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 CloneTM? 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.
