Beat That Backlog

Jay found us an amazing deli literally right around the corner from our hotel today. It’s spacious, empty, and actually serves freshly cooked bagel sandwiches. Nothing hits like a hot sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel right in the morning. We should have been coming here since day one.

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We all knew this was going to happen. I published my Day One post at 4am last night. Andrew and Jay didn’t even try to wake me (apparently they even communicated silently this morning to not disturb my slumber).

Like last year, I went to bed too late and got the con late today. 2pm to be exact.

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My girlfriend says I move around a lot in my sleep. We thankfully own a king size bed, so I have lots of room to kick and not wake her up. There are two beds in our hotel room, and they are not king sized. Someone’s sleep is about to be ruined.

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The weather has cooled today. I walk with Andrew to the convention with my duffel bag in tow. I’ll be heading to my train straight from the con this afternoon. Andrew’s bus departs earlier than my traim.

Our first stop is to check out TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, which already has a line forming for it. It’s a very faithful successor to the TMNT arcade games of the NES and SNES. The art style is phenomenal. It looks great and controls well too.

Also, the shelf in front of us completely collapses as we start playing, spilling hand sanitizer and a bottled water onto the floor. Yeah… no idea.

While at the booth I realize this is also the same place that I played War Stride Challenges on Friday. Each level is a short, timed challenge where you need to slide and bunny hop through the level while killing enemies. The course times are pretty challenging but it felt incredibly satisfying beating them after several rounds of practice.

Andrew wants me to check out a game he saw at the Tiny Build booth yesterday: Justice Sucks. It’s advertised as “Tactical Vacuum Action”.

You play a rumba that needs to neutralize intruders breaking into your home by hacking smart devices and turning them into deadly weapons, and then clean up the copious blood spills. You hide by going under couches and beds. Very clever, I gotta say.

At this point I break away from Andrew to go find some place to sit – three days walking across hard concrete and my feet are killing me now.

But my journey is interrupted when I stumble across a magical sight: There’s a Limited Run Games booth here at the convention! RIP my wallet.

I text Chris, Alfred, and Randall for requests. Randall has been waiting on Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties, which they say is still on its way. His other requests are met with an emphatic “no”, however.

Alfred requests After Party and VA-11 Hall-A (“Vallhalla”) for Switch, and I pick up some games for myself as well.

So tired. I head upstairs for lunch and a nap. While eating, I notice a game trailer for The Courier being played on a television. That was another game I played on Friday too. The game consistently froze every time I accepted the first quest (forcing me to kill the process and restart the demo executable), so eventually I ignored the quest and went exploring. It seemed okay. I got bored, to be honest.

After a nap I’m not quite ready for the floor again, so I go kill more time in the Console Free Play room. This time I try out two of my unplayed games: No Man’s Sky and Superliminal.

Much has already been said about No Man’s Sky‘s botched release and subsequent redemption. I don’t know, I’m finding my time with it strained and frankly boring. The camera feels clunky, the main quest simply points me where to go next, and the environments are surprisingly ugly. Maybe an issue with the Series X version I’m playing?

Superliminal is not much better, sadly. This is the optical illusion game where you can make objects larger or smaller using perspective tricks.

I didn’t know this game got a release, actually. I remember seeing it revived as a demo a few PAX’s ago. I get bored kind of quickly again. I’m starting to suspect it’s my mood and not these games’ actual fault.

With a little bit of time left to explore, I go check out some vendors for some last minute deals. I’m sorely tempted to snag some more retro titles being hawked here. There is a boxed copy of Earthbound going for $3500.

Sigh. Some day, perhaps?

Andrew shoots me a text that he’s on his bus home, so I decide to make trails as well. Thank heavens I took the train this year – I am in no shape to drive right now.

Come to think of it, we probably could have been doing this years ago. Carpooling from South Jersey is for the birds. The angus burgers from their dining car are also surprisingly wonderful. The Orient Express, it is not, but this ticket was worth every penny.

I’m just now crossing the Hudson River back into Jersey. I’m looking forward to taking a day off tomorrow. My friend Grace texted me while I was at the con – I need to spend some time with her and Chris next time I’m up there. I miss both of them.

