Shocked that New York developers don't open their doors to gamers, the folks at Muse Games started doing that. Tonight is their 10th monthly game night, open to all. Bonus: They just made a game and want your live feedback.
The venue is the Muse Games offices at 151 Lafayette Street in Manhattan, just south of Grand Street. Fourth floor. 6pm-9pm ET. Tonight!
Free beer. Free pizza. While it lasts.
The main attraction for the guys at Muse is that the public will be able to play the five-person company's just-launched 3D browser game, Guns of Icarus, in front of them. And you can tell them what you think. (You could also play it online, where it just launched, but that's not as personal.)
Muse creative director Austin Lane told me that the game nights have helped his team spot of some of the less obvious improvements needed in their games, a handy bit of on-the-spot focus testing on a game made in just four and a half months.
And just about anyone might show up to offer feedback. "The people who come to our game night are a whole range of gamers from hardcore gamers to girls who want to play monopoly," he told me on the phone today.
The Muse guys weren't definitive about whether they've had homeless people show up to their Game Night — it's not like they screen, and even I managed to get into the last one — but they have had people who should up five minutes early, get drunk on six beers in the first half hour and then want to talk games. They've also had a well-dressed couple in their mid-50s show up, sit down at opposite ends of a table to each have a slice of pizza, then get up and leave.
If you go, try to be a little more engaged than that, ok?
Guns of Icarus, Muse's latest is a shooter that puts the player on an airship that is swarmed by fighter planes. Shoot the planes down while repairing the ship. The game is played in-browser, using a Unity engine plug-in. And if you appreciate the amount of railings that surround the ships, thank a patron of a previous Muse game night. They asked for it.
I'll be checking in with the Muse guys tomorrow to see how it went. Please behave.