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This past weekend, several of the GeekDad contingent traveled to Seattle for PAX Prime 2011, a weekend of videogames, tabletop games, geeky panels, and celebrity sightings. Here's a quick run-down of my weekend, with plenty of visual aids.
I'll tell you right up front that I'm much more of a tabletop gamer (board games, card games, and so on) than a video gamer, so I focused mostly on what's on the periphery at PAX. The video games and PC games get top billing, but that means that the tabletop folks have a little more time to chat, which is great for me. This post will give you my brief impressions of things I saw and played this weekend, with more in-depth reviews to come!
Thursday evening Dave Banks and I met up in the hotel lobby and played a few games to kick off the weekend: Battleship Galaxies, Flash Point: Fire Rescue, and Catacombs. I would have loved to play more, but we both needed to get some sleep in preparation for the weekend.
My first stop on Friday was with Ray Wehrs of Calliope Games. I'd heard about their upcoming game Ugh! from John Kovalic, who did the artwork, so I knew it was something I wanted to check out. Wehrs told me a little bit more about the history of Calliope Games and where they're coming from. They have a cool story and are definitely worth checking out, especially if you're a boardgamer who has kids. So far they've just got four games in their line-up, but they are all kid-friendly and non-gamer-friendly, while still offering something for people who really like games.
Dave Banks and I sat down to try Ugh! and were both impressed. Here's the basic gist: you're collecting sets of three: a caveman, a pet, and a house (the orange, purple, and green cards). Your score for each set is the product of the three numbers, so getting higher numbers can increase your score significantly. However, until you lock in a set, you're in danger of losing it to other players or to various "Ugh" cards that turn up in the deck. It's a press-your-luck game with hilarious drawings by Kovalic and simple enough mechanics that you could teach it to younger kids, even if they can't do the multiplication themselves.
Next up was Tsuro. This has actually been around for a while (I know because I've had it on my "maybe" list), but now it's being distributed by Calliope Games. It's a little bit like Carcassonne with just roads. Each edge has two paths leading to it, and your goal is to play tiles so that you stay on the board the longest. Everyone chooses a starting space on the edge of the board, and then you play a tile to extend your path. You must move along the path until the end — if you're off the board, you're out of the game. It's a gorgeous looking game with very simple rules and a very zen-like feel to it, and you can play up to 8 players. (For the curious, this is one of the two games Curtis Silver beat us at.)
Last on Calliope's list for PAX was Got 'Em!, a game about boxing in your opponents. Players start near the center (on the white dots) and then everyone gets a few cards. On your turn, you play a card, which allows you to place a wall on a specific colored square, and then move from one to three spaces. Some cards let you play a wall on any color square, some allow you to remove walls, and some even allow you to walk through walls. If you get boxed in, you're eliminated. The reverse side of the board doesn't have any colors, and it's a more pure strategy game: play a wall, move a space. It's a pretty simple idea, but Dave and I both enjoyed this one, too.
Keep reading for more!
Ok, I just had to include a photo of this: Mayfair has an official Settlers of Catan table. Hey, I love me some Settlers but perhaps not at the level that I'd have a really nice table just for it. I'm one of those people who wants to try all the games, rather than playing a single game this much. But if you do play a lot of Settlers this is a neat idea: each player gets their own little recessed tray for bits, plus there are areas for all the resource cards and development cards, and an area in the middle that holds the whole board (and can accommodate the original game, the 5-6 player expansion, and the Cities & Knights expansion). On top of that, you can put in a regular tabletop that covers the whole thing for non-Settlers gaming. At around $299 starting price, it's not cheap ... unless you compare it to one of the Geek Chic tables. (See below...)
I stopped by the Halfbrick booth in the expo hall to see their latest offerings: Fruit Ninja for the Kinect and an iPad/iPhone app called Jetpack Joyride. Remember Barry Steakfries from Age of Zombies and Monster Dash? Well, he's back, and he's taking a joyride on what's arguably the most ridiculous, over-the-top weapon from Monster Dash: the machine gun jetpack. Yes, that's right. It's a jetpack that flies by firing a machine gun straight down. I'll admit — the machine gun jetpack was one of my least favorite weapons in Monster Dash because I usually managed to get myself killed with it.
