TL;DR – We dip our toes into what Melbourne has to offer a little more with round 2.
Disclosure – I paid for all products featured or mentioned here.
PAX Australia & Melbourne 2023 Day 4 –
It is day 4 of our trip to Melbourne and the last day of PAX, and of course, this was the day that Melbourne decided to turn on the charm with a delightful morning.
After skipping the show floor yesterday, today was the day to play all the games on show. So much of the show floor was about showing off local games, and my first stop was the Kiwi section.
I am always a sucker for Mars, so I was all on board with Red Echo where you play the first child born on the planet and are getting bulled to both sides of a civil war. Also, mutated insects are everywhere.
Our next game had us taking on the role of an eagle in Toroa. Playing an eagle soaring through the clouds was a delight, and the visuals pulled you along as you swooped through the sky. I also liked incorporating Māori worldviews into the proceedings.
Then I came across Beyond These Stars, which asked the question: Do you want to play a civilization that lives on the back of a giant turtle as it flies through the galaxy? And my answer is yes, yes, please, yes, please and now. One of the best things about conferences like this, is the ability to talk to the developers, and it was a joy to hear them talk about their love of games.
Leaving New Zealand for Australia, we dived through the rest of the show floor. The thing I love about conferences like this is that you get to discover games you would never have experienced before. In Ascending Inferno, you please someone who has gone down into the layers of hell to recuse your brother’s soul and then must boot it up football style through all the different layers. Watching people get frustrated about their ball/brother falling back three levels was a delight, and it was a joy when you saw someone master the ball kick to the new layer.
Then, have you ever wanted to work in a servo in space? Well, now you can. Now, to be fair, I need to disclose that I know some people who helped make Servonauts. But also, to be even fairer, I was absolutely rubbish at it and got destroyed by these kids I was playing with. It was teamwork chaos, and that was a blast.
The next most significant section of PAX is the tabletop area, and all weekend, there were hundreds of rounds and hundreds of different games happening all at once. Competitive and Cooperative games sit side by side.
I found a bunch of friends, and we had a go at this tactile Buffet Boss, and I had so much fun with it that I bought it when I saw it at the store later.
PAX is almost ending, but there was time for one last panel, and yes, I may have picked for the pun in the title. However, Meena Shamaly and Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe were a riot, and I had a blast from start to finish. It might be my favourite panel from the conference.
After PAX comes to an end, it is time for parties to start, and is discretion says that I won’t show any footage from that, and it is discretion only and not because of late-night singing to Linkin Park might be slightly embarrassing. But Melbourne did put on quite a show early in the morning.
By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.
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Credits – All images are by the author
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