As Andrew mentioned in his final text, it’s been a weird year, but it’s always an adventure. It’s weird being here and feeling as though I’ve seen all of this before. Not just conceptually, but like I’ve actually played these games before. The spectre of COVID still haunts the gaming industry.

That’s all for PAX East 2022! I’ll talk to you all next year. Now goodbye forever!

Several debaucherous nights out in Boston took me out of commission in previous years. 2019 was the worst of it, when a night out with some Stevens folks left me so hungover the next morning that I had to leave the opening line and go sleep in the mobile gaming lounge or risk puking all over the con floor.

This year it was not the drink that got me, but the intoxicating power of games journalism. Seriously, I stayed up until about 4 am polishing last night’s write-up and didn’t even leave my bed until noon today.

I make it onto the con floor at around 1:30 pm, which isn’t terrible considering three hours is about how long your energy levels peak at these things before fatigue sets in.

And look at that! It’s a full house today. None of the tickets sold out this year (which might actually be a first for PAX East), but Andrew mentioned that Saturday tickets were low last time he checked. Today might even be a sold out crowd.

Speaking of crowds, the first thing I do is head straight to the Goblin Games booth to try out Ozymandias, which only has a single station open. The balding asshole ahead of me has been playing for 30 minutes straight (I even start a timer on my phone). I tap him on the shoulder and ask if I can give the game a shot.

“Yeah sure, I’m almost done here,” he says, which is the second time he’s mentioned this out loud. Social awareness is not a core skill of this crowd.

The developer has been quietly noticing what’s been going on. Just as I’m about to poke the guy for a second time, the developer pulls up a new stool and laptop just to let me play. Hot damn, now that’s fucking hospitality.

“You must make some very addicting games!” I shout to the developer, loud enough so the guy hogging the station next to me can overhear.

Ozymandias is not quite as similar to Civilization V as I suspected, but it definitely has its template. You take charge of a bronze age civilization in the fertile crescent and build up an empire on a hex grid with resources and terrain. However, each turn you spend your accumulated science, money, and food on technology, armies, and land to reap the rewards instantaneously.

It’s Civilization V, limited to the “Buy Now” mechanics. This is significantly quicker than a game of Civ V, where research and production often takes several turns on even the fastest setting.

This is great. This game is fun.

Look at that! It’s the Super Marxist Twins starring Mikhail and Ludmil! Classic gaming icons!

I stop by just as the devs are asking if anyone wants to play. A seat is free, so I give it a shot. Its Super Mario Bros. with a satirical post-communist twist. Mario can throw hammers to destroy bricks while Luigi throws sickles to break hay blocks.

I compliment the devs and suggest some quick control fixes. They offer me some free swag in return.

I should hit the Devolver Booth sooner or later. To my surprise, the Terra Nil station is completely open. It’s a puzzle game where you need to terraform a wasteland, rebuild its biomes using various buildings, and then clean up all traces of your existence once the ecological cycle has been kick-started.

I get tingly feelings playing this game. This is such a cool concept – how to terraform a planet without leaving behind a trace. This is a cool take on both environmentalism and isometric city builders. The first level was moderately challenging, but I’m willing to bet things get pretty crazy in the later levels.

This game rocks.

Wow, my energy is already dropping and its only 4pm.

I pass by the Ysbryd Games booth and see there’s a line for World of Horrors. Alfred loves this game and asks me to pick up some swag. Can do! Yet another game that’s out already, although Alfred says there might have been a content patch recently?

Randall read my first day post. <3

This is, quite literally, the worst hot dog I have ever bought at a convention. Heh, wurst.

Firefly Studios is next to Finji and is showing off their new game Stronghold: Warlords. It’s an old RTS series, but I never got my hands on it.

“What sort of RTS’s are you into?”, one of the devs asks me.

I’m primarily into the Age of Empires and Total War series, I say. What catches my eye, though, is their trailer for Romans: Age of Caesar. It looks a lot like Caesar III, one of my favorite childhood games.

“Oh yeah,” says one of the devs, “some of our team worked on Caesar III.”

Well, fuck me sideways.

I launch into a spirited conversation about the series, plus other retro PC games like Roller Coaster Tycoon, The Sims, and Myst.

