Gametrodon

Category: PAX

  • PAX East 2023 – Day 4

    The final day of PAX is always a bit slower. After three full days of running around and playing games non-stop for 14 hours straight, I am a bit tired. So I’m more than happy for a day with less crowds, and a more leisurely tone.

    I started by wandering over to the Top Hat Studios booth. I tried a game called Elementallis. From what I saw it was sort of a simple dungeon crawler in the vein of the Zelda games. I ended up putting it down fairly quickly.

    Then I moved to another game at the booth, Athenian Rhapsody. Specifically, Athenian Rhapsody: Thunder Goober’s Personality Dungeon. It’s not a demo of the full game. Instead, it’s a sort of standalone mini-section of what the full game will be.

    Athenian Rhapsody might be my sleeper hit of the show. It’s unabashedly following in the vein of Earthbound and Undertale. It’s weird, with a distinctive style and unusual tone. It also uses a amped up version of Undertale’s bullet hell/real time movement dodge mechanics within an RPG.

    I am cautious. Undertale is an incredibly strong game on every axis. Music, writing, and perhaps most importantly, gameplay. But it’s a strong game because all of how well all of those three work together. I have no idea if Athenian Rhapsody will be as good. But I’d like to believe that it will be. It certainly has the potential.

    Anyway, moving along I found Treachery in Beatdown City. It’s part side scrolling beat-em-up, and part JRPG. Characters are moved around with the control sticks, but there’s a energy and FP menu for actually using some attacks on enemies. The game didn’t click for me, but it’s a very cool combination I’ve never seen done before.

    Another cool project that I haven’t tried out yet was Project Dark, a video game with no video. Instead, it’s an audio based game where you swipe left or right to make decisions. I grabbed a code for one of the modules and I’m hoping to try it at some point this week.

    Then a lunch break!

    Post-Lunch

    In entirely unrelated and weird experience, I ran into the booth for Artix Entertainment. There’s a longer story here. Short version is that I met someone who was basically a personal hero from my childhood, and made a bunch of the games I played in highschool and middle school. So that was cool. They’re working on a port of Adventure Quest Worlds to Unity, with the name Adventure Quest Worlds Infinity. So if I can ever figure out how to get my old character back, I might play that again.

    Then it was back to wandering, and I wandered over to Righteous Mojo. I didn’t like Righteous Mojo very much. The game felt and played like a combo of Friday Night Funkin and a 2006 flash game. It also looks like 2006 flash game. Graphics aren’t everything, and gameplay isn’t everything, but you gotta have at least one of them.

    Anyway, I wandered a bit more and found myself at the Raw Fury booth. I’ve written about one of their published games, Dome Keeper before. Raw Fury has a bunch of games I’m curious about, including Cassette Beasts and Superfuse. But I sat down and played Friends VS Friends, the deckbuildy-cardshooty 1v1 and 2v2 shooter. It had a bunch of cards I hadn’t seen before in some of the other public demos they’ve run, and was quite fun.

    Strolling around, I stopped into play ODR Hockey Heroes. Sports games aren’t really my thing, but it was pretty fun. It’s apparently inspired by the SNES era of couch co-op and versus hockey games. I’ve never played any of those, so I’m not sure if it succeeds.

    Then I played something a bit more in my wheelhouse: Robobeat. It’s a roguelike arena-shooter, where you get rewarded for shooting to the beat. It was pretty fun! Side note: This is a genre that demos well at game conventions, but I’ve burned by before as well. So I’m always a little hesitant when see these sorts of games.

    Crossing to the other side of the hall, I found Toy Tactics, a neat little RTS with primary gimmick being the ability to draw your own battle formations. It reminded a bit of Battalion Wars 2. Yes, I am comparing this to a Wii game from 2007. No, I won’t elaborate.

    Because PAX East closes at 6:00 on Sundays, I didn’t get in as many board games. I did however get to demo Potion Slingers, a very cool semi-deckbuilder. Its main difference from a traditional deckbuilder is that cards are placed face up onto your deck as you buy them, and many are single use. So instead of being a hard engine builder, it’s more about spotting combos and combining various factors. It was quite interesting, and ended being the only board game I played at the show today.

    However, it wasn’t my last game of the day. That honor goes to the somewhat unfortunately named Pandemic Train. It’s a roguelike about managing survivors in a train, and getting out to loot the places you stop at, all while trying to cure a deadly disease. The game was interesting, but felt a bit rough around the edges. Right now it has a release date of next quarter, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that gets pushed back a bit.

