Between the plane trips and the thousands of people at PAX, Pixelsocks managed to pick up something nasty. Once he’s feeling better, we’ll have information on what he learned while he was there. We’ve got interviews with all the PAX 10 as well as information on other games released at the conference.

The Penny Arcade Expo is right around the corner, and if history is any guide that means it’s time for this site to start giving shout outs to the PAX 10. So for the next week, your regular posting schedule will be filled with some of the most innovative gaming of 2008 and 2009. We present to you the conclusion of our PAX 10 introductions.

Sushi Bar Samurai is a unique entry among the innovative games in the PAX 10. There is no platforming, no physics, and no combat. Instead there’s a chef (you), his trusty stock of sushi ingredients, and a pile of spirits who are owed a last meal.

Sushi isn’t made a la Cooking Mama. Instead, the eponymous bar of sushi ingredients scrolls across the top of the screen, and you simply click to queue your stock to make combinations that will result in palatable sushi. The game is perhaps a distant relative of Tetris, but because you can see the ingredients in advance, the emphasis shifts from tactical to strategic. In a nutshell, Sushi Bar Samurai is about mastering the arcane intricacies of sushi, and using them to plan an optimal path through a stream of ingredients.

We make a great deal of fuss about accessibility around here, and transparency is a part of that. You might predict that we’d be critical of a game that revolves around secret codes written in meat and rice, but hit the jump to discover sole developer Casey Muratori’s intriguing counterpoints about transparency’s place in puzzle games. We also chat about the language of sushi and reasons to make a game aside from cash. There’s not presently a public demo, but stop by his website to read more about his development philosophy and check out some media.

Strange Attractors 2 is a top-down game about navigating an avatar from place to place using attraction and repulsion mechanics. It wasn’t the only game in the PAX 10 to use the environment to pull and push the player around, but it was the only one to use gravity to model those forces. So instead of using specially designated objects, everything in the environment pulls and pushes everything else. Controlling the game is like controlling the gravitational constant. It defaults to 0, but you can turn it up high, or flip it into negative numbers using the two mouse buttons.

We talked to Christoper McGarry of Ominous Development about how Strange Attractors 2 grew out of the first game, their distribution model, and the charmingly tortured cries of the game’s enemies. Hit the jump for all that and then check out the demo.

Longtime readers may recall a post bemoaning that cooperative multiplayer is hard to come by and harder to do right. Schizoid disagrees. It’s a top-down two-player game where each player controls either a red or a blue avatar. Enemies are color-coded too, and colliding with like-colored baddies destroys them while other colors destroy you instead. You arguably could control both avatars (and there’s a game mode called Überschizoid that lets you try just that: one analog stick per avatar), but it’s not recommended unless your corpus callosum has been severed.

Schizoid is presently available on XBox Live, though the XBLA strictures on demos don’t allow multiplayer. Still, you can fake it by grabbing a significant other and snuggling together to share one controller on Überschizoid, so give it a shot anyway.

We talked to Schizoid’s Richard Garfield about the game’s roots, cooperative gaming in general, and digital distribution. Hit the jump for the details.

If you’re a MMORPG player, have ever known a MMORPG player, or just known anyone who just might spend a little bit too much time playing video games, then The Guild is for you. The award-winning show consists of ten brief webisodes, and chronicles the trials of a MMORPG guild that decides to meet in person to defeat a real life problem. Wackiness ensues.

While Project Aftermath might appear at a glance to be a typical Real Time Strategy game, it’s not. Get your hands on it and you’ll realize it isn’t just about winning and losing—it’s about points. The idea sounds weird, but it’s really a self-correcting difficulty selector that makes room in the genre for neophytes and experts a like. Starting armaments cost points, and good performance earns them. There’s no cap on the special abilities that units can use, but they cost you a bit of score with each use. Neophytes can play armed to the teeth (and in deep point debt), actually winning games and having fun, while experts who win with little more than sticks and harsh language score big on the leaderboards.

Lee Hickey stopped by from England and told us all about this and other ways that Project Aftermath makes the RTS genre more accessible. Read on for that, Lee’s thoughts on explosions and their importance to design, and what you can do to bring skilled players and new players together without a one-sided bloodbath. Check out the demo too.

PAX is big. PAX is really big. Big Download is reporting that the final total for PAX 2008 attendees was 58,500. Given PAX 2007 attendance was 37,000, and this year’s projected estimate was between 45,000 and 50,000, that’s a lot of nerds. Our one-man content provider turned to his trusty web monkey, let her loose with a camera and (when needed) an audio recorder to help generate content. Our reporting staff now doubled, we felt empowered to cover a bit more of PAX than one person could have covered alone. A tiny bit more.

Independent developers have a hard lot. They can be under-funded, minimally marketed, and outright missed in the endlessly chattering internet. However, their sometimes-low profile frees indie devs to do some of the most creative gaming work available today.

This PAX, ten of them were recognized for their innovation, dedication, and development excellence. Pixelsocks.com was lucky to have a chance to chat with team members from each of the PAX 10. Check back daily for each interview.

• The Amazing Brain Train with Ryan Clark
• Audiosurf with Dylan Fitterer
• Chronotron with Joe Rheaume
• Impulse with Andrew Williams and Andy Ray
• The Maw with Mike Henry
• Project Aftermath with Lee Hickey
• Polarity with Daniel Bryner, Howard Braham, and Przemyslaw-Iwanowski
• Schizoid with Richard Garfield
• Strange Attractors 2 with Christopher McGarry
• Sushi Bar Samurai with Casey Muratori

A rogue alliance of guerilla confectioners known as the cookie brigade dispensed baked goods at PAX in exchange for donations to Child’s Play. When the flour settled, the group earned well over $5000 from the generous expo-goers at PAX. The Child’s Play charity donates gaming resources to hospitals that benefit the children there.
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