Author: MrBlueSky

PAX East 2023 – Day 3

Read day 1 here. Read day 2 here.

Day 3 of PAX East 2023 has rolled around. AKA Saturday. AKA the busiest day. But I was a bit tired, so I just laid in bed, and headed over to the convention center at about 12:00.

I started by heading over to the NIS America booth. They’re the publisher and developer for Disgaea, a series I absolutely adore. There was some promotional material for Disgaea 7, but no demo. So instead I played the five games that they had available. The two that stuck out to me as interesting were Grim Grimoire OnceMore and Trails to Azure. Grim Grimoire is a remake of a PS2 RTS style game. Trails to Azure is a JRPG.

After that, I wandered a bit and checked out Bish Bash Bots, a multiplayer tower defense game. The mechanic setting it apart is a light physics system. Players whack towers to upgrade them. They can also whack incoming enemies to push them back. What I saw was a bit simplistic, but fun.

I swung by Serenity Forge. The demos I was interested in had fairly long lines, so I kept going.

Then I found Galactic Getaway. Players play Mario Party style mini-games to earn currency. Then they can spend that currency to decorate and build up a Animal Crossing style island. One of the mini-games was a very clever tile placement thing I found quite fun. I didn’t really experiment with the other parts of the game, but there’s a lot of potential. I’m going to keep an eye on this one, even though it’s not really a genre in my personal wheelhouse. Side Note: I chatted with the devs a bit. They’re aiming for a multi-platform and cross platform release. It’s ambitious, and I hope it works out.

Then I went to actually demo Nostalgix. Nostalgix is an Indie TCG that feels like a combination of Hearthstone and the Pokémon TCG. It was actually quite fun! I’ve written a bit about other indie TCG’s (and my skepticism of MetaZoo). I may try to do a full writeup at some point on Nostalgix, but it played the best of any of the indie TCG’s I’ve seen so far.

After that I wandered and found Infernax. I legit didn’t know anything about it, other than that it looked like gritty Shovel Knight Castlevania. After playing for a bit, I would say that it was fine. It felt a bit tonally weird, but the actual mechanics of the demo didn’t feel special enough to make me love it.

Then it was time for board games. I demoed Skytear: Horde. It’s a co-op PVE defense game. I’m not a huge PVE board game person, so it didn’t grab me. Might be worth checking out if you are into that sort of thing though. It did have nice art.

After the expo hall closed, I checked out the board game library.

The first game I ended up playing was Downforce. Downforce is a diceless tactical movement game where you’re racing racecars by playing movement cards. Each card can move multiple cars, and there’s also a bidding element. It was quite neat, and I would play it again, but I did not win.

The second game from the library was Air Land & Sea. It’s a neat bluffing game. Players take turns placing cards, and try to win two of three battlefields. At the same time though, it’s possible to retreat early. Doing so lets you minimize losses, and keep playing.

The last game of the night was Macaryoshka. It was a sort of incredibly interesting Japanese homebrew, with what appeared to be home machined parts, and a set of English rules that weren’t translated 100% correctly. It placement game about Macarons. It was pretty neat! We did have to google translate the Japanese rules to figure a few things out though. Fantastic components, interesting gameplay. I would be shocked if I ever see another copy of this thing again in my life.

Image of Makaryoshika board game
Here’s an online image I found. I can’t actually find a website or link for the developer.

And with that, PAX East 2023 day 3 was over! But we still have one more day left. So for now I am going to get some sleep, and try to prepare mentally for Sunday.

PAX East 2023 – Day 2

Day 2 of PAX East 2023 is over, and I am completely fried. Before I stumble into bed though, I’ll be doing another quick recap! Mostly just focusing on what I saw and played.

Let’s start with the big highlight: Mina the Hollower.

It’s from Yacht Club Games, the folks who made Shovel Knight, which I also love.

