The Other ESC Game Theater Games

We started conceiving the ESC Game Theater in late 2009.

Note: The we does not include Ed Schlossberg, who began this vision in the 1980s and built a digital, adult-oriented, local-multiplayer, social, location-based experience. I was lucky enough to be there when he reopened that chapter of his aspiration and shared ESC with the world.

It was ambitious and futuristic. The level of tech required made parts impossible or at least risky. I loved it.

The grand vision was different from the result. The team created many variations, honing in on a 40,000-square-foot dream. Decks were pitched, critiqued, and advanced. I made dozens of game concepts and blew out several game design documents. It was the first time I was given free rein on video game design, and I reveled in it.

The emerging requirement was a demo, but what should we showcase? The plan was too big. We settled on taking a small piece and building that out. One of my games would get made! Alas, that’s not quite what happened.

I showed up to a partner meeting with my mountain of game documentation. I was going to tell a room full of stakeholders what we would build—and I did. It felt amazing. The games sounded fun, and I answered everyone’s questions in vivid detail. It was my first time leading the charge in a design meeting. Until then, my leadership triumphs were all part of side hustles or camps. This signaled something new.

Then we returned to our office, and the ideas were changed.

I was naive and young. I didn’t understand the context—I thought I was driving the project but was merely a passenger. We met with the internal team, and I was told what two games we would demo. Neither was one I pitched nor were they my concepts at all. I was devastated, but I quickly turned it around. Regardless of the seeds of the ideas, I would still be designing games.

Those two games were Spotter and SnB. Spotter later became Hat the Beast when we opened commercial game theater locations. SnB was rebuilt after our first demos and was modded into a new game called Robot Basketball.

I wasn’t used to ceding creative control in my game designs. I had created almost a dozen new live-action games a year and had difficulty letting someone else lead. I was a growing collaborator, as my work with Dalton and the Adventure Society years later would show, but I still was a creative force. Trying to solve someone else’s design problems was typical in my day job, and I thought I was too good to do that in my passion projects.

But ESC wasn’t my passion project. I was passionate about it and came to love everything we did, but Ed and his colleagues were paying. I had to respect that it was his baby, much more so than mine. ESC (Eddie’s Social Club) humbled me, although it took a while. I had to earn that respect, not assume it.

Many years later, a reluctant intern showed up at the ESC offices. He wasn’t hungry; he was arrogant. My early attitude had a touch of arrogance, but I earned my place by years of work. I paid my dues by facilitating and creating dozens of games before ESC was even a thing. This new employee decided that game designers were crowned, and he was next in line. I explained that my choices cost the company thousands of dollars - that when I made a new game concept, I stood by that idea until the very end. He went over my head, ignoring everything that made ESC special, mainly that it was a 30-player system, and suggested a single-player game that involved tanks and explosions. That backfired, and he was asked to leave.

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We needed more games. The demo went well enough that ESC got a pilot run at Buffalo Wild Wings. Warner Bros. was producing two games for the system, but our offerings were not enough. We had SnB and Hat the Beast, which are evolutions from the demo. We also added Robot Basketball and Cube Ball. The audience would want more.

Warner Bros. employed Montreal-based game developer?Sarbakan?for the first game.?Astro Beams?was fun but just a bit too tricky for younger players and a bit too kiddie for older players. They were looking for the next dev, and I suggested my buddies at?BumbleBear. The company was responsible for the indie hit?Killer Queen Arcade and had serious cred in the indie community. Engaging them to make a game would be excellent for the new system.

Beyond that, Killer Queen Arcade is one of my favorite games. It’s a perfectly balanced local multiplayer experience that shows its field-based origins. Through many Come Out and Play festivals, I witnessed the game's evolution from the field to the arcade. It was thrilling to watch friends become indie celebrities.

