indie-showcase-mapIf you are interested in mobile gaming, then the PAX East Indie Showcase (located at booth #5212) is an ideal place to start.

Every year PAX solicits game submissions from independent developers around the world for this limited showcase, selecting six lucky winners to feature during the show. Like last year, this year’s entire crop of games are either already available on iOS platforms or are scheduled to appear on iOS platforms once they are officially released.

A number of the games are readily available right now for download, while the others are still in various stages of completeness, but should have some sort of demo and/or playable build at the show.

Available Now

light-in-the-dark_857454465_ipad_03In the released category, we start with fourth-time returning developer Kumobius and their excellent (and I believe Apple-featured) platforming sequel Bean Dreams. Then there is a cool looking color-blending puzzle game called Light in the Dark and aSci-Fi real-time strategy game called Starlink TS, where you start with a single star and attempt to “spread your empire across the galaxy”.

Finally, currently available only in soft launch on the Canadian App Store is Which Comes First?, a casual family game where you try to place elements in chronological order. I can be played multiplayer against an opponent or single-player through an Adventure mode.


Upcoming Games

tumblestone

I first got a glimpse of puzzler Tumblestone at last year’s Indie MINIBOOTH and it is a rather fun and instense multiplayer puzzle game (with match-3 elements). It’s great to see that it’ll be back again this year and featured in the showcase.

Feed My Alien is a tile swapping, matching puzzle game which tasks players with helping to rescue a cute little (and very hungry) alien named Munchee. Swap-match food-themed pieces on a hexagonal “within a set number of moves to make paths between two fixed hexes on the board to feed Munchee”. There are move- and time-based levels as well as boss battles.

I plan to take a closer look at these while at the show (especially the unreleased ones), but in the meantime, for more information on each of these games, you can visit the official Indie Showcase page, or stop by booth #5212 yourself while at the show.

Want more iOS gaming?

The Indie Showcase is located right near the Indie MEGABOOTH, plus it is next to the tinyBuild booth, where they will be showing off several iOS titles and the Greater Than Games booth is next door if you want to check out either the tabletop or fantastic digital versions of Sentinels of the Multiverse.