PAX PRIME 2014: The Best of the Indie Mega Booth

ndie Mega Booth is quickly becoming the premier attraction at PAX, vastly growing bigger in size with each passing event, and there’s a good reason for that—the games showcased are easily the best of the show.

What’s slowly becoming a growing tradition with us, we set a course to plot as much Mega Booth territory that we possibly could, charting new games to play, and getting intimate with familiar software from the previous shows. We’re here to pour our guts out over the games that have left us the most smitten—including our choice for the Golden Zonkie of the show!

So strap in, and get set, here’s our tour of all the new must-see games at the booth this year!

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PAX PRIME 2014: Galak-Z: The Dimensional - Interview with Jake Kazdal

o far, I really dig Galak-Z: The Dimensional. Between its procedurally generated everything and its slick visual styling, this awesome new shooting game is one to look forward to, not just for STG enthusiasts but gamers in general.

There is quite a bit of nifty technological wizardry that has been infused into Galak-Z's retro-anime, physics-based gameplay, but how did it come to be in the first place? What were the challenges of making such a game? What is the creator's favorite retro system?

All of this and more was answered as I caught up with 17-Bit founder Jake Kazdal for some good old-fashioned post-hands-on Q&A on one of this years most intriguing shooting games.

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QCF: Micromon

hen you think of household names in video games today, what are some of the games that immediately come to mind? Just to name a few universally recognized ones, there’s Call of Duty, Super Mario, and even what most moms across the world have affectionately referred to as “that weird Mine game with crafting.” However, there’s still one going strong; Pokémon, and while many of its contemporaries have challenged and it failed—one indie studio went a different way, and flattered the hell out of it in their game, and on a format that Nintendo openly displayed cold feet towards venturing in no less.

Micromon from Moga Studios blurs the line between love letter and thievery, but it fills it satisfies a very specific appetite of that monster-raising/battle adventure that mobile gamers have hungered for, and to its credit, Micromon actually does it quite well.

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QCF: Super Comboman

ost platformers seem to follow a basic structure when it comes to simple implementations like control and level flow. Sometimes as an audience however, we are treated to subversions in the stereotypical platforming mechanics, and Super Comboman would be one of those unique times. 

A successful Kickstarter project from 2012, Super Comboman is a game that aims to mix beat 'em up combat with a distinct platforming feel. As you can tell from the outside, these are two extremely different ideals to marry—Ideals that unfortunately however may just be let down by the rest of its parts. 

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QCF: Armillo

hake your head all you want but the fact just simply remains that even after the introduction of Wiiware and eShop; the realm of indie games is still strange territory for Nintendo to cross—at least it seems like it with the way they’re going about it.

Thankfully, the big N is still trying to improve their approach towards their relationship in indie game distribution, and one of the products that’s especially benefited from their efforts in this campaign of exposure is an indie game about a space armadillo—a friggin’ sweet space armadillo.

Fuzzy Wuzzy Game’s Armillo channels the light-hearted spirit of character driven games of the 32-bit era, and humbly creates an adorably minimalistic atmosphere of challenge and colors that will universally appeal to the simple instincts and drive of platforming in a surprisingly intriguing way.

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Life Through The Pixel Glass-07/16/2014

s I write this, I’m sipping on the cool refreshing double fisted cocktail of Gatorade’s Lime ‘n Cucumber swigged with a Rockstar Zero Carb Energy Drink; it’s a concoction that’s quite literally not for the faint of heart.

I’m staring at the screen, going over appointments for PAX Prime, reviews, and other stuff; it’s starting to sink in that we’re in a really slow period in video games right now—I honestly love these sort of periods too. We all work hard, play hard, and live hard; it’s hard to stay on top of something that eats away at our precious time and money. Don’t get me wrong, it may sound like I’m complaining but I’m only trying to illustrate that we can all use a break from playing games—let’s just idealize in other ways like cool art and shit.

Yup, you know where this is going, welcome to another edition of Life Through The Pixel Glass; I missed it, and I hope you all did too, let’s get this rolling.

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QCF: Life Goes On

ired of survival horror, first person shooters, and basically every other video game forcing you to stay alive in order to play? Life Goes On takes the conventional gaming strategy of trying to survive as long as possible and turns it around - to beat the levels, you have to kill your character several times, and use their corpses as stepping stones to get to the prize. Morbid? Yes. A metaphor for capitalist society—possibly…but aside from being an interactive existential social commentary on our pointless lives, it can also refreshing and fun.

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Bullet Heaven HD, Episode 104 - Crimzon Clover: World Ignition

After years of requests for a Crimzon Clover review, it's finally time! Does Crimzon Clover deserve the "God-Tier" status it has garnered? It's time to stack up the newly steam-released Crimzon Clover: World Ignition to find out!

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