However, this game, which has you flying through a lab collecting coins and avoiding lasers and missiles, is hilarious. I'll have a full review on Thursday when it launches, but for now you can watch the video trailer.
I made sure to visit Flying Frog Productions, creators of Last Night on Earth and Invasion From Outer Space, among others. I've always loved the cinematic feel of their games, which spring from a love of old B-movies, and their latest game is a whopper. Fortune and Glory is a 1930s pulp action-movie adventure with dangerous temples, mysterious artifacts, and plenty of villainous Nazis traveling the world in their zeppelin wreaking havoc.
The first thing you'll notice about Fortune and Glory when you see it at your game store is that the box is enormous. They packed a whole lot into the game, and I'm excited to try it out. I got to play a round or two (as Doctor Zhukov, Master of Science) — I got kidnapped, escaped, slipped past Colonel Stahl, and retrieved the Armor of the Sun. If you've enjoyed the other games from Flying Frog, you'll want to check this one out.
Plants vs. Zombies were in full force at PAX this year. At least the zombies were. Last year I did see some folks dressed up as the plants, but this year we had a lot of crazy zombies walking around PAX, including this group doing a whole dance number outside the convention center.
One of the best things about PAX is the chance to actually play games with the other GeekDads. Since we're spread out all over the country (and the world), it's a rare chance to share some of our favorite games with each other and try out new ones. I brought Catacombs with me and got to play a couple times over the weekend. In this game, our fearless leader Ken Denmead played as the Overseer with all the monsters and bad guys, and I teamed up with the rest of the Denmead clan. It seems that Ken's billiards skills serve him pretty well in Catacombs, too, and he defeated us pretty handily.
By the way, if you read my review of Catacombs and have been waiting for the second printing to arrive, it's finally here! You can check with your local game store or find it online.
Saturday morning I got there a little earlier, and walked around the tabletop gaming area before the expo hall opened. There were some folks that were already set up, including Blackball Games. They were running demos of a very silly dice game called Monkeys With Knives and Guns. It's exactly what it sounds like. Each person gets a number of dice, and when you roll them, you get some monkeys with, well, knives and guns. And bananas. The ultimate goal of the game is to get the most bananas, but the knives and guns help you eliminate the other players' monkeys, reducing the number of bananas they get.
Blackball Games also has a line of Lovecraft-inspired miniatures called Book of Fragments, which are really creepy. I mean, look at that thing. It's so scary the monstrous fish creatures are running from it.
Out in another area I met Dave Weinstock of Mindspan Labs, who was showing his "new ancient game" ZoxSo. He has a line of collectible cards called ChessHeads which works in conjunction with a regular chess set to add a bit of randomness and powers to the game, but ZoxSo was what really caught my attention. It's a very elegant game, with only three types of pieces and simple movement rules. It feels a bit like chess but with fewer rules to remember, and I tried a couple games of it over the weekend. (His webstore is at Chessmate.com but Weinstock said that his games should be available at local game stores as well.)
Yes, this man has an axe in his head. But it's for a good reason: this is David Fooden of Game Company No. 3, and he was at PAX to promote Oh My God! There's an Axe in My Head, a game of international diplomacy. While I didn't get to sit down and actually play the game this weekend (I always overestimated the amount of time I had) I did get an overview of how the game works and it looks really funny. The story is that various countries are meeting in Switzerland, who has brought in their finest axe-juggling troupe to entertain the delegates. However, the jugglers have gone crazy and are now throwing axes at the audience.
Your goal is to get your ambassador, translator, and bodyguard out of the room without getting axed — but at the same time you want to get some international diplomacy done as well. The longer you stay in the room, the more treaties you can make and territories you can grab ... but of course then there are fewer people to hide behind when the axes are flying. The way the treaties work is pretty clever and should make for some really interesting game dynamics.
