The most interesting games I played at Pax.
PAX was roughly the same size as last year, with a similar number of booths and plenty of space to move around.
PAX was roughly the same size as last year, with a similar number of booths and plenty of space to move around. Friday was quite busy, and Saturday had even larger crowds. Some of the bigger booths had capped lines, meaning they were long enough that no one else was allowed to join the line until the following day. STALKER 2 was a culprit here, but I was still able to play it! However, this is not a post intended to brag, so let’s just talk about what I saw and what I am excited about.
Since I mentioned STALKER, let’s talk about STALKER! Historically, I played and finished both STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and STALKER: Call of Pripyat. I have not played the middle standalone game, STALKER: Clear Sky, due to stories of horrific issues with that one. I have not played STALKER: Anomaly, mostly due to a lack of time to give it a fair shake.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl was playable on the floor, and I was lucky enough to get into the line. After waiting roughly thirty minutes, I played the demo. The game was super smooth and looked fantastic. The atmosphere was great, in classic STALKER fashion. The game sets you up with a machine, and all the game tells you is that there is an anomaly in front of you. The anomaly is the classic lightning flash; shortly thereafter, I found myself in a firefight in a field. It reminded me of the graveyard area in Pripyat. There weren’t many bandits, and they were not a huge challenge to take out. But glancing at other players’ screens as I was leaving, I saw people getting taken out by the bandits. The UI seems fine; STALKER has never been great in this regard. It feels a bit simple, but it gets the job done. The demo was not long—maybe 12 minutes. But what I saw was a game that runs well while feeling like the old STALKER. Here's hoping I can get it running on Linux!
Here is GameSpot's coverage of the demo, as I did not get an interview spot or anything fancy. If you'd like to see the demo I played and hear one of the developers talking about it, check out their coverage.
AO: Containment Breach
Okay, so this is the discovery I am most excited about from PAX. AO: Containment Breach was hiding in the indie section. I missed it when I first walked past, but once I got a closer look, I had to stop. It’s a run-based dungeon crawler with a hard sci-fi feel and a lot of grim body horror visuals. It features chunky pixels and grid-based movement. The game is real-time, focused on looping through relatively short runs. The player’s goal is to trap escaped monsters. This is achieved by solving puzzles that unlock hints within the game to figure out how to trap the creatures. While smaller creatures can be killed in the game’s semi-auto battler, almost RPG-like combat system, weapons are saved from run to run, and the game’s progression is focused on upgrading and unlocking new weapons. It includes a system called Anchors, which allow the player to change how the levels generate to find new enemies and weapons—more or less, another form of progression.
When a run is completed, the player can loop, unlocking alternate paths and new monsters. In the build I saw, there was only one environment, called the office facility. It looked something like a lab or underground bunker to me, but I could see why they’d call it an office. There are lots of little computers and terminals scattered around the place that are interactable as part of the puzzles. Overall, it’s a simple-looking little indie game with a lot of features that strike my fancy—procedural levels and interesting possibilities that make it seem quite replayable. It’ll be launching in Early Access later this year, and the developers say it will be quite affordable. But before I move on to the next thing I played, I wanted to mention: it’s a first-person game running in RPG Maker. I was shocked.
Onorbit - Virtual Space Lab
Onorbit is a game that I wanted to highlight purely because of its audacious ambition. Almost landing in edutainment, it’s a space sim based on current-day technology, focused on assembling a spaceship in space. The player assembles parts in an almost Kerbal-like environment, with the goal of fully assembling a working spacecraft and then flying it to scan and take photos of Earth. Alternatively, the player can take photos of the night sky and scientists on the ground, with the goal of eventually building a ship that could fly around our solar system to scan other planets. The game runs at a 3x time scale. There is no way to speed up or slow down time, and time also progresses while the game is closed. The demo I played is also available through Steam. It’s super zen and fills the niche for realistic space shenanigans that so many people enjoy from Kerbal, with a more realistic aesthetic. It seems super ambitious and is worth keeping an eye on for space
PAX was great. It’s always good to run into people I haven’t seen in a while and catch up with as many people as I can. We were able to pull off a small community meetup at a pub up the street from the convention center. This is something I hope to do again next year. We’ll probably need more seating and maybe a calmer environment. The convention itself seems to be on the upswing. The board games section is as big as ever, as is the panel list and fighting game tournaments. The only part that is still a bit behind is the number of games at the show. Many big publishers don’t attend, and the indie presence is not what it used to be. But as the crowds grow, it’ll hopefully return to its former glory. I will also have a few more things to write about related to PAX in next week’s post.
The last thing I have to mention is that I met Dunky on Saturday while getting coffee! Honestly, it made my day!
Uploads from last week.
It’s a short list here—just the one big video I had cooking. I hope to get Future of the Fortress finished today, as well as some shorts made. But it depends on both my own energy and if I can get my post-trip chores done.
The schedule for this week is Tuesday through Thursday. I’m keeping Friday as a maybe because I’m tired as hell after PAX, and I’m planning a short overnight camping trip this weekend, so I might need the day to get things done. We’ll see. I’ll skip stats this week for a few reasons I’ll explain next week. For paying subscribers here, keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow for the big stats breakdown post.