What I Saw at PAX South 2018

PAX South was an interesting one this year. Last year the con struck gold when it became the first major convention to show off the Nintendo Switch to the public at multiple booths. When I looked at the Show Floor map and the panel schedule this year, I could see a lot of companies that are always at PAX conventions like Twitch, Rooster Teeth and others were a no show.

When I attended media hour (when the media is let in before everyone else), I felt somewhat underwhelmed. As I walked the show floor I realized I had already booked almost everything I found interesting with the exception of a few interesting indie games.

As I sat the rest of media hour at my friend’s booth I wondered if PAX South was doomed. That lasted about 20 minutes. When the doors opened for the general public a huge crowd that was about the same size as last year and previous years engulfed the show floor.  It was then I realized I must be jaded after doing this for so many years.

My first appointment was The Darwin Project at the Mixer booth. It’s a battle royal game like PUBG but doesn’t feel like a straight-up PUBG clone. The main hook is there is a person who can be the announcer and can control the game in various ways like a dungeon master in Dungeons and Dragons. Viewers on Mixer can vote on things like which zone to close, who should get a health boost, etc. It’s a neat game that can entertain you even when you aren’t playing.


Next I checked out Last Encounter. It is a twin sticks shooter you can play with up to three other friends. It has rogue-like elements where you lose progress but you can upgrade your ship over time. It reminded me of the fun I had on Xbox 360 with the XBLA games.


Phantom Doctrine is complex, very complex. It’s the Cold War in the 80’s and you are a terrorist group trying to get the Soviet Union and USA to enter WWIII so they can rule over the ashes and a turned based game like X Com 2. The part I found the most interesting was setting up the mission before you head out. You look at clues on the peg board with strings; hire spies, use time management, send out agents, etc. The coolest thing is you can capture enemy agents, brainwash them and then release them. Then when you are in a level with them you can say the trigger word and you can control them. On the flip side, if an agent of yours gets captured and finds their way back to the base, the same can happen to you. And that’s just one feature in this game. Like I said before; it’s very complex.


Frostpunk is Sim City meets the movie Snow Piercer. The planet has entered a new ice age. The surviving humans have traveled to a crater and set up a giant furnace generator. You are the leader and command the townspeople. You tell them to gather materials, meet their needs by building homes, fighting pits, etc. You can also enact child labor; make them work at night, etc. You can be a complete dick, but they might get rid of you so you need to play it safe.


Outpost Zero is a survival game kind of like Rust. The hook for this game is that you build AI bots and a base on an alien planet through scavenging. As you explore you’ll find volcanos or weird creatures flying through the air. It has a single player mode, but you can enter a PvP world too where you invade other bases or work together.


While Kingdom Come: Deliverance looks like everything else medieval that you’ve seen throughout the years, it’s not. The game takes place in a real time and has no magic or dragons. Combat is as real as it gets too. You have a sword, bow and armor and that’s it. If your visor is down, you only see through the slit. If you hit someone’s skull who has no helmet, it is over and the same applies to you. You can also use the environment for your advantage. For example if there are archers in the distance, light some nearby hay on fire to make the smoke obscure their view of the battle. Something about having a highly polished real life combat game was cool to see.


Underworld Ascendant is a first person dungeon crawler created by many vets in the video game industry who’ve worked on titles like Tacoma, Bioshock Infinite, Thief, Deus Ex, etc. The best feature in the game that they showed is that you get experience points based on how you killed enemies or accomplish something instead of just using the same technique over and over. For example if you lure a slug that leaves a trail of flammable slime with a berry, you can then light the path on fire and kill any enemies within the slimes path.



Sleep Tight was interesting. The guy who worked on the things like the opening sequence in the West World show wanted to make a game he and his friend thought of when they were kids. You play as a kid who prepares for battle with monsters during the day and then you enter a round at night. It’s basically a kid friendly version of Call of Duty Zombies or other horde mode types.


Imagine Earthbound mixed with late 90’s pop culture starring a hipster that looks like he’s from Seattle. YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is that game. As someone who recently beat Earthbound on my SNES Classic, the game feels very much like Earthbound. From the weird just to be weird aspects, phones for saving the game, etc. So if you want more Earthbound type games, get this.


Evolution is based on a board game. In the game you play against up to three AI or human players as you slowly evolve your animals with the card you gather after each turn. Depending on the card you can grow the animals stock, size, what they eat, and what powers they have. The goal of the game is to gather the most amount of food. If you are a predator, you get food from attacking opponents. If you are an herbivore you get this from eating plants that generate in the middle. If you like other card-based video games check it out.