They created Pixel Prison Blues for the ESC Game Theater. The game was phenomenal. It was an imbalanced retro-style maze-based cops and robbers game that felt like the cousin of Dig Dug. Some players were criminals, trying to get all of the loot. A few players were cops, trying to lock up all criminals. My main contribution to the game was pushing for an escape tunnel across the prison cells to let the captured criminals have an activity while they waited to be released. Beyond that, the game was brilliant and shined brightest with 20-30 players.

Our team got to work. I also had a list of concepts I pushed while folding in Ed’s ideas. I realized that for us to move quickly, part of my job was working closely with Ed to ensure he was on board. It would be scrapped if we presented a rapid prototype without Ed fully grasping the mechanics.

Ed was traveling to Japan at the time and suggested a sumo-based game. I thought this was a great idea—players could claim territory and knock one another out of a ring. We did a quick prototype called?Sumo Cars,?and it was interesting, but the controls were challenging. Our playtesters liked?smashing into one another the most, even though that wasn’t the game's focus. We found the fun.

Note: I wanted to build a destruction derby. We did drop the cars, but I brought them back with Borough Gods. I was persistent when I got a mechanic in my head.

We replaced the cars with round fruit. That let us simplify the controls into a Marble Madness / Super Monkey Ball-style. The flat planes were swapped with bowls. My idea was to make this feel like a fast-paced skateboarding game, with players knocking one another out of the ring while constantly rolling from bowl to bowl. Depth became our enemy.

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Before SnB was the idea, there was a push for a different game that used depth as a fundamental feature. I couldn’t make it work with a fixed camera - players would have difficulty immediately understanding how to shoot things into the screen at a specific level. Other games compensate through moving cameras, but we had a 50’ screen and potentially thirty players - cameras couldn’t move unless we wanted to make everyone sick. Plus, it wouldn’t solve the depth issue, as each player would be subject to a single moving image. I figured this out on paper before anything hit the screen, and SnB took its place.

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Unfortunately, no matter where we moved the camera, round fruit using bowls like skateboarding ramps were too hard to read from a fixed perspective. Players couldn’t properly aim their fruit, which was the entire goal of the game. We kept hitting against this with different ideas, but it didn’t work.

Sumo Fruit was temporarily shelved while we tried other ideas.?

This period was chaotic. We had a small team, with Jessica Fiorini , Kevin Harper , and me at the core. There was never just one game in progress - we were working on ten(!). SnB?and?Hat the Beast?were done but still constantly playtested, which meant bug fixes and quality-of-life updates when time permitted. Robot Basketball and Cube Ball were playable, but we were learning a lot from our playtests. Small iterations would improve both games. Those changes came with the new versions. Robot Basketball Tournament, created for a $5,000 tournament at Buffalo Wild Wings in Riverside, California, was a five-on-five game that forced players to pass before they could score. Robot Basketball Pro significantly improved the physics and shot mechanics, making it a far superior experience. Cube Ball Pro replaced the double tap charge with a hold-and-charge button that could be used for shots and variable bursts. The pro versions became definitive - we were lucky to squeeze in the improvements.

We would have five more titles before our marathon development period ended—all within 12 months. Several standout titles, however, made it pretty far down the development pipeline before being scrapped.

SnB Mods

There was a strong sense that we could easily create several variations from the SnB mechanic and cut down development time. This did net us Robot Basketball, but we spent some time working on a defense-based version of SnB called SnB: Protect. The game was never fun in playtests.

Wobble

I can’t remember this idea’s origin (it’s weird enough to be mine). The prototype felt like Klax, except players were supposed to smack wobbly avatars to push them back on a conveyor belt.

Here’s the description:

Do you regularly think, “Those stupid wobbles and their stupid faces? Man, I wish someone would punch that goofy grin off their maw.”? Do not fret, my pets; it is your time to shine. Grab a boxing glove, frying pan, baseball bat, or whatever weapon beckons to your violent rage and give those wobbles a beating. We’ll assign the hit, and you...well, you hit it!

