The annual East Coast Penny-Arcade Expo is always a sensory overloading amazing time. This year I hit the floor for 2old2play and interviewed a few studios. More info to follow on those interviews in the coming weeks. For now, here’s a rundown of some of the highlights and games you might want to check out.
Indie Mega Booth Favorites
This year PAX East had a lot of space set aside for indie games on the showroom floor. There were over 50 developers showcasing more than 60 games in a space dubbed The Indie Mega Booth. Within the mega booth was also a mini-booth showcasing three different games each day. And behind all that was the indie showcase which highlighted mobile games. Being our resident indie “expert” I didn’t know where to begin but here are two studios that stood out above the rest.
Lunchtime Studios
Lunchtime Studios had a great Prohibition Era style booth (complete with Flapper) with a playable demo for their game in development-Lords of New York. The game is a hybrid of adventure and RPG and encourages multiple playthroughs to unravel the stories of the different characters. A key game play element is poker matches where each character has different specialties, tells, or cheats. Maybe I’ll finally learn how to play card games through the magic of video games! There is currently a Kickstarter (which just added support for WiiU) so help make this game! They also get double bonus points for coolest swag as they were giving away thumb drives shaped like cask barrels with screenshots and videos of the game.
Dejobaan
With games like Drunken Robot Pornography showcased, Dejobaan was basically daring you to enter their booth. They feature a variety of games from shooters to rhythm. The game I am most interested in checking out (available on Steam) is titled Monster Loves You. It's basically a choose your own adventure book come to life complete with cute things and bad jokes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbeXf3mFGfY
Coolest Booth
Fire Hose Games
Massachusetts based indie Fire Hose Games, whose latest title Go Home Dinosaurs launched earlier this month, transformed their booth into a giant pillow and blanket fort. PAX East is awesome but exhausting so being surrounded by pillows I had to resist the urge to curl up for a nap. Thankfully, the game was fun enough to keep me awake and I got some hands on play lounging in a comfy cushion supervised by, according to his business card, their head of “Communications and Propaganda."
Most Disappointing Booth
2K
So I know I only had to wait about 24 hours post PAX East to play Bioshock Infinite but I still probably would have waited in line to see some game play. Developer Irrational Games' studio is 15 minutes from the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center where PAX East lives. So why the heck did 2K have nothing Bioshock on the floor?! In fact, I couldn’t even figure out what their booth was. It was a giant box you couldn’t enter with some TV's on a platform. People sat in front of the TV's sports announcer style. I guess they announced XCOM for iOS but I only knew that because I read it on the internet not because I saw it at PAX East.
Best Panels
I didn’t make it to as many panels as previous years since I had interviews lined up and friends in town. There was also really high demand this year. The two panels I really wanted to see-Double Fine Adventure and Cards Against Humanity-were full a half hour in advance. Even flashing my press pass I was SOL. Two of the more interesting panels I attended were:
After the Endgame: Indie Studios Founded by 38 Studios Alumni
This panel was seven former 38 Studios employees who all branched out into indie games of various sizes and platforms ranging from mobile to physical games. They had seeded questions and then took them from the audience with the caveat that they were there to talk about their new endeavours and not what happened at 38. The general sentiment expressed was that it was a great place to work-until it was no longer a place to work-and that they still possess a great sense of community in the aftermath of the studio's collapse. They fielded many questions comparing working for a large company versus yourself. There were many great panels this year at PAX East about making your own games or company. If that’s something you are interested in definitely check out PAX East and see if you can find your local indie community. You can check out the former 38 team’s released and in development games at http://www.bestpanelever.com. The one that stood out for me was Summer Camp Studios Fart Cat but that’s mostly because of the blog on their site titled “Sign of the Apocalypse Meow.” Also this video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5hwH70qEaQ
Rock Band Behind the Music: A Music Gaming Tell All
Recently, after over 280 weeks of consecutive DLC, Harmonix announced they would no longer release new content for Rock Band. At a pre-PAX East party Harmonix announced the final DLC song, available April 2nd, would fittingly be Don McLean’s American Pie. This panel was a sort of behind the music where community manager Aaron Trites introduced with “We are not here to bury Rock Band, but to praise it.”
The team then detailed just how difficult song licensing is between getting all the parties that own song rights to agree and then after all that determining if anyone actually still has the original master tracks.
They also detailed mistakes they made over the years such as announcing projects prematurely that never actually saw the light of day: Rock Band: Japan and Rock Band: Pearl Jam (the posts are still on the forums if you wanna dig around). They also showed screenshots and/or video from prototypes that never quite became reality such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin games.
Their community team is always entertaining-later that evening they filibustered the Giant Bomb panel complete with a mariachi band! Hopefully at next year's PAX East Harmonix announces something new they are there to show off. They were in the Microsoft booth this year with Dance Central right next to Halo. Perhaps the Halo universe answer to Kinect Star Wars (please god no!)?
Other Cool Stuff I’m too Lazy to Come up with a Clever Category for!
Elder Scrolls Online
Somehow our Editor-in-Chief and I managed to flash our press passes, FBI style, and sneak our way into Bethesda to see the upcoming DLC for both Dishonored and Elder Scrolls online. I opted for Elder Scrolls even though I am awful at open world RPGs and navigating with a keyboard instead of a controller. Graphics look great and I spent most of my time building my character since, much like in Skyrim, there are practically infinite controls to adjust stuff like age and butt size. I wandered a bit around the first area which was pirate themed and had to go on a quest to find someone with a monkey. Clearly this game gets two highly enthusiastic thumbs up from me! The MMO spans all the areas from previous Elder Scrolls games including Daggerfall and features updated graphics. It will be interesting to see how the game does at launch. While it looks great, most people I know that love the series would prefer Elder Scrolls VI over an MMO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGK57vfI97w
Unnamed Monkey Game
Old school Gameboy graphics, monkeys, platforms and and eight shades of green! What more could you want? I love that their website has a section for “Shut Up and Take My Money” because that was pretty much what I said after playing it! I hate playing games on my phone but I would totally make an exception for this game. Come to think of it, the only other game I currently play on my phone is Battle Monkeys. I’m starting to sense a theme here...
In addition to PC and mobile platforms this game is being developed for open consoles. I actually played it on a GCWZero which was a neat little device.
The Best for Last
Divekick
Divekick distills fighting games down to their most basic (and fun) elements. This game has two buttons, one for dive and one for kick (duh!). There is no walking around, you can only move through the trajectory of your dives and kicks. Each player starts with around 1,000 health points (depending on your character) but each hit is worth 1,000,000. Best of five rounds, first to connect wins. The cast of characters is great and they fight with their hands in their pockets. “Dive”’s signature move is dropping the mic rap battle style. There is a lot of parody of old skool and newer fighting game mechanics. But really you can’t describe this game, you just have to go play it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6IDtAxSnfE
If you have the opportunity I highly recommend checking out PAX East. Penny Arcade features three expos a year with PAX Prime in Seattle, East in Boston and PAX Australia in, ahh, somewhere in Australia. It's a great showcase of games, behind the scenes info, and a great community of gamers all in one place. Cliff Bleszinski pointed out in his keynote that, unlike at sporting events, you don’t see fist fights break out at video game tournaments and conventions (although I wonder if he’s seen King of Kong, we’re better at psychological trauma). All the profits go to Child’s Play Charity so not only are you having fun and meeting cool people but you are also supporting a great cause!
