TOTO’S JOURNEY AT MOSCOW GAME WEEK: WHAT PLAYERS REALLY WANTED TO SEE IN OUR ALPHA VERSION

The booth was never empty

When you pour months of work into a game and finally show it to players, there’s always a moment of truth: Will they get it? Will they see what we put into the meaning and the scenes? We got our answers at Moscow Game Week.

We showcased Toto’s Journey at the Moscow International Game Week in the «Indie Games Alley» in Skolkovo, where our alpha version steadily attracted attention during all three days. Despite huge competition at the event, our booth was constantly visited by players and was almost never empty. Many players got so hooked that some people waiting in line eventually left. It seems we’ll need more booths next time to let everyone play.

The motion capture moment

We showed behind-the-scenes footage of our dog, created using motion capture, on an additional screen. People didn’t just see it as something cool—they asked lots of detailed questions, examined the difference between authentic mocap and traditional animation, and were genuinely impressed by our effort to create realistic movement.

What players really wanted

Almost everyone wanted a sprint button. They liked our movement design, but players craved more speed and a dynamic dash. So we’ll explore how this will work with other game mechanics and how it will change the way players now perceive the spaces within each location. Around half of visitors wanted to be able to bite the capybara and the beaver. We are still delighted by this feedback.

People especially praised the realistic turning animations of Toto, which we had spent several weeks polishing before the show.

One young visitor spent 2.5 hours carefully exploring the level, collecting artifacts, and finding secrets. He looked for puzzles in every corner of the map. We simply had to reward that persistence and gave him some of our Toto merch.

An unexpected audience

We expected our core audience to be children. Dogs, exploration, interaction with the environment, quirkiness—all the elements that should have enchanted young players. Instead, the real magic happened with adults—especially women. They spent a long time studying the mechanics and asking about the story. They showed a genuine interest in understanding what we had created. We realized that we had made something that is perceived differently by different age groups.

Why children and adults want different things

Children prioritized immediate action: running, jumping, parkour, destruction, environmental chaos. They needed freedom of movement. They wanted physical interaction with the world. The story could wait—movement came first.

Adults wanted the full experience: story, character depth, world building. They stayed longer, asked more thoughtful questions, and engaged with the game more deeply. They wanted to understand not only how Toto moves, but why he exists in this world.

True understanding

Toto’s Journey is not a kids’ game that adults merely tolerate. It is a truly unique experience for people of all ages. And that’s awesome! Because that is exactly what we intended. Thank you to everyone who took part in this event and helped us strengthen our belief that we are on the right track!