Players choose avatars that are objects that can bop, punch, shove, or smack wobble. They are given assignments on which wobble they must bop. Assignments can be unique to an individual player/team or shared between players/teams. For example, three players may all be assigned the blue wobble at the same time.?

Assigned wobbles that are correctly bopped disappear in an explosion of sparkly confetti. Unassigned wobbles that are bopped bounce back and are not removed. Wobbles can knock into each other even though they are tethered to the spot. At times, it will be necessary for a player to bop a close wobble to uncover a shot at a far wobble.

It’s unclear if this was ever playable. The idea seemed fun but could get a bit repetitive.

Gopher Broke

I wanted this to work. I loved the idea of teams burrowing tunnels and blocking opponents. This was the first of many field-based concepts I would pitch, but it didn’t quite hit the fun notes in our prototypes.

Dig paths, block opponents, and hoard the most to win dominance over the subterranean world.

Four teams start at different corners of the screen near their designated Hoard (which starts relatively empty, depending on handicaps). Various objects are scattered around under the earth. Each team wants to fill their Hoard up first, which requires both gathering food (and other items) and blocking other teams.

Gophers can (1) dig tunnels, (2) carry food or other objects, and (3) block tunnels. Each of these actions is exclusive and cannot be done simultaneously. The default state of every gopher is to be a Digger. This means that they can dig any existing dirt. If a Digger approaches an object and there is enough room around that object, that gopher can pick up the object and change it to a Carrier. Carriers cannot dig, which means they are confined to whichever path exists around them. If a Carrier gets stuck, they can become a Digger again by eating or placing the object (if it is food). Gophers can become Constructors by getting the Constructors hat (a limited number in the game). Constructors cannot dig or pick up objects - they can only place new dirt in existing tunnels. They can become a Digger again by throwing away the hat.

Objects vary in size and value for the Hoard. Some objects can be used to block the other team or hinder their attempt at creating a good Hoard. The most valuable objects appear above ground (like golf balls), but traps and humans threaten gophers that venture above ground.

The gopher idea wasn’t resonating, so we tried a couple of failed variations, such as “Ice Breakers,” which somehow made the tunneling system about breaking ice in a pond. Strange.

Circuit Surfers

Circuit Surfers is a sad memory as the game was the farthest in the development of any of our missteps. Jet Tawara made us amazing graphics; the goal was to tweak the game into a playable state. This is one of the few examples of a game with almost no documentation - the concept was to combine a Tron aesthetic with Snake. Players would zip along thin lines, extending their tails through eating power surges and avoiding other players. We got far enough along in the game to test it with a crowd, and it didn’t work. The pinpoint controls and on-screen chaos were too much. We couldn’t salvage the effort.

Note: I designed a prototype called The Twerps years later for ESC. It took place on a circuit board but distinctly differed from Circuit Surfers' aesthetic. Neither game left beta, but there's some pattern there.

Monster Attitude

A lack of prep and context killed this game. Ed wanted the theater to be for everyone, not just gamers. He encouraged us to fight against video game tropes and avoid the familiar. Jess and I bucked at this now and then - and Monster Attitude was the definitive example.

I went to IndieCade (hosting Field Frogger) and witnessed a 100+ player game called Renga. The concept was that the players were on a spaceship at the center of the screen, and waves of other ships kept attacking. The audience had laser pointers and could defeat the enemy ships if they coordinated their aim. The theatricality of the experience was incredibly powerful, and we wanted to recreate it for ESC.

Note: I critiqued Renga at the time for lack of player agency. Even if I’m one of a hundred, I want to know how well I did individually, something that can’t be tracked through a simple laser light. Years later, It was revealed that due to a technical challenge, the IndieCade performance was not controlled by the laser lights but by a facilitator, meaning no one had any agency in the game. Finding that out was a real bummer.