I tell the dev I still listen to the Caesar III soundtrack from time to time, and he says one of his team mates might have even worked on it back then. I implore the dev to give my compliments to the composer next time he sees him. Fuck, this is what makes PAX East feel magical. I love this shit.

A chair for Stronghold: Warlords frees up, so I decide to take a seat and try it. The economics of RTS’s has evolved a lot since AoE II. Furthermore, I quickly dash my troops against some unwinnable fights right out of the gate. I’m feeling under-prepared for a modern RTS.

But fuck it, I think. I learn the mechanics as I play. Pretty soon, I’m turning the tide against the computer opponent. His two watch towers are down, and I’m going in for the final assault against his fortress.

Then, I hear some muffled voices: The con floor is closing, the loudspeaker announces as I lift a headphone from my ear.

“Victory is imminent!” I yell to the devs.

“Keep going, you have time!” they yell back.

The outer walls of my enemy’s keep falls. The reinforcements I ordered from my allies arrives. We storm the inner wall, and it too falls. All that’s left is the enemy warlord in his stronghold, and he is quickly taken down almost as soon as I breach his inner bailey. Victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat.

“I can’t believe I managed to do that!”, I yell to the devs as I lift the headphones off my ears.

“That’s pretty impressive how quickly you picked that up,” they reply. They were watching my triumph.

I gush about the mechanics with the devs. What a way to end the day. I leave the Firefly Studios booth, and enforcers quickly point me the way to exit. The day is over.

It was a productive day in the end, despite how late I arrived. I saw fewer games but spent more time with the ones I tried out. It felt more like traditional PAX today, in spite of all that was missing.

Now fuck off, I’m going to bed.

My first glance over the vacant showroom floor before the doors open today is my first sign that this will be an unusual year for PAX East.

It’s… small. Smaller than I’ve seen it in a long time. It has a first year feel to it, except even our first trip to PAX East back in 2013 had the likes of Behemoth, Microsoft, Sony, Bethesda, and Blizzard in attendance. The AAA booths were extravagant and humongous.

As I look out over the AAA floor this year, I see that a good third of the space is occupied by Intel. Oh… cool.

But it’s not until I spin around and inspect the indie show floor on the opposite side of the room’s straddling sky bridge that the changes truly dawn on me.

Holy crap, is that open floor I see down there beyond the indie booths? In year’s past, this area devoured more and more space until it was battling the PC tournament and board game areas for real estate. It’s size rivaled (and maybe even overtook) the AAA space by 2020. It’s tightly packed alleys brimmed with indie developers and vendors, it’s hidden gems tucked into easily overlooked corners.

This is sparse for PAX East, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. Wandering a sprawling bazaar of video game is exciting, but its exhausting too, and it got harder each year to spend my time efficiently.

I do a quick inspection of the indie floor. Devolver is here, as usual. But there’s no Annapurna Interactive booth, I notice.

I bet Kyle Sealey of Emily is Away fame hasn’t made it this year, either.

Dead Cells has a big booth though. Did they release more content recently? I don’t follow that game at all.

The vendors, typically scooted to the furthest reaches of the room to make way for more developers, take up a significant part of the show floor. A little less than half of it, by a rough estimate, and I may be low-balling that number. They clearly had space to fill.

Andrew is already in line for the doors to open, so I shuffle into place somewhere far behind him. The line is also shorter – the queuing area, typically packed tight by the time doors open, is barely halfway full as we spill out onto the floor.

The Gearbox booth occupies the very front of the showroom, and a short line is already fermenting around it.

“What demo are you waiting for?” I ask some folks in line.

“Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands.”

Geeze, fellas, that game has been out for weeks now. I’ve played several hours with my girlfriend already. Just buy the game if you’re still that curious.

I quickly discover that this is emblematic of how cozy PAX East will be this year, however. What few companies booked space in the AAA area brought their tried-and-true best sellers to show off. Most companies are absent entirely.

I spot Industries of Titan and Phantom Brigade at the Brace Yourself Games booth directly behind Gearbox. I tried both of these games in 2020, and Industries of Titan is 20% off on Steam right now.

While I remember being unimpressed by Industries of Titan, Phantom Brigade pleased both Andrew and I before it dropped from our radar. Still awaiting release, it looks like.

