Our podcast: We gave away things! It was awesome seeing friends, family and a bunch of new folks stopping by to listen to Chris and Kelly, and get the pile of free stuff we were giving away. It was a good, pizza-fueled time.
Meeting the guys from Peter Jackson’s Sorcery was a new experience. It isn’t often that I talk to people about a game they can’t place in a category. Sorcery is that. It isn’t quite an RPG or a gamebook or a roguelike, but it has elements of all three. The game uses an awesome procedural storytelling technique, a diceless, strategy-based combat system, and a gorgeous hand-drawn art style to deliver an experience that seems built with a tablet in mind from the ground up. I may not be able to tell you what category it falls in, but the game looks great. Also I’ve found my new career title: Fantasy Cartographer. That’s apparently a thing.
State of Decay is going to fill up your Xbox with zombies and machetes soon:
It’s always a good sign when a developer is so into a game he doesn’t want to hand me the controller because he wants to keep playing. State of Decay is the full zombie experience; you run around for supplies, survivors, and fortify safehouses. People turn on you at inopportune times or slowly build trust (and become additional playable characters). Zombie hordes run around and make nuisances of themselves. It looks great, feels good, and dismembering zombies with a machete is always a good time. Look for this thing to show up on XBLA soon, and don’t pass it up.
I know the 1920s Prohibition-era RPG with poker-based combat is a heavily oversaturated genre, but Lords of New York still deserves a look. The game’s kickstarting for more features now, but is set to launch in the nearish future and looks to be shaping up nicely.
Pittsburgh 68 is a boardgame made by about the nicest dude I’ve ever met. Larry Wickman at Gamewick not only did his best to make a board game experience that would transmit the same slow, building dread of a good zombie flick, he sat down with me at midnight on a Saturday to play his own game with a bunch of us. And it was great, tense, and ridiculous as my bat-toting athlete sprinted away from the last of the horde (only to be cut down in the final moments of the game). Covering three to thirteen players, Pittsburgh 68 is probably the most accommodating board game I’ve played, and it’s fun to boot. Go get it!
You bounce a caterpillar around a map who flies at everything teeth-first. Little Chomp is a basic little game, and a platformer for the iOS. It’s also the first such game that’s given me the same sense of control and flow I get out of something like Super Meat Boy or Super House of Dead Ninjas. This game’s already out, and it’s going to be on my phone before my next big trip.
PAX East has always been indie country, and this year is no exception. While I’m definitely looking forward to Elder Scrolls Online and Metro: Last Light, I’m thrilled and terrified by the sheer volume of really cool games coming out of smaller teams that stopped by to chat with me. More writeups are coming soon, but hopefully this gives you something of a feel of the madness and delight of the show.
Great article! Lords of New York link is broken at the moment, should be:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/732810782/lords-of-new-york/
Thanks for the kind words, Zach! When I saw you guys with the rulebook out, I had to swing by and see if you wanted some help getting those zombies to shuffle. Great meeting you guys.