Gavin Sheehan Archives

Probably the happiest group of people we came across at PAX East this year were the crew from North Star Games, who follow by a creed of making games more about having fun than about winning. That's the experience we got from the first game they showed us in Evolution, both as a card game and an app.

Probably the highlight of day 3 at PAX East was being able to go over and check out the animated beauty that was the tactical RPG Banner Saga 3, as we got to try out a small demo for the game.

Whenever we hit a convention, we do our best to hit up some of the people bringing in hardware since they only take up a small portion of everything you see. The first people we got to visit with at PAX East who had gear to show off were Dell and Alienware.

On the third day of PAX East, one of the more interesting titles to catch out attention was Dungeon Stars, a medieval cartoon platformer developed by Furnace Games and being published by Riposte Games & Co.

There are times when you come across a game where it looks like the designers did all the right things and then somehow threw a sack of dirt on everything to make you feel grimy playing it. That's how we felt picking up the demo for Disco Elysium from Humble Bundle at PAX East.

Often when we go to events like PAX East, getting swag is usually par for the course as you tend to get handed things like t-shirts, buttons, pins, the occasional freebie copy of the game and whatnot. Checking out Cede was the first time someone gave me a plant to take care of when I got home.

If you've ever hitchhiked in your life, chances are you know the paranoia of not knowing who you're with. Now add in a creepy mystery about who you actually are with a fixed POV and you get Hitchhiker: First Ride, which we tried out at PAX East.

It isn't often you have a developer sit there and watch you play the game and ask "are you trying to break it?" That was the case for me when I tried out Sky Noon at PAX East, being developed by Lunar Rooster and published by Reverb Triple XP.

For a lot of us, when we get a dungeon crawler where you eventually get out and return to do other things, the prospect of death is minimal. Moonlighter changes all that as we discovered when we swung by the 11 Bit Studios booth at PAX East.

In the crossover event we never predicted would happen and probably should have, The Walking Dead will partner with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in a four-hour tournament involving some high-profile Twitch streamers.

There's nothing more satisfying than being able to take our hordes of zombies just be doing something stupid. And that's the exact kind of fun we got to have when we tried out Double Kick Heroes at PAX East.

Today, Rare released a brand-new video along with some notes about their content plans for Sea of Thieves moving forward. 

Today, Blizzard and Twitch released a new announcement detailing new ways the two would partner up to make the Overwatch League a much more interactive experience, which includes introducing an All-Access Pass for viewers.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be Lumiere from Beauty & The Beast? Zodiac Interactive brought their own version of that experience to PAX East as we got to try out Candleman: The Complete Journey.

One of the cooler looking titles we got to mess with at PAX East came to us from China as Zodiac Interactive brought over a few titles for the event including Tales Of The Neon Sea.

In a move that even we have to question the rationality behind, Electronic Arts today announced that they would be bringing back purchasable crystal microtransactions back to Star Wars: Battlefront II. 

There's nothing like dealing with a cult to get the blo0od pumping in the middle of the day! That's the experience we got to have at PAX East as PAranoid Productions brought their latest title The Church in the Darkness to the con last week.

Once in a while, you come across an indie developer that makes your heart smile for days because you know they're making an awesome effort. That's the way I felt after chatting with the husband and wife duo of Robot Loves Kitty as they showed me their latest game, Super Tony Land.

Visiting with the crew at Devolver Digital at PAX East, we were able to sit down and try out one of their new co-op games that kind of put a smile on our face as we tried out The Swords Of Ditto.

Earlier today, BAFTA (The British Academy of Film and Television Arts) made the formal announcement for the list of winners for their 14th annual game awards. In a very surprising win, What Remains of Edith Finch took the top honors as Best Game.

Sometimes, when you're a media person covering events like PAX East, your appointments fly by fast and you get some time to check out other cool stuff along the way to getting to other appointments. Such is the case with Dark Devotion, as I briefly tried it out on Friday morning.

Another title we got to try out at PAX East was Dusk from New Blood Interactive, which had us going back in our minds to the glory days of playing Quake online, with all the intensity and bloodshed you might expect.

We got a taste of a couple new titles from New Blood Interactive at PAX East this year, and while there is a fondness in our hearts for first-person bloodbath PC titles, something caught our eye about both of their games starting with Amid Evil.

While we were at PAX East, not all of it was video games, we got in some decent board gaming time as well. One of the appointments we managed to book in the tabletop area landed us some time with a game called Beasts Of Balance. 

Sometimes when you hit the PAX East floor, you get taken down a very dark path and you're not entirely sure how to respond to it, you just know it will haunt you for days. Such was the case when we tried out Immure from Wither Studios, as we're still not sure if the demons left us.

If you're going to reinvent the jumping maze platformer in your own image, throwing in a new mechanic is a good way to get our attention, like Graffiti Games did at PAX East with one of the games they were showing off in The King's Bird.

If you've ever wanted to play as Indiana Jones to a degree and be in a world that has some magic, then you might want to take a quick look at City of Brass from Uppercut Games as we checked them out at PAX East this weekend.

One of the best games that we got a chance to play on the PAX East floor was a fun little game from publisher Blowfish Studios called Projection: First Light. The game itself is simple in concept but it makes for one of the best experiences we had all weekend.

As much as I enjoy the current landscape of gaming, there's still a part of me that harkens back to the old PC adventure titles from the late '80s and early '90s. When we walked up to the Faeland booth at PAX East and saw what the game had to offer, I was instantly taken back.

I wasn't quite sure what I was in for when I checked in with the Epsilon Games crew at PAX East to try out their latest game, Primus Vita. And to be honest, I'm still not sure what I experienced.