Signs for “Available Now” are becoming more apparent with every step I take.

Crypt of the Necrodancer gets it own display this year, despite coming out seven years ago.

The gigantic Baldur’s Gate III castle is back. Still the exact same booth, still in development.

The Tiny Build booth is taking up significant floor space in the AAA section and is showing off Rawmen, a multiplayer shooter that left mediocre impressions when I played it here previously. Hello Neighbor is being shown off, too. That game came out five years ago, but Andrew says it sells well for them.

While crossing the main aisle, what looks like an Apple-designed beer cooler on two wheels cuts me off. Rude.

Wait… what the hell is that thing anyway? Some sort of robot? It’s following a developer around the Wired Productions booth. Its side is branded with The Last Worker, a game being shown off here.

“A custom Piaggio Fast Forward” the developer states casually, as if he were talking about the type of dog he owns.

They both shuffle away before I have the time to gawk at how accessible robots are going to become to consumers this decade.

In any case, their marketing tactic does its job and I fill an open spot for The Last Worker. Shit, this game looks genuinely exciting. Not to mention its actually a new game.

The Last Worker is a single player narrative game where you are the last human worker in a labyrinthine Amazon warehouse the size of Manhattan (which your character notes is now underwater). All of the other workers have been fired and replaced with robots. The company is named Jüngle and has murals of an appropriately batshit-looking founder pasted on its walls pontificating messianic corporate bullshit.

I get Portal vibes from its dry, dystopian humor in the few minutes I spend with it. I neglect to play chapter 2 of the demo but leave with a golden impression, so I let Andrew know to check it out.

The Last Worker prompts me to try out the other three games being shown off at the Wired Productions booth:

• Tin Hearts is a game by former Lionhead Studios developers. One of its devs describes it as 3D Lemmings with environmental storytelling, and it’s exactly that. Very charming but pacing is slow. Afterwards I talk with the dev a bit about his time at Lionhead and his work helping to make the Fable series.
• Gori: Cuddly Carnage is Tony Hawk if your skateboard had retractable blades and helped you kill unicorns as an orange tabby (“Release Date: As soon as the unicorns allow it”). I’m over this type of cute campiness in games, but for what it’s worth, I actually laughed at the absurd carnage when I discovered the slo-mo button.
• Martha is Dead is some sort of horror-themed walking simulator à la Ethan Carter or perhaps Blair Witch. I only tried out a brief narrative section, though I was sincerely revolted when the game made me hold down the mouse button to cut off a woman’s face with a razor and then try it on for size. Nonetheless, its scenery is very beautiful to look at, typical of many of these types of games. Also “Available Now”.

Game publisher Finji is down here, across the big aisle in the indie game space. Most of the stations are showing off Tunic, which I started playing a few days ago and actually played at a previous PAX. I left with strong impressions back then and was excited to give it a try when it came out a few weeks ago.

Randy, Austin, and Alfred played it already, all of them loving it until some sort of diabolical difficulty spike made them balk at it in disgust.

I stayed on a very late night Discord call with Austin while he was playing it one evening, and his intermittent cursing dripped with unbridled fury. Alfred requested that I slap one of the devs at the booth for him.

Finji’s other indie darlings adorn their main banner. I easily recognize characters from Chicory, A Night in the Woods, and Overland, plus a few unfamiliar others.

Now that I’m exploring the indie section, it does feel bigger down here than it looked from up above.

I wander by a game called Valley of Shadow, and its lone seat is open. You solve some rather simple puzzles through a very linear set of corridors inside of a dream-like, almost ominous-feeling church. A dialogue between the main character and a therapist plays over top a deeply meditative soundtrack. Along the way you pick up mementos such as wedding photos and a home movie of some kids talking with each other.

Mental illness has become somewhat of a hackneyed plot device in indie games in the past decade, and eavesdropping on fictitious therapy sessions to tell a story strikes me as even more trite.

I’m ready to put the game down after about three minutes, when a sudden feeling of hypnosis takes hold of me. Whether from the mentally untaxing puzzles, the dreamlike voices, the meditative music, or just simple fatigue, I am genuinely unsure.

