PAX is very indie game friendly, so while I wrote mostly about the big companies in my Day 1 article, today we’ll look at some indie game fare.  Plus some great PC and tablet offerings from Big Fish Games and Cartoon Network!

Light in the Dark

In this upcoming tablet game, you use the touch screen to move around critters that suspiciously look like the ones found in Cut the Rope.  But the guys in this game can emit different colors of light all around, and you must illuminate stars of the same color with the same hue of light.  As you move around, you’ll have to take account of walls that block light, mirrors that reflect it, and how the light colors will mix if two different colored critters’ lights shine in the same place.  Later on you’ll have to watch out for enemies who will wake up and chase you if you shine light on them for too long as well!  Light in the Dark offers some very creative and challenging puzzles, and will be out soon!

Midnight City

Midnight City is publishing a lot of great upcoming console and PC titles.  I didn’t look at Slender, but I did play the sequel to the cult-favorite Halloween inspired RPG Costume Quest.  It takes place right after where Grubbins on Ice left off.  The two kids return home only to find an evil dentist talking with a mysterious time wizard, and by using time travel, the dentist rids the world of Halloween and trick or treating for candy forever!  It’s up to the two kids to zip through time, gather powerful costumes, and bring back trick or treating to kids of the world in this RPG.  All costumes now have special abilities in the overworld, and performing powerful blows in battles is easier thanks to picture cues.  And if the game is too easy, just try “Hardcorn” mode and dress one of your kids in the candy corn outfit, who doesn’t do anything in battle.  Seriously, when it’s their turn, the candy corn just sits there and says funny things like “Candy Corn knows when to hold ‘em.”  Hopefully Costume Quest 2 will make it out by Halloween.  I hated missing out on the first one, but hopefully I’ll get to review this one.

The other game I played from Midnight City was Videoball, which will be out on nearly all consoles later this year.  It’s a multiplayer sports game that’s like a mix of soccer, air hockey, and a game from the 80’s called Crossfire (anyone get “caught up in the Cross-fiyah” in the 80’s?).  Anyway, you must get your ball to your goal to score points, but to do that you shoot projectiles to move the balls.  You can charge up your shots for more powerful ‘kicks,’ or make squares to block your opponents.  It has a retro feel with geometric shapes for graphics (reminds me of Combat).  And while I’m not big into sports games, I did like this one and when I played it at PAX, I scored the most points to win!

The Next Penelope

Late last year my friend reviewed a game for me called Poof vs. the Cursed Kitty.  And now one of the folks who worked on that game, Aurelien Regard, is making his own game!  It’s a racing game called The Next Penelope.  Now, when I think of racing games starring a woman named Penelope, I think of Penelope Pitstop from Wacky Races.  But no, this one stars the daughter of one of the Greek goddesses, and mixes futuristic racing with a Greek mythology storyline…somehow.  Anyway, the game plays like Micro Machines in that it’s a top down racer that controls the same way.  But it’s also like F-Zero because it’s very fast and challenging with lots of jumps.  You can also use all kinds of weapons at any time, but they’ll take off some of your energy so you must be careful.  As you race, you’ll battle bosses and more, so there is lots of variety.  And the characters look really cool, too.  Aurelien is hoping to get this game on PC and Wii U, and I hope he succeeds!

Big Fish Games

This tablet game maker had a trio of awesome casual games at the show.  The first was Panda Pandamonium, which plays like an arcade style Mah-Jongg puzzler.  You must remove tiles of the same symbol to free two pandas trapped between tiles!  It’s really fun, the pandas are adorable, and I’ll have a review of the full game up later next week!  Next was a match 3 puzzle game called Cascade.  What makes this one different is that it mixes up typical Candy Crush style gameplay with slots!  You can only match gems from a list on the bottom of the screen, and when you can’t make any more matches, you must spin for more!  It’s a little hard to figure out at first, but I got the hang of it just by playing.  And last is a free-to-play version of Big Fish’s action solitaire game: Fairway Solitaire.  If you own an iPad or iPhone, you should have at least one Big Fish game in your collection!