From what I played, it feels like a combination of the best mechanics of 2D Zelda and a sprinkling of Soulslike, specifically Bloodborne in some ways. So far it is hands down the best thing I’ve seen at PAX East this year. The movement and combat is fantastic and fun, and while I can’t comment too much on on story/art/music, they all seemed great from what I saw.

I did get to chat with one of the devs as I was playing, and he mentioned that the game likely won’t be out this here, but hopefully will be out next year. So I have a bit to wait before we get to play the whole thing.

Anyway, just in case I wasn’t clear enough, let me say it one more time. Mina the Hollower is currently the best thing I’ve seen at PAX East 2023, and it might turn out to be the best game there.

Rest of the Day

Anyway, after that I rolled over to the Unpub tables, and played some stuff there. First game was Magician’s Challenge by James Eastband, who doesn’t have a Twitter or website I can link to. Players try to draw props to complete various sets to perform magic tricks, while messing with their opponents via sneak cards. It’s effectively Yahtzee with cards, and it was pretty fun.

This was followed by Wormwood. It’s a 2-4 player (prebuilt?) deck game, in the spirit of something like Netrunner or Magic’s Commander format. Where it differs is that it’s designed to be played with 4 players, and there’s no elimination. Instead, you win by collecting 10 of a certain type of card, meaning that even if you fall behind, you stay in the game. I only played a two player game, but it was pretty neat, even if I did feel a little overwhelmed at the start.

Finally, I played The Armory a second time after seeing it at Granite State Games festival. There have been been a few tweaks, reducing the lulls quite a bit, and it’s neat to see how it’s shaping up.

Then it was back to roaming the show floor for a bit. I tried out Blackout Protocol, a top down team based shooter in the spirit of something like Alien Swarm. Me and the other two folks I was playing with got absolutely bodied by the zombies.

The big thing I saw this afternoon, though, was Cobalt Core, a deckbuilding game about piloting a spaceship, in the vein of something like Slay the Spire. I quite liked what I saw, but it was a 12 minute demo. It’s a bit hard to draw long term conclusions. Still, there was enough there, and enough differences to make it feel distinct from Slay the Spire, especially with the positioning and row mechanics.

Finally, with the day rounding down, I went and got a healthy dinner.

Just kidding. I went, ate half of a friend’s sandwich, and sat down for some more games. I played Gudnak, and just dipped after a little bit. It’s a positional card game, but it didn’t really grab me.

This was followed up by Dice Miner. It’s a set collection and engine builder game that was quite fun. Players take turns drafting dice off the top of a mountain, score points, and than accumulate a increasing horde of dice to use to get more points in the next round. I liked it.

The last game I played was Hero: Tales of the Tomes. I demoed this game at PAX Unplugged about four months ago. Overall, I can’t say I love it. It feels like it’s trying to give a Commander-in-a-box experience. The problem is that there’s a lot randomness in card draw. There’s also first player advantage, and not much incentive to be the aggressive player. When one player dropped to leave, we all decided to just sort of abandon the game, and call it a night.

Everything Else – AKA Rapid Fire Round

Broombot Battlegrounds: Play as a “Legally Distinct Non-Roomba robots,” and compete in a small battle arenas sucking up dust. Played a little bit, but controls were inconsistent and didn’t quite grab me.
Star Salvager: Match falling blocks into your ship to power your weapons and fight off aliens Space Invaders style. Controls felt a bit wonky, but it does have a demo, so if that sounds neat, check it out.
No Longer Human: Side scrolling spectacle fighter. Currently looks like it’s an very early alpha, and I broke the demo build while playing it.

Overall thoughts

Solid second day. Mina the Hollower could be my game of the year for 2024, so at least I have that to look forward to. I’m planning to take it easy tomorrow. As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll be back to regularly scheduled writeups until April. Until then, I have two days of PAX left, and I need to sleep.