Hordes of ill-mannered monsters have been let loose upon the earth. Honestly, the earthlings wouldn’t mind too much because the monsters don’t seem bent upon destroying cities or kidnapping ladies. It’s just that these monsters are total jerks. Where did your PB&J go? Monsters. How did you lose your place in line at the movie theater? Monsters. Why are all your socks ripped and covered with slobber? Well, we hope that it’s because of monsters. So please do us a favor, old chum, take your trusty bow and arrow in hand and rid the earth of the pesky ne’er-do-wells.

Each player uses a bow to launch arrows at waves of monsters that grow in strength and size while diminishing in number. All monsters in a wave must be defeated within a time limit. The monsters have terrible attitudes and can be pretty cocky. They don’t move off-screen but show off their dismissiveness for the player by taunting them and prancing about the screen. The first wave contains multiple tiny monsters, each with one weak point. The next wave has fewer monsters but comprises more enormous, more brutal monsters with multiple weak points. The final round culminates in an epic boss battle that features one giant monster that all players must defeat together.

Waves are the most essential part of this game. As the entire game is timed, many play sessions will not reach the final wave. Even if a group of players makes it to the final wave, they may not be able to defeat the ultimate boss in the remaining time. This will be balanced so that teams rarely make it to the end but do get a taste of the final reveal, which is both spectacular and terrifying (in a funny way).

Waves are also used to ramp up teamwork in the game. Players start by defeating single monsters (as mentioned) and must work together with each subsequent wave as the monsters become less numerous but more massive and difficult to defeat.

Players use the controller to fling arrows from bows lining the bottom of the screen. Bows and monsters will never collide. Arrows can collide. Therefore, players need to communicate as the number of monsters declines to cut down on crossfire. Monsters can only be damaged by hitting specific and increasingly difficult-to-locate weak points. Monsters “die” in amusing and disgusting ways.

Some monsters employ a timing mechanic by alternately exposing and hiding weak spots. An example is a monster with a weak eye that opens and closes. Monsters have impressive defense mechanisms and can swat arrows out of their path. Players must aim and time their shots carefully.

The monsters grow in size until the final boss battle. The final boss is epic and cannot fit its entire body on screen. This mega-monster features multiple weak spots and an impressive defense system.

I don’t have a picture from the playtest, as we used some terrible video game assets for the bad guys, and it was canned the moment the images hit the screen. Another problematic feature of the game was the inherent violence. At the time, none of the approved ESC games involved hitting or killing, which was reason enough to focus on other projects. It's a shame, as we were trying to build Punch Out! meets Sink the Ship (my version of Sink the Ship).

Cubicle Thrashers

I wanted to riff on a Karl Rohnke field game called Bad Neighbors for one of the games. Bad Neighbors is simple: Throw as much trash as possible into your neighbor’s yard in the allocated time. Your neighbor is doing the same thing, so the game is a significant back-and-forth. I modified it for Come Out and Play with four different teams, and it was a cross-generational hit.

Gopher Broke?and?Circuit Surfers?were grid-based maze games, and I wanted them to be similar. Players?would try to trash one another's cubicles in an office environment while protecting their cubicles. There were even player classes, such as Accountants, who could slow down players with complex tax documentation, or Architects, who could move around cubicle walls.?

The World is presented as a top-down cubicle maze, similar to a rat’s maze. Each team controls a quarter of the space. In each space is an assortment of desks, some covered in garbage. There are also garbage cans and other random dirty bits that can be picked up and transported.

The main objects in the game are “trash types.” Depending on the type of garbage and the location, it takes longer to remove and transport and is worth a different amount of trashiness.

Players race through the maze, picking up trash from their area and placing it into an opponent’s area. Players can also go to specific locations (Trash Station) on the board to create new trash.

If a player is holding trash in another player’s area and the other player is not holding trash, that player can “tag” the trasher, which sends them (and the garbage) back to their spawn (home) location.

