Birmingham!
Project Lexa at EGX Birmingham 2025
When
Friday, November 28th, 2025 through Sunday, November 30th, 2025
Where
EGX Leftfield Collection
National Exhibition Centre
Marston Green, United Kingdom
So if you’re reading this and kicking yourself for missing our first public demo of the Project Lexa — fear not! All of the games that were a part of the Leftfield Collection at EGX London last month have also been invited to the Leftfield Collection at EGX Birmingham this upcoming weekend, November 28th through the 30th!
