The Many Many Hidden Indie Treasures OF PAX East – Popgeeks
PAX East starts not too long from now, May 8. Just about every major video game and tabletop publisher will be there, but we’d like to spotlight a few of the smaller, scrappier publishers and developers on the show floor. There isn’t enough space to mention every single one of them, but you should keep a lookout for these folks…
9th Level Games, Booth 10105: An indie tabletop roleplaying publisher with a mission to introduce more first-timers to the world of TTRPGs. They produce a line of simplified TT games called “Funshot,” with titles like Pigeon’s Eleven and Sentai & Sensibility, that run on their own engine called the Polymorph Rules System.
ByteRockers Games, Booth 17096: Based out of Berlin, Germany, ByteRockers has existed since 2008, contains nearly 40 members, and has quite a few indie titles to their record. They’re best known for the titles Insurmountable and Beat Slayer, but at PAX they’ll be showing off their latest projects Net.Attack(), Let Them Trade, Constance, Solnox – Grimoire of Seasons, The Berlin Apartment, and Exovia.
Cleromancy Games, Booth 10099: Cleromancy claims they’ve made the first wearable strategy trading card game. They call it “Worn Wanderers” and the battlefield is your shirt. You wear your army as pins and other people with similar pins can challenge you. If you try out the game, they’ll give you your own convention-exclusive pin to start you off.
Akupara Games, Booths 15090 and 15091: An indie game studio based in Los Angeles, Akupara Games considers itself an “indie for indies,” and by that they mean they’re a studio that provides support to other indie studios through development, publishing, porting, and advising. Each project, they say, receives a unique experience and personalized support.
Black Oak Workshop, Booth 10093: Producer of accessories for tabletop games, like treasure chests, torches and dice bags (and of course, their own unique style of dice).
Bitmask Games, Booth 16108: I admit I know these people. Bitmask Games developed NESMaker, the software that provides shortcuts to NES game development, which I’ve used myself. They’re working on a more advanced successor called Retro Game Forge that will be capable of developing for multiple retro systems: NES, SNES and Genesis. It’ll be a while before RGF is finished, but perhaps you’ll be able to tinker with it at the booth.
Cubicorn Games, Booth 16110: Currently working on Super Cucumber, a 2D action-platformer that boasts of over one hundred hand-crafted levels. “Become the greatest aardvark superhero in the world,” they’ve teased.
Daruma Games, Booth 15104: Currently working on Sol Mates, a multiplayer party game where up to four players can take on missions locally or online. “Your ship is constantly under siege by pirates, black holes, and bizarre cosmic dangers, and only tight teamwork will keep you from getting blown to bits. Steer, shield, and shoot your way through procedurally generated challenges, where one wrong move could land you face-to-face with a giant alien crab!”
Cheer Up Games, Booth 11086: This team is known for the lighter side of party games, with titles like Cheer Up, Swearmints and Drawing Swords. “Love to laugh? You’ve come to the right booth,” they say. “Come say hi and play with us, and bring some friends!”
If you want the full list, we’ll leave the link here. PAX East runs in Boston, Massachusetts from May 8 through May 11.