On the side of the board is a Trashometer showing each area's general trashiness. The teams want to (1) have the lowest Trashometer score when time runs out, (2) completely clean out their area before time runs out, or (3) fill their Trashometer before time runs out (shooting the moon).

Note—Every designer has strong feelings about the concept of Shooting the Moon from?Hearts.?Killer Queen Arcade?has the snail, which is a similar mechanic—sacrificing a player's effort for a slow and unlikely task that, if somehow completed, yields an immediate victory.

There are a couple of things that could be improved with this idea. One is that all players are using touchscreen controls, meaning that movement through space needs to be simple. Screen-based joysticks are the least popular for the critical masses, as some folks have a hard time not looking down without the sensation or haptic pleasure of a physical controller. The other issue is that I led too strongly with the theme, which didn’t sound as fun as I thought. The mechanic was solid, though, and I think this would have been fully produced if I had focused on stripping away the excess and starting with an abstract, themeless canvas.

It was such a busy time that I had to create a flow chart explaining all of our game development steps and where each game currently sat. In the old trash heap were Wobble, Super Bacon Grab 3 (at least I’m consistent), Gopher Broke, Ice Breakers, Cubicle Thrashers, SnB Protect, Sumo Cars, and Monster Attitude. At this point, Circuit Surfers was still in the mix.

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Despite multiple failures, we built five more games (not including pro versions) with various successes. These were in simultaneous development (poor Kevin), so we had almost twenty games progressing at one point.

Ed pitched a game called Sticker Car. It was a destruction derby variation, except that when you ran into another car, instead of damage, you left a sticker. I combined this with Sumo Fruit and eliminated the ramp-based skating. Instead of leaving a sticker, I wanted to steal stickers and make the game feel like Capture the Flag. Players control their fruit by tilting the controller and tapping the screen to boost in a given direction.

The fun was obvious once we put the fruit onto a flat plain. I just needed to firm up the team play. We settled on six teams, with a maximum of five players per team. Each player started with three stickers (which were eventually replaced with tattoos, and Fruit Tattoo was born). They were represented by icons that floated behind each fruit. If players got smacked three times, they would splat onto the field, leaving a big mess - and you would steal their tattoo.

Even though this was fun, we wanted to make it easier to play and learn, so we created Fruit Tattoo Pro. In this, if you collided with one of the icons, you would steal it, to bring it back to your base. If any team got the complete set of five different tattoos before time elapsed, the round would immediately end, and that team would get a bonus. Similarly, the round would end if all the tattoos were stolen. Otherwise, the round ended after a couple of minutes.

Note - The original version had Marble Madness-like slippery controls. This was okay, but it drastically improved in the Pro version. Players don't like fighting against the controller to get what they want!

The additional round ends made Fruit Tattoo Pro wholly unique and incredibly competitive. It’s another game that I sorely wish I could share with others!

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Bee Racing (aka Speedy Bees, or Birdz and Beez) was high on my list to create. The first version sounded like this:

Players attempt to collect pollen and return it to their hive. Each piece of pollen returned creates a drop of honey. Players continue to collect and return pollen until their hive is full of honey. Once a hive is full of honey, the game is over.?

Players cycle through controlling birds, bees, and caterpillars. This means that every player can play each animal. Players cycle through animals upon death.?

Example: Player starts the game as bee. Player deposits 5 pollen pieces before being eaten by a bird. Player respawns as a bird. Player eats 2 bees and destroys 1 caterpillar before being swarmed and killed by bees. Player respawns as caterpillar. Player manages to deposit 10 pollen pieces before being destroyed by birds. Player respawns as bee.

Players direct the animals using a combination of the accelerometer and touchscreen. They tilt to move forward and back and tap the screen to increase their vertical height.

I was inspired by Killer Queen Arcade and wanted something similar on our system. Kevin and Jet assembled a bee flight demo, which we controlled with tilt. The game was sold by its feel and visuals—in fact, the feeling of flying bees around felt so good that we wanted the entire game to be about bees.