Cartoon Network

Cable channel Cartoon Network has a games division for making tablet and PC games based on their characters and shows.  Their first upcoming game is called Adventure Time: Game Wizard.  In this one, you use graph paper to draw symbols and lines, and then use the tablet’s camera to take a picture of what you created, and the game will make a 2-D platforming level out of it!  It’s actually pretty amazing.  You play as characters from the popular Adventure Time show, including Finn, Jake, the Ice King, and my favorite character: BMO!  You can also draw levels in-game, and share and play levels online with others.  It’s actually a pretty clever idea.  One cool thing about Cartoon Network Games is that even though they’re just making licensed titles, they make the best use out of the licenses they have.

Another tablet game based on a new Cartoon Network license is Steven Universe: Attack the Light.  Steven Universe reminds me a lot of Adventure Time, and this game is an RPG.  In the turn-based battles, tap on the three girl gem characters to select attacks.  Like the Mario RPG games, you can tap enemies at the right time for more damage.  Like the cartoon, Steven himself doesn’t do much of the fighting, but instead is a support character who can heal the girls with items from his famous Cheeseburger Backpack!

On the backside of the Cartoon Network Games booth was Adult Swim Games.  Just because the name has the word Adult in it, it doesn’t mean their games are for adults only.  It just means these games are more ‘hardcore’ and may be better enjoyed by older players.  They had some 2-D retro themed action games like Mega Coin Squad, which is out now, as well as Duck Game, a 2-D competitive shooting game featuring ducks!  It’s out now for Ouya but will be on Steam soon.  The last retro styled game they had was Westerado: Double Barreled, which is best described as a 2-D, 8-bit Read Dead Redemption.  They also had a game called Oblitus, which they described as a 2-D Dark Souls.  I never played that game, so I’ll just say it’s a fun and challenging 2-D hack and slash platformer and you can throw spears in any direction.  And it has nice graphics that look hand-drawn, too.  Finally they had Rain World, a multiplayer last-man-standing game where you play as weird cat-slug things and avoid enemies and find hiding places before it starts to rain!

Machineers

I’m always on the lookout for educational games at PAX, and luckily they had some this year.  One was at the always-crowded Indie Megabooth, and it’s an upcoming tablet game called Machineers.  In the game, you play as a girl who works at an amusement park repairing roller coasters and other rides, and she aspires to one day become a Machineer to build and fix things.  In the game, you make things work and run by attaching gears, conveyor belts, and other doo dads.  It’s a bit like The Incredible Machine.  The game also has a neat metallic art style, too.

Misc. Pics

I took a lot of pictures at PAX that I don’t know where to put, so I’ll just dump them right here for you all to look at. Enjoy!

At one booth that was showing off controllers and hardware, they had a contest around lunchtime where if you made a burger in the classic arcade game BurgerTime, you’d win a real burger from a caterer they hired!  If the line wasn’t so long, I would’ve done that because I knew I would’ve won.  I’m pretty good at BurgerTime and it was one of the few arcade games to pull me away from Pac-Man back in the day.  Plus I just thought it looked cool seeing BurgerTime on such a big screen at the show!

My brothers love to play games like World of Tanks, World of Warplanes, and World of Warships, so at their booth at PAX, I took a picture of this tank.  I wonder how they get those big things into the show floor, especially since this was four stories up!

This alien monster statue was HUGE!  Not sure what game it’s for, though.

Here are some statues ready to fight.  Not sure what game they’re from either, I just thought they looked cool.

And here is another big and cool statue of something I don’t know where it’s from.

And that’s all for the second day!  Tomorrow we’ll look at my last day of the show, wrap up my meetings, and look at some of my favorite costumed characters at PAX!

Tags: Misc