As I mentioned in my previous review, I just got back from PAX West 2018. Here’s a by no means complete list of games I played there and thought were interesting!

I’m not going to talk here about upcoming AAA releases like Kingdom Hearts 3 and Devil May Cry 5. (Though if you didn’t know that both of those games are coming out, they are!) Instead I’m just going to talk about small/indie games that caught my interest. Not only do I love indie games, but the lines to play them are a lot shorter, so you get more game in your day. Win/win!

Watch Joel Goodwin of Electron Dance and I momentarily trade the dog-eat-dog for… fox-help-raccoon in Piece of Cake’s split-screen asymmetric stealth action game Hacktag. This is the first — and unfortunately only — co-op title in this season of Side by Side.

Remember when I used to write words about video games? Man, good times.

On this the week after PAX West (which, was basically the last time I seriously wrote about video games one year ago, as the mood struck me), I decided to jump in on the release of Ben Esposito’s Donut County. I attended Ben’s GDC talk about the development of the game a few years ago, and I wanted to see how the final product ended up.

My momma always said “itch.io is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get”. She wasn’t wrong, but thanks to some handy search tools it’s easy to get some real treats. This week’s treat is Totemori, a local multiplayer… uh, tot’em up? Tot’em up. Yeah, that sort of works.

Joel Goodwin of Electron Dance and I see whether it all stacks up.

Side by Side’s been a bit twitchy so far hasn’t it? Well in this week’s episode, Joel Goodwin of Electron Dance and I take a look at Cuckoo Curling to break that run up a little. It’s curling meets Connect 4 for up to four players and it’s a lovely gentle thing.

Earlier in the week Joel Goodwin of Electron Dance published our fourth episode of Side by Side where we wrangle with Anyball, a loosey-goosey local multiplayer sports game where the rules and equipment keep changing. Yikes!

In this week’s Side by Side, Joel Goodwin of Electron Dance and I take on the trippy channel hopping arcade madness of Tuned Out.

Next up Joel Goodwin of Electron Dance and I play Slampunks’ adorable slippery cephalopod racer Muddledash.

We’re back and this time we’re actually on a couch side by side. It’s only taken four seasons. I even got some pictures hung up on my back wall.

This year’s Rezzed in London was a smörgåsbord of local multiplayer delights and I was fortunate enough to tuck into a plateful of them with Joel Goodwin, friend and fellow Side by Sider over at Electron Dance.