Ed wasn’t thrilled by the idea. We likely pitched the bird/bee/caterpillar version, and it seemed too nonsensical. I devised a plan: one of our coworkers ( Kris Haberman ) was an apiarist. In a last-ditch attempt to save the game, I met with our team and Kris, asking him everything about bees. We rethought our approach and pitched the following to Ed:

Bees pollinate flower buds. After three pollination, a flower bud will open. Bees deposit the nectar from the flower buds into the hive. After three deposits in a cell, the cell will slowly wax over and become safe. Bees can attack enemy bees and steal from the other hive. Also, there is something about bee dancing (I believe this is technically what you do when you hover over a bud to pollinate it).

It may have been that we went through the motion of engaging a beekeeper, or it may have been Jess standing up for the project, or we may have just found Ed at the right moment, but?Bee Racing?was approved for development. The game came together well and played the longest of all the ESC titles. If teams were evenly matched, it was a tug-of-war until the end, often timing out before either hive was full.

We made a tournament-ready modification to Bee Racing called Bee Racing Pro, which improved movement and attack and introduced on-hit kills. Although this was a superior game, it was too harsh for new players, so it was the only pro title that didn’t replace the previous version, instead acting as a level-up for advanced players.

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I wanted to create a rhythm game for the system. We were just past the rise and fall of?Rock Band,?and I thought a group-based precision music game would uniquely showcase the system's low latency. I was concerned that getting royalties for known music would be tough, so I pushed for work in the public domain. It seemed a requirement that the music should be recognizable, such that players could anticipate moves. Beat Saber?and similar VR titles proved me wrong from that perspective. That noted, however, is that the unique music-indie?Trombone Champ?primarily uses public domain works and is phenomenal.

My solution was to have the game be about marching during football halftime. Somehow, the players would control a group of band members, and their ability to keep time would maintain the band formation. We evolved this into a band marching in a parade, but this idea didn’t excite anyone, so we kept brainstorming.

There was an idea of everyone in a team being on a boat, rowing as a team to avoid obstacles. What if we combine this with the parade idea? I replaced the marching band with a giant float. Each player would tilt their device to move the float to the left or right of their lane - all of the directions on a team adding up to the actual float motion. Birds would fly overhead (this is a remnant of a whole other idea) and poop on the floats, that is, unless the players worked together to avoid the hazards. While this was happening, the players would play a rhythm game with the music, and the better the float holders did, the higher (this was top-down) the float would be. Points were awarded for winning the race, rhythm excellence, and float cleanliness.

Sticky Floats Parade was fascinating but never quite there. The beat detection was never correct. Despite our low latency, the game was programmed so that synching the music and the notes on the screen never worked. Players had to block out the music to do well, which is a problem in a music game. Beyond that, the music was reminiscent of a nursery school - it wasn’t cool to be in that room when it played. It was disjointed and didn’t hit near the other games' notes, gathering dust when commercially released.

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We took on a junior developer to help offload the pile of work we created for Kevin. They were brilliant, kind, and talented, and after a few weeks of chasing bugs and attempting to make Sticky Floats Parade more fun, I gave them a new project.

Ed brought me into his office to pitch a game about trains in space. The trains could move toward the center of the screen and back to the outer edge on a series of parallel tracks that lined up with one another, creating a radial pattern. This was the seed of the idea—make this into a game.

Note - I spent too long looking for the sketch accompanying this explanation. I shall find it for the book!

Instead of pushing back, I embraced it, even though I wasn’t clear on the approach. The one change I made immediately was to change the trains into trucks. I wanted the game to feel like Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin.” I described the basic idea to our new developer, and within a couple of weeks, we had a working prototype.

The idea was that players could tilt right and left to change lanes and tilt forward and back to move up and down the lanes. Each truck would pick up packages and deliver them to depots with the same package color while avoiding one another and asteroids.

