Gametrodon

Category: PAX

  • Indie Games Night Market @ PAX Unplugged

    I had a skeleton of this article written up before last night. I figured it would be a fairly simple thing to fill in a few details, double check some numbers, get some quotes and call it a day.

    Less than 37 minutes into the Indie Games Night Market, there were still hundreds of folks in line just to get in.

    Multiple games had already sold out.

    Hosted by New Mill Games

    So I scrapped that draft, and started over.

    The Event

    The Indie Games Night Market was “small” market event within PAX Unplugged, organized and hosted by Daniel Newman of New Mill Games. It was for games that would otherwise never go to production or distribution.

    The reasons for that were as varied as the games themselves:

    Propaganda is a game about tossing dice and then using photo framing to try and sell yourself as the underdog. The game’s core mechanic and unfortunately topical theming made it difficult for the designer, Chris Lawrence, to pitch it to publishers.

    Lab Meltdown is a real time co-operative game with a lot of components. Designer Amelie Le-Roche, who assembles her games out of garage, said it would have been impractical for her to produce more copies than she needed for the Night Market.

    In Memory Of is a collaborative storytelling experience about holding a funeral for fictional person. The designer, Tony Tran, felt like it would be too sad an experience for a mass market audience.

    And some games, like Skyline, a 1-4 player co-op visual puzzle game, were never made to be distributed at all. Max Seidman and Mary Flanagan made Skyline as a research tool over 10 years ago, and the Night Market proved to be a solid opportunity to dust off and hand-craft a fun game that otherwise wouldn’t have been published.

    This is just a smattering of games and reasons, but the Night Market let all of these designs, that might otherwise not have seen the light of day, have a chance to shine.

    The Results

    It’s hard to see this first event as anything but staggering success. There were over 20 games, and slightly under that many designers. There were some pain points, but both attendees and designers clearly had a huge amount of enthusiasm for the idea.

    Folks had started lining up at 6:00 to get in, and by the time 7:00 rolled around, there were five or six stacks of lines filled. Here’s a bird’s eye view of the setup:

    Diagram of table layout and flow. There are 20 tables, and lines going from left to right to enter the area where the tables are.

    Games sold quickly. Different designers brought different numbers of games, so some games vanished in an instant, while other games held onto their demo copy to sell closer to the end of the night. While the event was planned to run until 10:00, things had mostly quieted down by about 9:30 or so.

    Pain Points

    No first draft is perfect, and the same can be said for events. While things went fairly smoothly for the designers, many attendees who waited in line found that all the games they were looking for had sold out by the time they got in.

    Image of crowd of people gathered around tables with board games on them. The image was taken at PAX Unplugged.
    I probably should have taken more photos, but that would have required me to actually look up from the event itself.

    In addition, the looping structure of the layout and the small corridors for each table meant that there was some bunching up near the front. This resolved itself eventually, but was definitely a bit of a problem at the start.

    Overall

    IGNM was a pretty incredible event. While I didn’t get a chance to talk to everyone, it seemed like at least half the tables completely sold out. I’m super excited to see what the future holds for this sort of event.

    That said I do feel quite bad for folks on the tail end of the line to get in. Some of these attendees waited 45 minutes to walk into a mostly empty salesfloor.

    The designers I was able to talk to were thrilled with the response to their games. Even the folks who had expected to sell all their copies didn’t expect this level of turnout.

    While I obviously wasn’t able to look at everything, the full list of games and designers can be found here.

    Post-Scripts

    1. There’s a lot that could be said about Japanese indie culture as it relates to fan work, small batch board games, and other differences between Japan and the US. And it should be said by someone who knows what they’re talking about. Someone like James Nathan, whose has a bunch of great posts about attending the Tokyo Game Market on Opinionated Gamers. (The one above is a really fascinating read about catalogs, and cultural expectations.)
    2. I had originally planned to play as many of the games at the event as I could, and buy a lot more. Since I managed to get into the event early to help folks set up, and to interview a few people, I scrapped that plan out of respect to attendees who had waited in line. I did manage to get copies of Propaganda, Mutation, and In Memory Of, which I’ll cover at some point in the future.

    Thanks

    I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who took time to chat with me about their games, and their thoughts on the night market, including, but not limited to:

    • Daniel Newman of New Mill Games, for hosting the event, and chatting with me about his inspiration for it.
    • Chris Lawrence, the designer of Propaganda
    • Max Seidman, one of the designers of Skyline
    • Tony Tran, the designer of In Memory Of
    • The many, many, attendees who took the time to chat with me briefly about their feelings on the event.