    And finally, as the hall closed, I waved goodbye and-no wait, I didn’t do that. Instead, I helped some friends break down their booth, lug everything out to the car, and then made my way home, where I’m now typing this.

    From an attendee standpoint, this was a pretty good PAX. Attendance did feel a bit lighter then usual, but I don’t know how that worked out for folks at booths. I saw a bunch of cool stuff, learned about some interesting looking upcoming games, and chatted with cool folks.

  • 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.

  • PAX Unplugged: Indie TCGs

    TCGs are a complex subject. There’s the supply chain. There’s the fact that printing booster packs is expensive. There’s the fact that the space of trading card games has been dominated by the big three (Magic, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh) for years on end. There’s an argument about whether or not these games are effectively lottery tickets with a better consolation prize. There’s the impacts that TCGs have on smaller game stores, and a billion other factors revolving around them. There’s the question how many lifestyle games the market can support.

    I will be addressing exactly zero of these topics in this writeup. Instead, I’ll be looking at two indie TCGs I saw at PAX Unplugged: Genesis and Gem Blenders.

    Genesis: Battle of Champions

    Genesis is a 2-4 player independent TCG. Unlike many other TCGs I’ve played, Genesis is actually played on a board: a large 5×6 grid. Each player starts with a hero out, and you win by being the last hero standing.

    Heroes define a few important elements of the game including your starting health, and also the cards and archetypes you can include in your deck. Unfortunately, I can’t speak to the deck construction or color archetypes as I only played one game of Genesis, and it was with preconstructed decks.

    Anyway, back to the gameplay. There’s a few interesting things about Genesis that I want call out. First, you start with your full mana pool, and it doesn’t regenerate during the game. For example, my character started with about 125 mana, and was down to 10 by the time the game finished. This means that you can drop your most powerful cards on turn one if you wish.

    Mana is the most common limitation in existing TCGs. But in Genesis, it felt like I was limited by cards in hand, and space on the board. Many of the monsters felt a bit fragile in the large scheme of things, usually taking only 2/3 hits to kill.

    Two other things I want to mention. The game has a stack for resolving actions that was a little difficult to parse during my demo, but I’m sure would be fine once I got used to it, and direction matters. One of the primary things you do is rotate cards to face various directions, indicating where they can attack.

    Overall, Genesis was interesting. I was curious enough to pick up some preconstructed decks, but that was primarily as samples to add to my board game collection. I’m not hugely in the market for another TCG at the moment, and I wouldn’t say I was really grabbed by the art or world building in my incredibly brief exposure to it.

    If you want to learn more about the game, or find yourself curious, you can check it out here.

    Gem Blenders

    Most Indie TCGs tend to end up mimicking on of the big three in at least some small way. For most of them, this ends up being reminiscent of Magic’s land/non-land system. You have cards that generate resources, but are very hard to remove, and cards that are used to move toward your victory condition, but are easier to remove.

    Gem Blenders flips that, and uses something that will probably be more familiar to players of the Pokemon TCG: You start with a set of 4 blenders out, and you put Gems onto them. Blenders can then “Blend” into higher tier blenders with better stats once they have the prerequisite gems attached to them.

    Unlike Pokemon, Blenders don’t get knocked out, so the game is mostly about playing your gem per turn, and slowly trying to build advantageous board state. I also got crushed by the individual demoing it at the show. So it can join Mythic Mischief in that category.

    The one other interesting thing to me was Gem Blenders’ action system. There’s no limit on the number of action cards you can play per turn, but you can only play a max of 5 total in a game.

    Side note: It was interesting to me that both Gem Blenders and Genesis had these mechanics where you started with a full set of resources, and spent it as the game went on.

    Gem Blenders was more appealing to me and I actually got a chance to sit down with the creator. We chatted for a bit about his longer term goals for Gem Blenders, what he sees as important for an indie TCG, and why he wants Gem Blenders to be a TCG in the first place.

    It was a really interesting chat, and I hope to get a chance to transcribe it and put it up on the site. It’s been a busy last few months.

    If you’re curious about Gem Blenders, and would like to learn more, you can find the game’s site here.

    Wrap Up

    Overall, I liked my limited time with Gem Blenders a bit more than Genesis. A large portion of that is just personal taste. I found Gem Blenders’ weird art style to be appealing, and I like games where I build up forces overall a bit more than games where I just shred stuff down.

    I still think both of these are neat games, and I picked up starter sets for both. Will I play them as full TCGs? Unlikely. Magic and Pokemon already occupy most of my interest for the time being. But I’m happy to see some indie TCGs that really seem to be trying to be solid card games, and not FOMO messes.