We hit a big wall with this game. The main problem was that it was a single-player game - there was no interaction between the players beyond getting in one another’s way. I don’t think we tried this with 30 players, as it would be impossible. The development issue, though, was a more significant challenge. The junior developer wouldn’t let us play until the entire game was made - and it was too hard and no fun. My guidance in these situations is to strip the game down to the base elements, essentially the movement of the trucks, and go from there. The developer had a hard time reverting the work - their perspective was that the game was good enough. I had to bring playtesters to show them how hard and unwieldy it felt.

Even when we could strip it down, the game was not fun. We moved forward with it, doing the best we could, but Truckin’ Amazin' was not a hit. The controls were frustrating, the goal was baffling, and the entire interaction was unpleasant. I had a couple of playtesters who enjoyed the game, but I think that’s only because they played it enough to know how to win, not because they would ever seek it out.

I was focused on the other games in development and should have resisted the initial proposal more. Our games have elements that force some interaction, so Truckin’ Amazin’ should have stood out immediately as mechanically unsound for the ESC Game Theater.

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I was pushing for a real-time strategy game as our final launch game. It would be a game for gamers. The ideas were mapped out, and we waited patiently for time to open up between the dozen other projects. The theater was being installed at several Buffalo Wild Wings locations, so I spent many hours eating mango habanero sauce while watching other people watch sports. I concluded that we needed a football game—that is, somewhere in my head, I queued up a football game.

We did a soft opening and I immediately knew that an RTS game wouldn’t work. The audience was too diverse - we needed simple. We needed obvious. We needed football.

I pitched a football game called Kill the Carrier 3D in the system's early days, but we wanted to avoid games that replicated sports. It needed a twist. I was so deep into RTS that I suggested we make a fantasy-based football game. We couldn’t call it Fantasy Football, but we could call it something like Feudal Football. It stuck. I initially described it as a mix of football and Gauntlet, which turned out like chocolate and peanut butter.

The idea was that players would all start as Peasants who could move relatively quickly and throw apples a short distance for minimal damage. They could get power-ups strewn throughout the field to change the character to any fantasy class. These classes would have different balanced(ish) abilities that help either attack the other team or move the ball down the field. The main levers would be attack strength, attack reach, health/defense, and speed. All players could grab the football on the ground but lose it if hit with enough damage (a single apple wouldn’t quite do it). And all players could throw the ball to the closest team player straight from their direction.

We already knew the game would be a hit, but this would feel like a war - it would be the first actual violent-ish game on the system (other than bees attacking bees). I needed to pitch the game with a weird twist to get buy-in - so I made the power-ups into donuts. And it worked.

The other aspects of the game were destructible obstacles and a dragon you could summon by activating the triggers on all four corners of the field. We started with Wizard, Fighter, Archer, and Peasent as our initial classes but had several others ready to activate after launch, such as Giant and Golem.

Feudal Football was released at the tail end of our theater launch and was a bit late to make a splash. It was the most gamey game we made, second to Pixel Prison Blues on the system. Thirty players fighting head-to-head on the football field was entertaining and fast-paced. It took coordination and strategy to be a great team - something we saw over and over again during playtests. Unfortunately, the theaters were past the initial influx of patrons, and a game that required at least 15 people to shine didn’t get enough play.

The theater was installed at several locations in Vegas and New Jersey. Still, we could never hit the critical mass necessary for a thriving location-based entertainment product. The best examples of play happened at festivals like IndieCade, where we had non-stop players for hours, Playcrafting, or at our parties and playtest gatherings. We pivoted the business to create a platform for local multiplayer engagement, and eventually, all of our venues shut down, along with the services required to run them.

I learned a lot, grew a lot, and made a lot of unforgettable memories. I wish ESC were still with us, but I cherish my time, the games I made, and the people I had the incredible fortune to work with.