  • PAX Unplugged 2024 – Day 2

    It’s the second day of PAX Unplugged! This meant that I actually had time to attend some of the meetings that I’d set up yesterday, starting with a demo of Obscurids!

    Obscurids

    As a game, Obscruids can be described as an attempt to fix all of the problems with Magic: The Gathering’s commander format. Mana screw has been removed, there’s no summoning sickness, and the game is based around victory points instead of life totals. That last one is important, because it heavily rewards aggression over purely defensive play.

    If those words didn’t mean anything to you, it’s probably best to describe Obscurids as a big monster brawl, and a fun one that at. If you want to learn more about the game, it has a Tabletop Simulator Mod here.

    (And for folks who might be a bit worried by that “collectible card game” under the tagline, the devs have told me that there will also just be a 5 deck box set for all the people who don’t like cracking boosters.)

    After that I just tooled around the show floor a bit, helped some folks find the upstairs freeplay area, and finally headed over to UnPub. I played a few things that didn’t quite stick, before finding Tournament Arc, a sports anime themed game by Little Creature.

    Tournament Arc

    Tournament Arc is pretty straightforward. Players draft athletes, and then take turns playing episode cards to buff and debuff their own and other players’ athletes. All of this is in service of creating the best team for the sport that’s been randomly chosen.

    While it’s a simple game and some ways reminded me a bit of Fluxx or Muchkin, its strongest point is just how funny and accurate it feels to following sports anime. Someone got isekaied! Someone has a tragic backstory! There’s a love triangle.

    I also just found the art to be incredibly wonderful. It feels incredibly evocative but without engaging in a lot of the crappier anime tropes.

    It’ll be Kickstarting at some point in the future, and I’ll likely back it.

    Leaving UnPub, I went back to browsing the expo hall. I did a little shopping, and picked up a copy of Clank Legacy 2. I said in my Clank Legacy writeup that I wouldn’t play a fresh game, but the $115 I just spent says otherwise.

    Was that my entire day? Well, no. The Indie Games Night Market tonight is probably the thing I’m most excited to see at PAX, followed by the Jonathan Coulton concert. So of course they’re at the same time. I also have a few meetings to demo stuff before the night market, so I’ll have to see how that pans out.

    That said, the Night Market will be receiving its own writeup, so I’m going to take this hour to chug pedialyte and consume a waffle refresh and relax, before rushing back to the show floor.

    If you’re curious about my experiences on day 1, you can read them here. And if you’d like semi-random photos and live blogs of the show, you can follow me on Bluesky here.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a waffle to eat.

  • PAX Unplugged 2024 – Day 1

    Woof. It’s just around 4:00 PM, and everything is in a bit of haze. Maybe it’s the hours on the con floor, or maybe it’s the 5 hours of sleep. It’s been a good event so far, if busy. PAX Unplugged actually sold out for the first time this year, but it hasn’t felt too bad.

    Side Note: I’m on Bluesky now. If you want tweets and updates from the show, follow me there. Shilling over, back to blogging.

    Morning

    I spent most of the morning getting ahold of few things that seemed like they would be pretty tricky to get otherwise. Notably the new Lord of the Rings trick taking game. I don’t have any special fondness for either rings or tricks, but I have friends who do, and Dan Thurot has given it positive review, so I grabbed a copy.

    Buying games based on other peoples’ enthusiasm is not something I usually do. Usually, I just make questionable purchases based off box art. Given that the game sold its daily allotment by about 1:00, I think I may have made the right call here.

    I followed this up by demoing and purchasing a copy of Happy Camper’s Combo, a retheme of Surfosaurus Max. It’s a co-operative set building game where you try to have your own personal cards be the best value in the set.

    Last purchase of the morning was Undergrove, again, going in somewhat blind. But Elizabeth Hargrave is an incredible designer, so I’m willing to take a chance.

    Afternoon

    The afternoon was a bit more chaotic. I taught some folks dressed up as the Grinch’s dog Max how to play Lorcana. I did a little bit of networking and chatting for a future investigative piece I’m doing (mostly just looked for contacts and grabbed business cards) and just wandered the floor.

    I can’t talk about those conversations too much yet, but they felt like a productive start to a bigger piece.

    I didn’t play as many games as I had expected to play in UnPub. But fortunately, the two games I did play were both great.

