PAX Prime 2015 – Day 2 in Review
Today’s been yet another fast-paced and frantic day at PAX Prime and there’s still a lot more to do, so let me jump right in!
My first step of a very busy day was to check out the Oculus-utilizing mystery game P.O.L.L.E.N.. I’m very interested in the story this game, which revolves around exploring an abandoned space station in hopes of discovery why its crew has mysteriously vanished. Our demo was less story based and more around how the Oculus is used in the game, but I’ll admit that everything the game showed off was both a selling point for the game and the Oculus.
It’s been a year since I’ve played anything on an Oculus system and once again, I’m happy to see how far development and the hardware has come. This was the first game I’ve played on the Oculus that had depth-tracking, which meant that it was simple to simply lean forward to investigate and item or read a sign.
P.O.L.L.E.N. is set on a spaceship designed by what the 1970s thought space travel would be like, using things like microfilm instead of touch screens and displaying a color pallet of gaudy oranges and blues mixed in with austere whites. I loved the atmosphere, which was only furthered by occasionally turning a corner to see an abandoned space suit and pair of boots laying forebodingly on the floor. I’m excited to see more of this game’s story, which I think will make it stand out from other games utilizing the Oculus.
P.O.L.L.E.N. was also the only Oculus game I’ve played so far that included the ability to jump, including jumping off a railing and to my doom. I experienced no nausea tackling either the stairs to the second story or the jump itself, but it was an awesome feeling to experiencing falling WHILE STILL SITTING DOWN.
I’m going to keep an eye on P.O.L.L.E.N. because I’m still really looking forward to when VR games are focused not on the novelty of being VR but instead on being good games that utilize the technology.
This might be my favorite game of PAX Prime so far. It’s not a new concept and it’s not a complicated concept but it’s done so well in Just Shapes and Beats that I just utterly fell in love.
In Just Shapes and Beats, you are a shape and the beats are trying to kill you. It’s side-view bullet hell-esque game with patterns and enemies based off of the beats of songs. There’s 4 artists associated with the project so far; all three rounds I played were based off of Danimal Cannon songs – which worked beautifully with the concept.
As a Touhou player I have high expectations from danmaku games and Just Shapes and Beats met that. Big moves such as beams that take up three quarters of the screen are telegraphed VERY shortly before the move is fired, which leads to frantic, fast paced dashing around the screen while occasionally darting over to heal an ally that’s taken too much damage. It’s a great party game – vibrant and frantic. The creator (with Berzerk Studio) told me he finds success depending on the number of WHAT THE HELLs are yelled during a level, which I certainly both heard and yelled a lot when playing.
The other thing that really caught me off guard with Just Shapes and Beats was how the content is not procedurally generated as it is in other rhythm games like Audiosurf and Beat Hazard (which Just Shapes and Beats reminds me of). Each level is hand-crafted and done so beautifully, leading up to a boss fight that was so fun that every bullet hell game should aspire to its heights.
Design an RPG in 3600 Seconds
I try to always hit one tabletop RPG-focused panel a year and this year’s panel was easy to pick. The creators of some of my favorite RPGs – Dungeon World, Lasers and Feelings and Burning Wheel – working with a crowd of roughly 200 people to design a pen and paper RPG in one hour.
From the start we were behind (180 seconds to be precise) but the panel wasn’t really so much about ending up with a game, but instead what the fundamentals of good game design are. The first half of the panel was about boiling down the building blocks of a game:
- Setting
- Roles
- Currency
- Uncertainty
- Conversation
And discussing what those really mean. The second half was crowdsourcing ideas based on these fundamentals, which was both hilariously fun and incredibly informative of the diverse viewpoints of gamers.
Eventually we wound up with a game about (among many other things) exemplar knights from across the knightly ages brought to a biomechanical space ship to reclaim planets taken by four-armed aliens. There was a surprising amount of nuance to this idea. Also, a few incredibly interesting mechanical pitches such as your HP and your dice are the same, rolling dice means discarding dice to represent the rigors of battle and how these knights-out-of-time are slowly breaking down. I want to see multiple people from the crowd make this game because as Luke Crane said “you’ll all make a completely different game.”
This was just some of my PAX Day 2 – today also included a game that deserves its own feature, We Are Chicago and Megan’s (fantastic) panel. It’s been a great day that once again flew by and I can’t wait for what tomorrow’s PAX Prime Day 3 brings.