I feel compelled to keep playing, and it becomes clear that you are living out the guided, meditative therapy of the narrator. The ominous vibe continues to grow as I advance down the corridors. I approach an altar in the final room when the narrator finally mentions his alcoholic father and his parents’ failed marriage; he bails on therapy immediately after, and the scene quickly transitions away.

I ask the dev how much of himself is in the game, and he says all of it. His dad was an alcoholic that traumatized his family. Those photos are of his parents’ wedding, the video of him and his siblings as children, the dialogue a scripted recreation of his own therapy. Its an autobiographical work, he tells me. It even says so on the stall’s banner.

Jesus Christ. Talk about a bad take on my part. This is not a game about mental illness, but an autobiographical work regarding an alcoholic father that ruined a family. My impression of the game goes from pretentious to sinister. Whatever else is in that game is probably some deeply raw shit.

I compliment the dev on his work before moving on, though the game continues to occupy my thoughts as I wander the stalls.

Ozymandias catches my eye with its Civilization V-like graphics… maybe a bonafide Indie Clone^TM? I’ll check it out tomorrow.

I head into the PAX Rising area (a section of the indie floor dedicated to in-development games seeking a publisher, and a perennial source of truly undiscovered treasures), when my stomach groans and I realize I haven’t eaten since 6:30 am.

Lunch makes me drowsy, and not feeling any pressure to rush back to the con floor, I visit the Console Free Play room. For the first time in years I sit down to relax and actually play a game (Sonic Mania, for those curious). I grimly note how many of the available games I’ve not only played but also beaten or even 100% completed.

My energy is gone so the rest of the afternoon is more wandering than playing. On the way back to the floor, I notice that the familiar Dance Central stage has been replaced by a speed-running competition area and get a forlorn feeling from it.

The Devolver booth is packed, I’ll stop by very early tomorrow.

Earlier, Andrew told me about a game called Dread Delusion, an old-school style RPG with Morrowind and Daggerfall vibes and some distinctly PS1 graphics. He says its a “Neuteboom game”, for sure. I have trouble finding the booth and text Andrew for directions, but I eventually get there to discover the devs busy uploading a brand new build of the game.

No sooner do I step away to find something distracting for 15 minutes than I bump into Andrew, who was nearby and decided to come meet me.

After waiting 25 minutes for the guy in front of me to give up the only seat for Dread Delusion, I finally tap him on the shoulder and politely ask him to vacate (please stop monopolizing demos when there’s a line, folks!).

As Andrew suspected, I enjoy Dread Delusion, and I laugh at some of the opening dialogue. I set a phone timer for 10 minutes; it’s a quarter to five by the time it ticks down, so Andrew and I decide to call it quits for the day.

Andrew tried The Last Worker; he notes that the game feels significantly different in the second half of the demo that I skipped. I’m still optimistic, and if anything, now more curious than before to try the finished product.

So far its been an interesting year. I am somewhat relieved that the convention is more condensed this year. My time here feels freer, less stressful. Usually there is just way too much to investigate. There are also no mobs of people to deal with, which previously got worse year after year. PAX East was fucking crowded. It really sucked.

At the same time, it’s somewhat dispiriting to see so many familiar developers and convention staples absent this year. Like returning to your hometown and finding it diminished from when you had departed.

In previous years I felt almost overwhelmed by a sea of both familiar and unfamiliar games. For me, that was the PAX experience. There was a sense of vastness to the convention, and by extension, the industry.

This year, I’ve already played about half the games on the floor. That’s pretty rare for me. I play games nearly every night, but I often opt for older releases and I’m pretty bad at keeping up with the news. My gaze is fixed backwards, not forward.

Andrew calls this a transition year for PAX East, and I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of publishers never even signed up because the possibility of PAX East this year wasn’t a guarantee.

COVID also took its toll on developers. New games are being developed out there, even if they aren’t being shown off in here. To expect everything to simply be the same again post-COVID is simply unrealistic. And in all likelihood, the convention will grow back to its former size with time. For now, most booths are bridging the gap with stuff they already have that they’re happy to show off again to fans.

But hell, at least the Jackbox lounge is still here this year. The Jackbox lounge is eternal. Long live the Jackbox lounge.