Currently Fooden is raising money on Kickstarter to publish the game. He's got about 2 weeks left and is really close to the goal, so if this looks intriguing to you head over to his page for more details.
Geek Chic was at PAX last year as well, and their custom gaming tables are absolutely gorgeous. They have removable leaves with an inset acrylic surface (which can be custom designed as well), so that you can play games and then cover everything up and have dinner. Or, if you prefer, your kids can have the fanciest Lego table ever. They're not cheap, of course, so you'll have to save up a lot of pennies to get one.
Of course as you walk around the booths, you'll see a lot of people wearing fancy costumes trying to get you to check out their wares. PAX actually frowns on the idea of "booth babes" — we saw a bunch of women wearing short NO5 dresses getting escorted out of the hall Friday morning — but people dressed up as the video game characters are apparently okay.
But by far the best booth babes of the show were from Good Old Games, a site that lets you play all those old-school PC games you played in high school. Well, at least if you have a PC. Their booth was decorated to look like an old fashioned living room, with drapes and some easy chairs, and they had some nice motherly-looking women at the booth handing out hot chocolate chip cookies. Sweeeeet.
Tucked away on the 6th floor I came across GameChurch.com, some folks who were there to tell gamers that Jesus loves them and handing out copies of Jesus, For The Win! From their banner, it seems apparent that Jesus favors the Xbox. This might come as a surprise for Apple fans.
The only panel-type event I made it to (besides the GeekDad panel, of course) was Acquisitions, Inc. It's really more of a show: Wil Wheaton, Scott Kurtz (of PvP), and Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade get up on stage and play D&D. Really.
Last year most of the other GeekDads went while I stayed out and played board games since I just don't have much D&D experience, but this year I thought I really wanted to see what it was all about. Wizards of the Coast provided us with VIP seating so we got a good view of the action. Paul and Storm, dressed as minstrels, opened the show and inserted various themes at appropriate (and inappropriate) times. Apparently this year there was a lot more flash and glitz: aside from Paul and Storm, they all had costumes, elaborate sets to highlight each character's entrance, and a Geek Chic table with a huge model of the Darkmagic estate.
It was pretty funny watching these four grown men (and DM) play D&D on stage, but I was a little disappointed that the encounter didn't really start until about an hour and half in, and they had to rush through a lot of the actual fighting without making as many jokes then. I skipped out slightly early to get to the expo hall before it closed. Overall, I'm glad I went this year, but it's hard to spend a couple hours on this when I could be playing games myself.
Speaking of playing games myself, after dinner on Saturday we convened back in the convention center, this time with a local friend of mine, Alex, and Chuck Gamble (creator of GeekDad favorite Mixamajig). We played another game of Flash Point: Fire Rescue and managed to rescue our seven victims from the house, though it got a little hairy a couple of times. It seems the bedroom in the back of the house was a pretty dangerous spot to be.
After putting out fires, we had a big food fight. Food Fight is a new card game from Cryptozoic Entertainment, who also have a Penny Arcade deck-builder coming up. The artwork on this is hilarious, and it's all about using these food-based troops to battle for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. It took a little while to figure it out, but once we got going we had a blast. The basic mechanic is a little like War, with the higher number winning, but there are lots of modifiers (condiments, for example) which can give you an advantage in the battle. I'm looking forward to playing this one some more.
Sunday morning was the Geek Parenting panel, with several GeekDads, a GeekMom, and some guests. We'll have some summary posts about the panel later this week for those of you who missed it, including a list of all the various games that were mentioned either during our presentations or during the comments and Q&A with the audience. The last three times we did PAX panels (here and in Boston), we packed the room and had to turn people away, and we always ran out of time. This year for PAX Prime they put us in the big room, with 1,200 seats, and gave us an hour and a half instead of an hour. However, we were also the first thing Sunday morning, and the Pegasus Theater was over in the Sheraton rather than the convention center. I think both of those factors worked against us, because we had a smaller possibility of somebody just walking by and coming in to our panel (or seeing the line for it).