    First up was Matthew Everhart’s Dance Shuffle, a very clever dance themed deckbuilder for 2-6 players. I’ll likely revisit it in a full UnPub rundown post-show. But in summary: it’s worth playing even as it currently stands. It has some very satisfying movement, chaining and typal triggers, and also has a very clever scoring system. None of which I quite have the energy to currently describe in detail.

    It’s not finished yet, but if you like deckbuilders, and get a chance to play this, you should.

    The second game was Brightcast. Brightcast describes itself on the back of the box as a 1v1 card battler, which is really underselling it. I think it’s like two MTG controls decks into each other. It’s a very tense of game of reading your opponent’s options, and trying to figure out how to they interact with your own.

    It’s a very fun experience, and the dev team was actually giving out free copies of the game up in UnPub.

    It also has some incredible art. Again, cannot stress the whole “Get a free copy of this” thing enough.

    Oh! This doesn’t fit in anywhere else, but I chatted with a few folks who had been competing in Speed Puzzling! It’s basically doing jigsaw puzzles as fast as you can. It was really cool to see part of the event, and learn about something I’d never heard of before. So that was really neat.

    Of course, the show isn’t over yet. I’m planning to do some two headed giant Magic in about an hour and 30 minutes, but that’ll probably be my final event of the night. I’m a little wiped from the drive down, and not getting enough sleep. I really want to conserve my energy for the Indie Game Night Market tomorrow, and the Jonathan Coulton concert.

    Corrections 12/9: In an earlier version of this article, I incorrectly called Dance Shuffle’s creator Matthew Everhart by the name Matt Ever. This has been fixed.

  • PAX East – The Card Game Post

    Card games? Card games! One of the great things about PAX East is that there are an incredible variety of new card games and weird TCG’s to play. In this post, I’ll be quickly going over what I saw, and what I enjoyed, and also what I didn’t.

    The Good

    These are all the games I recommend at least trying if you get a chance. Am I going to collect them myself? Not necessarily, but I do enjoy playing them, and would play them again.

    Here Be Monsters

    Here There Be Monsters is a placement and ability-driven head-to-head battler with a sort of wacky pirate theme. It was in Unpub, and unfinished, but was fun enough for me to play 3 games of it—which is rare for something in Unpub. The core mechanics felt like they were almost where they needed to be, but the cards themselves did have some balance issues.

    I’m hopeful that I’ll get to see more of this game, though I’m not sure when. There’s a lot of promise here, and the core mechanics are fun.

    Altered

    It feels like we’re in a bit of a TCG gold rush at the moment. Altered raised over $7 million kickstarter. I didn’t back it for various reasons, but mostly a distaste of said gold rush.

    That said, I will absolutely not turn down a chance to try to play new card games, so I did play it. It’s neat, and doing some fairly different stuff. There’s no direct combat; instead it’s effectively a series of cost checks, where you and your opponent try to have the most of a given value present at one of two locations. While what I played didn’t sell me on buying a case, it did convince me that it might not just be an attempt to cash in.

    Star Wars: Unlimited

    I actually rather like Star Wars: Unlimited. It’s just unfortunate that I’m not a Star Wars person; I actually find the Star Wars theming a bit of a turn off. But I’ve found the gameplay of all the demos I’ve played quite enjoyable. They’ve got a nice tension to them, and that’s enough to put it into the good category.

    PAX is also a great opportunity to grab all the promos.

    The Bad

    Despite the title of this section, these aren’t necessarily bad games. They are, however, (based on what I played) games I will never demo or touch again unless I am paid cash to do so.

    Flesh and Blood

    I’d heard a lot of good things about Flesh and Blood over the years, and it’s one of the mid-level TCG’s that seems to have clawed itself a spot at various local game stores. So I’ve been curious about it for a while, and at one point even thought about picking up a starter set.

    Holy crap, am I glad I didn’t. I hate this game. I pretty much just quit halfway through, and didn’t even grab the simple starter deck.

    The short version is that I just found Flesh and Blood both boring and frustrating, and it felt more akin to playing a fighting game than a card game.

    UniVersus

    The best thing I can say about playing UniVersus is: UniVersus made it clear that I just don’t like the alternating turns of attack and defense pattern that both it and Flesh and Blood seem to be using.

    It just never clicked, and I never had fun. I’m sure I’ll get plastered for this, but both of these demos felt random. They felt like I was missing much of the critical information I needed to make meaningful strategic choices. And the remaining choices—the tactical ones—were boring to me.

    The Ugly

    Welcome to the bad vibes section. It’s not even the mechanics for this one.

