Our PAX West 2023 coverage doesn’t stop. Check out the latest batch of games we got to see at the show!
Mars After Midnight
The latest and greatest from Lucas Pope, creator of Papers Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, and this time he’s making a game for the new Playdate device. Mars After Midnight is very reminiscent of Papers Please, as you play as the operator of a community support center on Mars. Each night your center has a specific topic it invites people for and it’s your job to let in the right person. You’re given instructions on what type of martians are allowed in, like they can only have three eyes and never smile, and each alien that comes in also takes a piece of food at the table to eat which you need to clean after they make their mess. Being on the Playdate, you’ll use the crank on the device to do various functions like opening/closing the peephole on the door, or moving a vacuum back and forth to clean food off the table. At the end of the night you’ll collect your credits depending on how well you did and you’ll then prepare for the next night, like choosing which district you’ll go to or what food item you’ll serve. It’s a cute, bite-sized version of Papers Please that made the idea of getting a Playdate a bit more enticing if it’s going to have games like this on it. Considering the Playdate is set to release later this year, it’s probably safe to say you can expect Mars After Midnight to release around that date or perhaps later.
Demonschool
So imagine Persona, but if it were more outright demonic but also funnier: that’s Demonschool. A tactics RPG, Demonschool puts you in the role of Faye, a university student just trying to make it through the semester while on a mysterious island that flips between the human and demon world. I only got a brief glimpse at the non-combat side of Demonschool, but the characters were immediately endearing and full of charm. It’s not often that you can say a game is funny, but Demonschool’s cast definitely has a sense of humor about their situation and themselves. You’ll be able to plan your school schedule and hang out with your friends, building up their skills, when not venturing into hellish dungeons. If you’ve played any tactics game before, Demonschool’s system should be immediately familiar: you move your characters on a grid, making sure to mind the AP system that fuels the amount of actions you can take, and when you’re happy with your decision you hit the “execute” button and watch it all play out. The whole thing is a visual treat as characters uppercut demons who die in these wonderful fountains of blood. After a few demonic goons I got to face off with an enormous skeleton that took up half the arena, and I’d have to mind the spaces where it’d slam its massive fist down. My crew definitely didn’t make it, but it was still a blast to play. There’s no release date for it currently, with a tentative “TBA 2023” on their site, but it’s available to wishlist now.
Blackout Protocol
My favorite kind of co-op games are the kind where unintentional hijinks can occur. There’s just something about popping your head into a corridor to light up with your flamethrower and forgetting your buddies might have also been in there. Your friends being just as much of a risk at ending a run as the monsters themselves just adds a fun edge to a co-op game to me and I got that fun with Blackout Protocol. A rogue-lite top-down shooter, Blackout Protocol has you and a group of friends fighting your way through a secretive research lab that’s currently being overrun by monstrous experiments.
You’ll start each run by selecting your agent, each with their own abilities, like Scalpel who can lunge at enemies with a powerful hit that steals their health or Red who can increase their reload speed and fire rate. I opted for Boy Scout who can do an AOE psychic blast that pushes enemies away which was incredibly useful in some tight encounters. After selecting our preferred firearm, my group was then let into the facility where hordes of fairly upset monsters were waiting for us. What proceeded was a pretty tense series of fights that had my group constantly on the cusp of defeat as we slowly understood the mechanics. Between fights we’d find blueprints to unlock new guns, or credits we could use in saferooms to purchase permanent upgrades. The whole thing was a lot of fun, and I can definitely see my group of friends diving into this together. Blackout Protocol is currently in Early Access on Steam.
Fight Crab 2
The best crustacean physics-based fighting game is back with a few new tricks up its sleeve. Fight Crab was easily one of the funniest games to put on with friends and Fight Crab 2 doesn’t seem interested in straying away from what made the first game work: instead it’s adding elements so that there’s a bit more meat on its bones compared to its somewhat bare predecessor. The first immediate change is the inclusion of a proper career mode where you’ll pick and raise a crab through various exhibition matches and watch that little sucker get stronger with every fight. You can continue holding onto that crab, or pass down its skills to a fresh new crab. As in the previous game, expect a lot of silly fights in Fight Crab 2 as one match had me facing off against some lobsters driving tractors. The other major change to the game is the inclusion of human riders for the crab. You can use your newfound friend to scurry the battlefield to toss you weapons, fend off smaller crabs, or even mount your teammate’s crab in case your current one goes down. It’s all incredibly absurd in practice and had me grinning the entire demo. You’ll be able to get your claws on Fight Crab 2 when it launches in early access later this year.