On the other hand, it meant that everyone at our panel wanted to be there, and we took the extra time to take more comments and questions from the audience, which was pretty cool. Each of us introduced a short topic, and then we did Q&A, and then gave a lot of stuff away. Again, we'll have more about the panel from the individuals, but here's the list of topics:
- Dave Banks: Why 3D should die. (In brief: it doesn't work, and it's bad.)
- Cathe Post: Kids' games that are like Mom & Dad's (Pokemon, RPGKids, HeroQuest)
- Rael and Asha Dornfest: Creating geeky family culture, learning through gaming
- Michael Venables: Why kids like to game; education and gaming
- Jonathan Liu: Good alternatives to bad kids' board games
Ken and Curtis walked around the room with microphones so that people could make comments or ask questions, and we had some pretty great audience participation (including one really enthusiastic little kid).
Finally, after making a few more rounds of the expo hall and tabletop gaming to catch a few more people, I camped out in one of the free play rooms with my games for a few more games. First off was The Impossible Machine from Sandstorm and Glowfly. It's a game about making a Rube Goldberg machine, with diagrams of crazy components with plenty of marbles, dominoes, fans, and so on. You try to get as many of your machine parts into the machine as you can, but after a certain point the machine starts up and you try to keep it going as long as possible.
Next we played The Adventurers: The Pyramid of Horus from Fantasy Flight Games. It's a sequel to The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac, a press-your-luck Indiana Jones-style adventure game. I was a big fan of the original, and I have to say that they did a great job with this one, especially because they removed the one element I really didn't like: player elimination. Expect a review of this one soon, but there are a lot of great mechanics and it's a great one for people who like to toe the line between risks and rewards.
My last game before I had to head home was Nuns on the Run from Mayfair. Unfortunately I forgot to get a photo, but it's a sort of reverse Scotland Yard. Rather than many players catching one player, you have one (or two) players trying to catch many. The novice nuns are all sneaking around the convent after hours, trying to fulfill their secret wishes, and the Abbess and Prioress are trying to catch them. It's got some interesting mechanics but we had a few difficulties with it too. I'm hoping to get this back on the table to try it some more.
Finally, I wanted to mention a couple other games that I saw but for whatever reason didn't manage to get photos. Some of these I'll be able to check out later on and you'll see full reviews.
Square Head of Office Experience Chris Gorman "strolls" the halls of the company's San Francisco office from his Tokyo hotel room atop Beam, one of multiple video-chat bots meant to keep remote workers close to the action. Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired
Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative card game set in a comic book universe — you and your teammates each play a hero and battle a villain. The game is by a small company (just three guys) and they had a strong focus on making a game that really encourages teamwork and works for kids. I haven't played it yet, but I'm really excited about it and am looking forward to it. A fun bit of trivia: two of these guys grew up playing games at Tabletop Game and Hobby, Dave Banks' favorite game store in Kansas City (and one that I've patronized several times on trips there).
Pajaggle was back again this year, and again I usually saw their table filled with people playing, trying to beat their best time. Bill Witt told me that they've got a new board coming soon that has some improvements, plus some changes with two new strategy games. More on those later.
Square's open floor plan includes "cabanas" for cozier chats and quiet work sessions. Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired
I got to meet Justin de Witt from Fireside Games, who designed Castle Panic. He was working at the Steve Jackson Games booth and then showing off his own games on the side. Along with the really fantastic Castle Panic, he's got a new, silly dice game called Bears! that is a lot of fun. And he mentioned that there's an expansion for Castle Panic coming soon that introduces some new, more powerful cards for the players, as well as some new, more dangerous monsters.
AEG had their Thunderstone line-up and the Legend of the Five Rings games. Although I haven't played the L5R series at all yet (I'm not much of a CCG player), I was really impressed with the packaging of their Forgotten Legacy set. Yeah, it's expensive and it's probably not something I'm going to buy because it's not my type of game, but if you play L5R and you want to buy this big set, you'll be very happy with it. They also have Ninja, a board game set in the L5R universe that looks more my speed.