PAX East 2023 – Day 1

PAX East 2023 day 1 is over! Which means I still have three days left. This post is going up on what will technically be day 2 of PAX East, so it’s going to be a bit ramshackle. Still I want to get my thoughts down on paper.

I showed up a bit after 10:00 instead of waiting around too much this year, and just wandered the show floor for a bit.

First game I demoed was Worn Wanderers by Cleromancy Games. They’d launched their Kickstarter 20 or so minutes before I showed up, and it’s blazed past its funding goal now, which is awesome. I wouldn’t say that I loved the game from what I played, but I think making a game that you can play with wearable enamel pins is a really cool design space.

Next demo was Xenotilt. I’ve written about Demon’s Tilt, and this is another game from the same creator, who was more than happy to entertain my questions about various mechanics in the game, and give me some answers. Xenotilt does seem like it’s going to solve some of my complaints about Demon’s Tilt, so I’m excited to see how it ends up.

A bit more wandering, and I found Begone Beast by Tandemi. It’s pretty clearly in an early stage (there are quite a few things that need some polish) but the core movement is fun, even if the combat isn’t quite there yet. In addition, the final boss is a giant blob made out of hands, and it’s terrifying and I love it. I’m gonna be keeping an eye on this one. I’m not sure if it’s something special yet, but it could be something very fun.

Then there was Bomb Sworders. I didn’t play a huge amount, and kind of just got instantly killed each round. No strong feelings either way on this one.

There’s a augmented reality game called Sigil. It’s kind of hard to demo an augmented reality game, but I like that genre. I’m always up for more stuff like Pokemon Go, and I’m curious to see how Sigil compares to something like Orna.

There’s a few other things that happened, but don’t have enough to fill a whole paragraph, so let’s cover those!

I got crushed at Pocket Paragons by the folks at the Solis Game Studio booth. I played Brew, and lost by 8 points. There was a cool multiplayer Vampire Survivors styled game called Extremely Powerful Capybaras, and that was pretty neat.

I’ve also managed to sign up for a press session for Mina the Hollower (Yacht Club Games, the folks who made Shovel Knight, yay!) and then somehow misplaced the one business card I needed to hold onto (I’m an idiot). Fingers crossed that all works out. Bought some stuff, but no new games so nothing to say on that.

All in all, a solid day one of PAX East 2023. And now I am going to sleep.

Dungeons of Mandom VIII

Dungeons of Mandom VIII is compact bluffing board game. Personally I like it quite a lot, though that may be because I won when I played. It’s designed by Antoine Bauza and I WAS GAME, and published by Oink Games.

There are no other games in the Dungeons of Mandom series, but that doesn’t stop me from imaging what they could look like. In all seriousness though, the game is entirely family friendly. Unlike me.

The goal of Dungeons of Mandom VIII is to to be either the last adventurer standing, or the first adventurer to complete a dungeon twice. However, this is a bluffing game, not a dungeon crawler.

This is first obvious in hero selection. Instead of each player selecting a character, the group as a whole has a single hero between them. Heroes come with their equipment, but because this is the 8th Dungeon of Mandom, that equipment is likely going to be stripped off, in order to prove how manly you are.

There’s flavor in the equipment. Most of the characters have some form of HP boosting equipment, usually a piece of armor, or a shield. However, for the Princess class, this equipment takes the role of a Suitor and a Chaperone giving the fun implication of them being used as meat shields.

The E in fiancé stands for éxpendable

Equipment and hero selection aside though, the meat of the game is building the dungeon! On a player’s turn, they can choose to either pass and drop from the rotation, or to build out the dungeon deck. To build the dungeon deck, they draw a card from a the monster deck, and then make a second choice. They can add it facedown to the dungeon, or they can remove a piece of equipment from the hero, and not add the card they just drew to the dungeon.

The monster deck is made up of a bunch of different monsters, including some special monsters. Monsters each have a number associated with them, which is linked to how much damage they do. There are more copies of the weaker monsters, and only a single copy of some of the stronger monsters, such as the Litch, Demon, and Dragon.

