a while back I submitted waxweaver to UNO Nerbaska Indie Expo 2025. It's a new yearly event, from some folks at uno trying to get a game dev scene running in the Omaha area. Omaha has always been a little dead in terms of dev communities (or community in general if I'm being real) so of course when I saw the event I HAD to sign up.
The event was small, maybe 25ish people? A lot of whom were students at UNO. Two awards were given out, FREE game of the year and PAID game of the year. I'm happy to say that waxweaver was able to win the free category award!!
I did feel like a bit of jackass, showing up like "heyy I don't go to school here but I'm taking your award anyways !!" But I believe the games were voted on by the students themselves, and anyone in the metro area was allowed to submit.
Playing the other games and meeting the other devs was a wonderful experience though. I loved the silly little student projects, and special shoutouts to the winner of the commerical game of the year BITCH HELL as well as the upcoming game Chop Shop . The two guys behind chop shop, Andrew and David, had a wonderful little table with decorations, stickers, hats, all in theme with their game. They're super nice and passionate people and I wish them all the successes a game dev could dream of. The two behind BITCH HELL are also cool people, and they had their game running on a black and white CRT television! Notes taken, I'm putting more effort in next year.
It was very very nice overall. I've never gotten the opprotunity to go to any sort of expo, and I've never gotten the chance to meet other devs in my area. Admittedly I've been in a bit of a slump lately, but the event really picked my spirits back up. So thanks to the organizers, for real. I hope in the oncoming years more people get involved to make it bigger and better. And remember that if you wanna make games, go fucking do it !!!!!