Pax West 2023 Day 3 Awards

What's up and welcome to the single player experience. The only show that's better than Good Burger Secret Sauce. As always, I'm your host Sebastian Mauldin, the Sultan of single player games, the Prince of Podcasts, and the Notorious 90s Kid. Lately, for the last couple of episodes, I've been giving my Dame one. And day two, best of PAX West 2023 games, and I've been giving out some awards like the most unique game of the day awards and the MVP of the day award. During the event, I was fortunate enough to play a whole lot of triple a games like Tekken 8

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Prince of Persia,

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Persona 5 Tactica,

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Super Mario Brothers Wonder.

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And, Grand Blue Fantasy Relink.

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I also dove into a wide gambit of indie games. In this episode, I'm going to do the exact same thing with my day three top games and give out my day three MVP award. This will be the last episode of our PAX West 2023 wrap up mini series. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. But before we do, don't forget to like, and subscribe and show some love to this podcast, because it really helps the podcast grow anyways, let's get to it. So, the first award of the day is my most unique game award. This is pretty self explanatory, it's going to the most unique game that I saw during day one of PAX West. So, the winner of this award has to go to one of the most unique games that I've ever seen in my entire life, and that's Chicken Police Into the Hive. Let's start off with the Day 3 Most Unique Game Award. So, every once in a while I come across a game that I look at sideways due to its concept being, well, out there. This was my initial reaction when I heard about Sky the Scraper. Then I heard the magic words that always seemed to make me interested in a game. Sky the Scraper is a roguelike game. That genre continues to be my kryptonite or the dessert that I just can't seem to resist. Here is their description of this game. This is a building cleaning roguelike action game about a young man named Sky who chases an uncertain dream as a building cleaner. Conquer thrilling randomly changing high rise Upgrade your skills and gear with your money and wheel and find your path within a two month limit. Here's my impressions about the game. Right off the bat, I'll admit, I didn't do well in the demo. The PR rep, as a matter of fact, often laughed at me as I continuously fell off the building. I'd rest my character up a bit, do one of the many side quests that the game has to offer, and then I'd gear up once again to try to clean off another skyscraper. It didn't take long for me to once again fail very quickly in that endeavor. The dangerous part was that in that little time that I played the game, the loop was enough to get his hooks into me. Like many roguelike games that I adore, Sky the Scraper got me hooked and wanting absolutely more and more of this game. The game drops in 2024 and best believe, you damn sure best believe, I'll be playing it. Not only because it was entertaining, but to earn my redemption because I embarrassed myself in front of everyone while playing this game. Next up, I want to talk about Demon School. Demon School is a 2D based RPG that felt like a fusion of Yu Yu Hakusho and Persona, which speaks to that 90s kid in me on every single level. The 2D art style had a splash of color and the game's dialogue felt very modern. The tactics were fun and challenging without being super overwhelming. I love that you can plot and preview your whole team's move for a turn and see how the strategy would work out, HP wise, without having to learn that in retrospect afterwards. Demon If you don't like the preview of the strategy, then you can basically go back out and try another strategy out. This is a smaller RPG to really keep your eyes on. Next, I want to pivot to a different game. So morphing into your opponents is a concept that years ago I thought would be a major trend in video games. Turns out I was wrong, but the French studio Yummy Games is out to show why this is a cool feature in their upcoming game, Project Tower. This is a sci fi game that not only intrigued me with its morphing concept, but with its visuals. It's running in Unreal Engine 5 and it's another great example of how indie studios are using Unreal to redefine the landscape of 3D modern indies. Here's their description of the game. Project Tower is a third person shooter set in a science fiction world. You play as a prisoner trapped in a tower. The only way to regain your freedom is by reaching its summit. To do that, you're gonna have to unlock new weapons, new abilities, and fight those who lock you in here. Metamorphosize yourself to better surprise your enemies. You use this unique mechanic to get out of all sorts of different situations. Are you ready to take up this challenge? So that is their description, and here's my impression of Project Tower. Project Tower was a delightfully fun game that impressed me in many ways. I like the become the aliens you face concept. It has the gameplay that kind of reminds me of Returnal, but the environment that kind of reminds me of Aliens. The Yummy Games team said that they still have some work to do, and didn't really provide a release date. But, whenever they decide to bless us with Project Tower, you can be sure that I'll be playing this game, day one of its release. The next game that I want to talk about is a first person shooter with a roguelike twist. This is a game that I couldn't believe someone else hasn't done before, because it's such a cool concept. The game is called Scopia, which is named after the city. Fun fact, this city is also the capital of the Republic of Macedonia. So, here's their description of this game. Dive into Scopia, a comic book style first person shooter with roguelike elements and an open world gameplay. Explore a city thrust in disarray by unknown events and survive the horde of mutated abominations that lurk at every corner. Here's my impression of the game. Scopia is a game that I don't know how to pronounce, well, I really didn't until I googled it, but I do know that it has the potential to be something absolutely special. Playing the demo gave me vibes of playing Call of Duty Zombies from back in the day. It's comic book art style gives the game a