Cool Monster Club – Not pictured: the dragon who’s just too cool.

This is core tension of Dungeons of Mandom VIII. “Do I think that with the remaining equipment, based on what I’ve seen my fellow players do, I can beat the dungeon as it currently stands, or do I need to pull back?” I played one game where another player chose to remove the equipment that hero needed to beat the dragon, and I knew that I’d added the dragon to the dungeon, so I chose to pass.

When one player takes an action, and every player after them passes, it’s finally time for that player to venture into the dungeon, and prove their worth! Or more likely, get stabbed in the face by the Litch for 6 damage and then beaten by goblins.

The exploring player reveals cards from the top of the dungeon deck one by one, either defeating them, or taking damage equal to their value if they don’t have some way to defeat them. If they get through card in the deck, they beat the dungeon, and get a treasure card! If they don’t, they take a hit. When a player takes two hits, they lose and can’t play anymore. However, if a player gets two treasure tokens, they win.

If I have any gripes with the game, it’s that I don’t love the elimination component. I get why it has to be there. Without it, there would never be any reason to not push your luck. But it sucks that you can end up in a position where you don’t get to play anymore.

If the game sounds interesting, you can find it from Oink Games here.

Top 3 Games To Watch

With Steam Next Fest completed, it seems like as good a time as any to talk about demos I played. My personal favorites were actually pretty different from what ended up on the most popular list!

Super Raft Boat Together describes itself as a multiplayer roguelike shooter. Technically, Super Raft Boat already exists, and the new part here is just the “together.” But I never played the original, so for me, the whole thing is new.

It’s a fun little multiplayer roguelike. Is it hugely innovative? No. Did I have fun playing it? Yes.

I’m going to fail to describe Inkbound correctly, but I still want to try, so here we go. Inkbound is a multiplayer roguelike. Its primary innovation is a turn based, real time combat.

Here’s how it works. In combat, all human players have an individual pool of action points, and can use that pool to move and take actions independent of other human players. These actions are resolved in real time, as they are taken. When all humans mark their turn as finished, all the enemy NPC’s take their turn.

Then the process repeats.

It’s a really cool system, and there are a bunch of other neat ideas and innovations here, that I don’t quite have time to cover or describe. The short version is “Inkbound might have something really special mechanically.” I’m very excited to see the finished game.

Deceive Inc is very interesting. I think there’s a non-zero chance I end up sucking at or hating the finished version of this product. That said, I played over 8 hours of the game, and I wanted to play more when the demo ended.

It’s a blend-in game that at least initially appears to be in the style of something like Perfect Heist 2. You’re a secret agent infiltrating a map, trying to ultimately collect a briefcase, and make your escape.

What the game doesn’t really tell you is that, in some ways, it’s more of a skill based shooter than a blend-in/deduction game. The time to kill is very high, and many guns’ mechanics are so intricate that they have a skill ceiling that I didn’t so much as scratch during the time I spent playing.

There are two opposing gameplay directions that the developers could take the game’s mechanics. Neither is a bad choice, but they represent two very different games. One is to lean heavily into the blending in, cautious stealth, and sneaking approach of something like Perfect Heist 2. The other (and current) direction is to lean into the gunplay/combat-based mechanics. This would result in a game that is closer to something like Hunt:Showdown. I don’t know how to recommend this game, without knowing the direction it will take.

The other reason I’m a bit hesitant on Deceive Inc is that I’m not sure how long the game will be up. Everything about it screams “Live Service” game. The history of interesting, but ultimately (financial) failures of live service games is documented pretty well, even just on this blog.

Quantum League. Knockout City. Darwin Project. Okay, I never did a writeup on that last one, but the point still stands. These were all interesting, creative games, with cool mechanics.

Now they’re all dead, and it’s not because they were bad games. It’s because their entire business model was based on getting a large playerbase and a level of revenue they never achieved.