PAX Aus 2018 has kicked off! We had great chats with several developers today who showed us their work. Let’s talk about their games and important release info, etc.
Welcome to PAX Rising
What is PAX Rising? It’s the home of indie at PAX. This year, it’s front and centre in the Exhibition Hall. As you enter from the Queue Hall, you can’t miss it! You might be tempted to walk straight past it and head for all the big names and shiny sines. But, don’t underestimate the fun you’ll find.
We had a chance to talk with a few teams there that you may want to check out yourself ????
Soundfall (
Soundfall is a rhythm dungeon crawler with a procedurally generated environment. It’s on the far right side of PAX Rising as you come in from the Queue Hall.
It’s from the American team Drastic Games made up of Epic alumni. We had a really good chat with Julian from the team who let Dez and I have a preview of a level on Xbox. You can see a quick video we posted on Twitter yesterday:
Check out @f_meliton and @DerekMaggs81 playing @SoundfallGame at PAX Rising! #PAXAus
Keep an eye out for the article later for release info and more 👀 pic.twitter.com/8N0oKaRGLw
— goto.game (@gotogame) October 26, 2018
I came away with a really good first impression of what the team put together. The aesthetics are really bright but not overly cartoony to not be taken seriously. For a game that’s not going to be released until late 2019, gameplay was smooth and not hard to pick up and play.
You’ll find the terminology and lore revolves a lot around anything to do with sound. Obviously, sound and music are the themes. It’s such a big theme that that’s what drives the procedurally generated map. The team has plans to have different genres driving different maps.
I can see a lot of opportunity in a game like this to feature independent artists and their music. Of course, if licencing permitted, it’d be cool to see more popular artists in the game.
It’ll be cool to see how the launch goes next year. I’m most excited to see how the game evolves in the time between now and then.
Party Crashers/Party Poppers
Hello, Australian devs! I was very happy to see Australian teams at PAX Rising. We had a great chat with the Giant Margarita team who were showcasing two games: Party Crashers and Party Poppers.
I will admit, it was surprising to hear that the team were basically creating these games part-time. Because… you know… working full-time isn’t hard enough then you throw on top of that making some awesome games. But also, go Tassie!
What impressed me the most about Party Crashers is that it isn’t just any old arcade racing game where you Mario Kart your way through your opponents to win. It’s got 800 customisation options for gameplay, game mode, power-ups and so on. It would make for an excellent party game where you continually change the rules to keep the game fun.
We also had a quick look at Party Poppers where you play as a dinosaur (I’d argue catface dinosaur) that tries to pop as many balloons as possible to win the game. Like Party Crashers, this game also features multitudes of customisation. Keep throwing off you and your friends by changing the rules!
Party Crashers is available on Xbox, PlayStation and Steam. For now we haven’t been able to find whether Party Poppers is on sale but we’ll update this article once we get more info ????
You’ll find Party Crashers and Party Poppers in the middle of PAX Rising ????
Check out Dez winning a round of Party Poppers! ⤵
Thanks for the chat @GiantMargarita! #PartyCrashers and #PartyPoppers was heaps of fun ✌🏼 #PAXAus pic.twitter.com/nbwalg63D5
— goto.game (@gotogame) October 26, 2018
Lethal Lawns
In short, this is the most fun game I’ve played so far this weekend that has only 1 control mechanism. You don’t need those trigger buttons or A or B or X or O. All you need is a thumbstick and you’re good to go!
The best way to summarise what Lethal Lawns is all about is competitive “mowing bloodsport”, or so their sign says at the booth.
Supposedly, according to the team when we spoke to them, the game has the most interesting origin story. (And yes, this is important to gameplay, hear me out). The game started less than 12 months ago based off of mowing ruminations. The team thought, basically, that it’d take forever to mow a lawn if you only had one person. Let’s say you hire one person to mow the lawn and that’s alright… but it’d go a lot faster if you hired 4 people.
So, thoughts about hiring lawn mowing people to fun party game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The game starts with 4 players in each corner and the goal is to win as much coin as possible. You can get coin from mowing the lawns on the screen or you can get the other players with your lawnmower (which is obviously more fun). The art style is super cartoony and cute. The animations and slow-mo death shots are hilarious and it’s hard not to get competitive.
We had a play of #LethalLawns by @DimeStudios and had a blast! Good to see Australian games on the #PAXAus main floor 👍🏼👍🏼 pic.twitter.com/5tFQIXLKzI
— goto.game (@gotogame) October 26, 2018
Oh and most importantly if you’re around the booth on Sunday, you have a chance to win the Inaugural Golden Lawnmower! Get in on it!
Win the Inaugural Golden Lawnmower at the #LethalLawns stand at PAX Rising this Sunday! #PAXAus pic.twitter.com/C2u2VGsWzE
— goto.game (@gotogame) October 26, 2018
Learn more about PAX Rising here. Also, keep an eye out for more articles from us! We’ll be doing a separate article on Reign Absolute later today which is a card game we checked out from Friday too.