Borderlands aesthetic, but it has a tight gameplay of Call of Duty. I love I love roguelike games, and this one has a different feel to it than the ones I've played lately. I didn't get a date window, but I'll be playing the hell out of it when it drops by preventing us from getting another one of these gems. Out to bring balance back into the world by giving us a podracing game is Ginyan Now, this next game that I want to tell you about has a little bit of a story to it. So, I was walking, kind of in the back of the convention center, just minding my black ass business, and, I looked to the right, and I saw a game that legitimately stunned me. And, the reason it stunned me is because I haven't seen a game like this in a very, very long time. And, the reason why I say that is because it's been many moons, many moons, since we saw a pod racing video game. It seems like the dark side of the video game industry has been strong by preventing us from getting one of these gems. So, out to bring balance back into the world, and back to the force, is a studio called Ganyan Games with their upcoming game Ascent Rivals, which is essentially a pod racing video game. That's amazing, right? So, Ginyan Games is a studio based out of Seattle, Washington, and they are a passionate team who showcase some dope games at PAX West. One of them was Ascent Rivals. This is a pod like racing experience that's fast paced with some speed running elements and an emphasis on utilizing your turbo boost at the right time. The controls are very different than Star Wars Episode I Racer, which is appropriate since this team is out to put their own spin on the concept. While the game is still a bit early in development, it demoed so well, both in its controls and in its visuals. I've been waiting, absolutely salivating, for a modern day pod racing game for years at this point, and I lost all hope that we'd ever get one. Thanks to Ascent Rivals, that hope is coming back in full force. Now, let's cap it off with the MVP award for Day 3. So, over the years, one of my most played games has been Fight Night Champions. It's partially because it's a good game, and it's also because I genuinely love the sport of boxing. So when I heard that there was going to be a boxing game that was going to be at PAX West, I was excited to see what they were going to bring to the table. Big Boy Boxing did enough to not only impress, but earn the Day 3 MVP award. Here is their description of the game. Experience the single player action boss rush game with Pixel perfect retro aesthetics and inspiration from classic titles like Punch Out and the recent indie hits like Cuphead. Starting off as a typical underdog story, you encounter, challenge and befriend different characters, all with their own unique personalities and backstories. Reading your opponents is key to getting the upper hand in the boxing ring. Now I'm gonna be real with you. I was insanely impressed with this game and the description's pretty on point there. Big Boy Boxing feels like Punch Out's gameplay meets Cuphead's art style. The bosses are varied enough that each level feels unique and presents its own challenges. I can see myself playing this game on any platform, even the Switch, and I know, I know y'all know that I've been avoiding playing my Switch these days. I can't wait for the game to come out, and it's firmly on my most anticipated game list. So, overall, my day three of PAX was filled with a lot of variety. There was a podracing game, a boxing game, a game where I got to turn into an alien, a roguelike window cleaning game. There was all sorts of things that I played that I didn't even mention here, and I was blown away by each game in a different way. PAX West 2023 Day 3 Awards was tough because there are so many, and I'm talking about so many great games that I got to play and experience. It also made me want to add more categories because I really wanted to give them all awards. They're all deserving. There is legitimately a bit of something for everyone here. So if any of these games tickle your fancy, go ahead and wishlist them. Like, go support these devs. They're working extra hard to bring out some solid content for y'all. So that's a wrap for my PAX West 2023 Day 3 Awards. It's also a wrap for my PAX West coverage for this year. Stay tuned. We'll probably do this again when PAX East comes around next year. But anyways, thank you so much for listening to my coverage and my impressions on all these games. If you have any questions, hit me up in the single player experience discord server. It was honestly a good time. If you've ever been on the fence, or if you ever wanted to experience something like E3, you should definitely go check out PAX. It's a really good time. And I know the. A lot of people think like, oh, PAX is only just the indie convention, but that's not really true because a lot of AAA games showed up, you know, showed up and showed out in a very big way. So PAX is kind of becoming like the E3, or PAX, East End PAX was just sort of becoming like, E3 part 1 and E3 part 2 nowadays. But anyways, if you've ever been on the fence, go check those out. So before I go, I want to tell you about a free video game code giveaway that I'm doing and to win this free game, all you have to do is basically review this episode and then screenshot your review. And send me a picture of it on discord to do such. All you have to do is click that discord link in the description of this episode and say, what's up, man? I gave you a nice review and you'll be eligible to win this code. I'm going to be doing a lot more giveaways like this in the future. So stay tuned and good luck, everyone, in the giveaway. So that's a wrap for today's show. I wanna let you know about the single player experience Discord server. It's the perfect place for single player gamers to talk about the good single player games they've been playing lately, and to get video game recommendations. Think of it kind of like a book club for single player gamers. The link to join will be in the description. Once you're in, feel free to share your video game backlog list. Talk about the good games you've been playing, or give your feedback on the show if you have a game that you think should be recommended or that you think I should talk about. Let me know in the single Player Experience Discord server. I'll see you there. Before we go, I just want to thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Stay safe, stay gamming, and I hope to catch you in the next one. Peace.