I’ll be honest; when I took the appointment for ChronoBlade I thought it was a well-polished $14.99 indie game. Turns out it’s a free to play IOS/Android game with hack and slash gameplay. If that doesn’t sell you on it, I don’t think anything will.


The Swords of Ditto is a single player or co-op kid friendly rogue like game that plays like Zelda. The world is procedurally generated after a child/robot dies and the sword of ditto finds another random kid/robot to fight evil for it. The creator made it to be very co-op friendly for kids. If one player dies, you revive them by hugging them and giving them half your health for example.


Crossing Souls felt like the video game version of Ready Player One. The game borrows heavily from movies made in the 80’s like Stand by Me, Goonies, E.T., and other movies that had a group of kids overcoming something. One interesting aspect is that the game is made from developers in Spain so they don’t quite know what was popular in the 80’s in the USA. I’d see things like an Alex Kidd poster or a Dragon Ball poster with Goku riding the nimbus cloud for example. It made the experience more interesting knowing that fact.


Pillars of Eternity II looked cool. Character customization is super detailed and complex. I can see people spending four hours on it and then starting the game. The demo had a problem where I kept running into super overpowered enemies that the producer of the game would go “Oh you’re going to die” a couple times. To be honest though I don’t play this sub-genre of RPGs and only took the appointment since these guys made South Park: Stick of Truth and Fallout: New Vegas.


At Sundown is a multiplayer driven top down run and gun game. The hook is that you can’t see yourself or your opponents unless they shoot or they walk under a light.



I stopped by the Fabrazz booth and looked at SpiritSphere DX and Slime-San. They are fun and simple games you can enjoy in short bursts on your Switch.


Ancestors Legacy is a strategy RPG that takes place in various parts of Europe. I picked the Viking campaign because of my last name. I would often send troops to battle, let them murder and die and then create more troops to replace them instead of healing them. The guy showing me the demo was quite amused that I didn’t care if my guys died or not since a lot of people heal their troops apparently. It’s a demo and they all die anyways once I walk away in my mind. The most impressive aspect was the combat animations. They actually fight each other and pair up. You’ll see things like a guy taking an axe to the head and dropping like a sack of potatoes.


Wattam is from the creator of Katamari Damacy and it shows based on the visuals. The game is very hands off and you wander around, trying to figure out what to do next. The gameplay is very bare bones and has a sandbox appeal where you just hold hands, explode, wear things, etc. It has co-op so if you have a 3- to 8-year- old in the house this is something you’ll enjoy playing with them.


And that’s it. I had a panel on Sunday so I pretty much took a lot of appointments and it turned out it was most of the show floor.

Thank you to everyone who turned up to the panel too or hunted for the Mooby icon at PAX South. It was fun that first day when people figured it out.

Nice write-up. Being there myself, I didn't even see a few of these in my time on the show floor.  The missing big names were very noticeable though and it seemed there were fewer booths.  The question regarding the fate of PAX South was asked in the Penny Arcade Create-a-Strip panel and addressed by Jerry (he addressed the awkward timing of the show for big devs but pointed out the many indies and more intimate feeling).  I will say it feels like the panels this year were pretty lack-luster on a whole vs previous years where I had to decide between overlapping ones (not to say they weren't some good ones in there like yours .  That said, I do not regret going.   

Would you care to talk about the level of polish in Kingdom Come? I'm very interested, but worry about jank.

eulogywerd21 said:

Would you care to talk about the level of polish in Kingdom Come? I'm very interested, but worry about jank.

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They used the Crytek engine and focused a lot on the environment and accuracy to the period. It kind of made me laugh how they worked so hard on the visuals and then you put on a helmet with a tiny slit to look through. As for jank, the only ones I saw were during the loading periods. Things like a helmet loading last on your character, slow load times at certain points, etc.It was a demo though and I wasn't playing the game so who knows when it's released.

My boys wanted to go so I took them and boy was I bored. Half that convention center was empty and nobody special was there, giant bomb, Nintendo, twitch, Sony or Microsoft. My son made a video of the cosplayers that I thought came out pretty well. I had a much better time at PSX and E3.

https://youtu.be/C0XMMyuOPqU

Gusto said:

My boys wanted to go so I took them and boy was I bored. Half that convention center was empty and nobody special was there, giant bomb, Nintendo, twitch, Sony or Microsoft. My son made a video of the cosplayers that I thought came out pretty well. I had a much better time at PSX and E3.

https://youtu.be/C0XMMyuOPqU

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This is great. More stuff I'd like to see from the con outside of the norm. Your son did a cool job. Thanks for sharing.