PAX East 2020: The Recap, The Review

We met PAX East 2020 with fun, flair, and one funky little alien dude.

After announcing Alien Hominid Invasion at the end of January, PAX was the first opportunity for players to get their hands on a demo of the game! For all of our homebodies and friends that couldn’t make it to the show, we also revealed a first look at gameplay which you can watch here.

In the midst of all that jazz, there was of course much more going on: we debuted new merch, had games and competitions, and oh… did we mention that when Alien Hominid Invasion was playable, it was playable on custom-build arcade cabs?

Even if you missed the IRL sensations, you can see it all in our PAX East 2020 Recap video:

Reliving it is almost as good as being there, right? Right!?

But of course, for those who prefer to consume their memories in still, non-moving photo form, you can do that right here. We’ll give you the smallest taste with this beautifully crafted image of our Alien Hominid Invasion arcade cabs in the calm before the PAX attendee storm.

As we mentioned, this was the first time that players could ever get their hands on Alien Hominid Invasion! We were so thrilled to be able to share our current project with so many excited fans, and it was great to get firsthand feedback on the floor. In fact, we’ve already made some changes to the game based off of our experiences with players! This game is really shaping up to be something special.

Exemplary visual archives and wonderful memories aside, we fully intend on getting the game back out to more of our excited players later this year. Stay tuned for more news on that!

Also, in case anyone was wondering, the cold SUCKS. Every walk to and from the convention center was met with varying levels of freezing, struggling, and language not appropriate for our T-rated games. But you know what? Our team of spoiled-by-the-constant-sun San Diegans persevered anyway. We trudged like, two frozen blocks through wind and negative temperatures every day for almost a week. And we did it all for you, because we love you. <3

European Tradeshow Mini-Tour Recap

It was a big and busy month for the small chickens at The Behemoth. If you recall, we hit EGX London, then MCM Comic Con London, and THEN EGX Berlin. It was three straight weeks of awesome shows, but it took a minute to shake off the jet lag that came with it.

Now that everything is back in order at home base, we wanted to share our adventures before we dive into prep for 2020 (yeah, that’s coming soon).

After the first weekend in Europe, John wrote up a blog post on EGX London, which you can read here.

Moving into MCM Comic Con London we weren’t sure what to expect. Since we’re San Diego based, we’re used to the enormous spectacle of San Diego Comic-Con that happens every year. I guess that lead us to believe that MCM Comic Con would be a smaller show, which was pretty off-base.

While the show wasn’t quite as crazy as San Diego Comic-Con, we were very pleased by how balanced it was. There was a great mix of pop culture, comics, and of course, video games! The crowd also had more than enough interest in everything, and there was more than enough fun to go around.

There were also quite a few Behemoth cosplayers that showed up! It’s always incredible to see people bringing our characters to life IN real life — that’s a feeling that never goes away or gets old.

At EGX Berlin, the Berlin gaming crowd turned out in a big way. There were about tons of indie devs and games publishers, as well as the lots and lots of enthusiastic cosplayers. 

Strangely, they had a small motocross stunt track that was used twice a day. At first we thought it was an electric moto, but after a bit the thick sweet smell of exhaust began to waft through the small exhibition area. Yay, carbon monoxide! We all woke up several hours later….

The venue had two large halls with the devs in one and the merch, food trucks, and lounges in another. Luckily there was a bit of an airlock between the halls because once the deep fat fryers got started, it smelled like a county fair. Inside. All things considered, we were lucky to be in the other room!

The show had crazy mix of games and devs from all over Europe. We saw lots of point and click and narrative games, a good helping of puzzlers and reaction games, and even a golf game for non-golfers built by devs who don’t play golf. One of the publishers also brought their full array of simulators (bus simulator anyone?).

All in all, we had a great time in Europe testing out these new (to us) shows. Looking ahead to 2020, we definitely might have to make our way back to a couple of them, and we can’t wait!