    Gem Blenders

    I wrote a bit about Gem Blenders a while back, and I was pleased to see they were still around, and had a booth. But I was somewhat dismayed to learn that with their switch to a full TCG model, they also switched their card backs. Meaning that if you purchased their earlier base set, the game is no longer compatible.

    It just doesn’t feel great, y’know? Anyway, that lands them in ugly.

    Final Fantasy TCG

    Not good, not bad, just sorta there. Maybe this would have landed better another year, but I just didn’t get anything out of this one. Honestly, I felt a bit bad for the enforcer and 3 other folks total I saw playing the game over the con. It follows a weird version of MTG’s resource system that I found both very slow, and not too fun.

  • PAX Report – Path of Exile 2

    So, one of the coolest things I got to do at PAX was sit down and see the media demo for Path of Exile 2. I’d like to thank the folks Grinding Gear Games and Octavian0/Chris for showing me the game, since I’m obviously a much smaller outlet than a lot of other folks. If you’re curious about why you should care about my opinion click here.

    Overall Thoughts

    There’s a bunch of interesting small things, but as someone who previously played a bunch of PoE, two things stood out to me from the demo:

    1. A focus on making the game much more reactive than Path of Exile is.
    2. An intention to simplify the parts of the game that can be simplified.

    Let’s go through them!

    Increased Reactivity, Less Spamming

    There were two big sets of changes I saw in the media demo of Path of Exile 2, and the demo I played. The first was that bosses felt and played differently than in the first game. I watched one boss fight thathad a sort of bullet hell sub-mechanic, and I fought against two bosses in the demo.

    Of those bosses, the demo’s version of “Hillock” is a good example here. Hillock is the very first sort of mini-boss in the game, and he’s just a big chonky dude. In PoE, he just runs at the player, so you kite him back, and whack him down.

    In Path of Exile 2, the boss has a much larger variety of attacks, including summoning packs of zombies, and a ground targeted panel that crosses a large portion of the screen and has to be dodged with the game’s new roll/dash. Plus, Hillock was just generally much more aggressive with its gap closers.

    On the player’s side of the media demo, Octavian0 showed off a much larger level of interactivity between skills than I’ve seen previously in PoE. This included things like: throwing down clouds of poisonous gas and igniting them with fire; and setting up plants to grow over time, but that can be detonated early by casting another skill onto them. Instead of just having PoE’s synergy between skills, there was real interactivity between them.

    Simplification

    This might sound bad, but it really isn’t. In this case, I’m mostly talking about simplifying some of PoE’s internal systems, specifically mechanics around getting early game items.

    I saw two big examples of this. The first was skill gems. Instead of single gems, gems now come as uncut gems that when dropped, and you use them to choose what skill you need.

    The second was around…. GOLD. Yes, PoE has gold now, but it seems like it’s mostly to buy campaign items from vendors. And honestly, it feels like a really good change for onboarding. I’m someone who loves PoE’s economy, but asking a new player to understand the idea of alterations and chromas and vendor recipes, as well as the skill tree has always felt like a bit much when I try to get new friends into the game.

    So yeah. Simplification of systems that can be simplified.

    Some Other Notes, and Neat Stuff

    I’m just gonna be rambling now, but there was a bunch of other cool stuff I saw. For example, there are gonna be mounts! And Rhoas have been been redesigned look more like Chocobos, and less like head-crabs with legs.

    The WASD movement feels great, as does the dodge roll. It honestly feels better than right clicking. There are skills on weapons, so that seems neat. Also, many bosses seem to build up stun, giving them a much nicer sense of pacing than “dodge dodge dodge dodge pray flask dodge”.

    Overall, after what I’ve seen, I’m really excited for Path of Exile 2. It’s gonna be a different game, and potentially a much harder one, but it looks incredibly fun. It’s trying to address a lot of the problems Path of Exile has, just as a result of 10 years of incremental updates.

    My Background

    I like Path of Exile. How much do I like Path of Exile? Well, here’s my Steam playtime.

    And this before I switched over to the single player client, where a majority of my play time is.

    For fellow PoE players, who are going “Yeah, but for all we know, that was spent farming tab cards in Blood Aqueducts,” I offer the following notes.

    • I killed Uber Elder when it was peak end game boss.
    • I almost exclusively play necro/summoners, but I’ve also played trappers/miners in a few leagues.
    • Most of my playtime was between Delve League, and Echos of the Atlas, with a smattering afterwards, so I am a bit out of date. That said, I tried to chat with some folks who have played more recently, and did a quick act 1 run for comparison with the demo I played at PAX East.