Taking the Scenic Route: PAX and the Path of Discovery

One of the many things I love about PAX East is exploration and discovery. The floor is buzzing with the electric excitement of thousands of gamers getting to try new games for the first time. And surrounding the big tents of AREA 34 and Nintendo, there are hundreds of developers camped out with quirky, novel, or ambitious ideas that you might not see anywhere else. Or maybe they just made something beautiful, and they can’t wait to show you. I’ve collected a number of these gems over the years. And I’ve known in the back of my head that PAX titles have become part of my regular gaming rotation. But when I ran the numbers, I was surprised at how much of my gaming is directly because of PAX. Of my Switch 2 library, 18% of the titles are there because of something I saw, played, or otherwise experienced at PAX. I probably would have missed out on a lot of these if it wasn’t for what happened on the show floor. Let’s take a look at just a few of my PAX discoveries.

TUNIC

I remember the first time I laid hands on this game. The Finji booth had a game with a cute fox in a green tunic with a sword and a shield. I knew what was up. This is an isometric “I’m totally not Zelda” fantasy adventure. The demo did not disappoint. Several months later it hit the Nintendo eShop and immediately I grabbed it. I started playing. Then it grabbed me. Then the layers of depth started slowly revealing themselves. I thought I knew what was up with this Zelda-like game, but I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went. TUNIC created an online secret-sharing, puzzle-solving community that resembled the playground secret swapping that surrounded the original Legend of Zelda back when I was in middle school. It blends great play, intricate puzzles, and baked-in community-building. I loved finding this title, and it still has so much replay value years later.

HOA

Hoa is unlike anything else in my library. I wandered through the indie developers and stumbled on a booth with almost no line, but there was a developer with something beautiful. Hoa is a chill puzzle platformer that is as peaceful as it is gorgeous in sight and song. The environments, the music, and the entire art style all make this game a treasure in my library. The creators have had some clear inspiration from sources I treasure, and they’ve taken painstaking care to create something beautiful. I downloaded this as soon as I got home from PAX. It’s a short game about a fairy unpacking the past after returning to its homeland. While it may not be the same challenge that some of my favorite games are, it hits home by being peaceful and gorgeous while still being fun. I know I would not have found this game if it hadn’t been for my experience on the show floor.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge

I had been eyeballing this one all day, but the lines were crazy. It looked like the arcade game that devoured our quarters in 1989, and that resemblance was no accident. It’s a spiritual sequel with a retro arcade feel while still solidly being a product of the 21^st century. It looked great, but I couldn’t get my hands on it. That is until later in the day a machine was finally open, and my teenager and I finally had our shot. Neither one of us is deep into the beat ‘em up genre, but once we had our hands on it, we knew it had even more substance than it did nostalgia. For months the whole family was grinding away at this game, leveling up characters, completing challenges, and trashing the Foot Clan. Better yet, it turned us on to the studio’s continuing work.

Would I have found this one later through word of mouth? Maybe. But I know that demo made the purchase an easy decision.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

I know that this is where half of you are gonna call B.S. and peace out. But hear me out here. I’d never heard of Animal Crossing before. Let me explain. Prior to 2015, I’d been hiding out under a retro-game rock for a few decades. Sure, I’d try things here and there, but if it wasn’t 8-bit, I wasn’t sinking a lot of time into it. Fast forward to March 2020 and I’d completely missed all prior iterations of the game. Then something happened on the show floor at PAX. There was a massive and incredibly immersive booth that put you in an Animal Crossing environment. My wife and I peeked at it. Said “neat.” We shrugged and turned to go on our way. But something was clearly happening to nearly everyone else. I’d seen someone get a look at it and almost cry. People were experiencing something magical. But I had no context for it.

We all know what happened a couple weeks later. Our densely packed urban world shut down. We saw the inside of our four walls. My wife saw Animal Crossing in the eShop. She remembered the cozy setup. We remembered the reactions and decided it was worth trying a piece of that too.

Now, Animal Crossing didn’t change tough times into magic, but it did give our entire family little goals while we built, collected, and nurtured together on a cute, cozy island. Would we have tried it without PAX? Hard to say. But I can tell you, while the impressive display moved the needle, the area effect of other congoers’ reactions had the real impact.

Why I can’t stay away

Every year I hear some lament that conventions aren’t what they used to be. A lot of people miss the competing presence of big names fighting for more floor space. I get it. But for me, the value I see year after year is the chance to connect with something that might have remained hidden, or to see a game through another person’s eyes. Connecting with the gaming community and the passionate developers is an incredible experience. It’s a chance to find something of value I would have missed if I’d stayed in my rut. These are the reasons why I keep coming back year after year, and it’s why I always look forward to what I might discover at my next PAX.