At last year's PAX East, we spent a lot of our time poking around the PAX Rising Showcase booth, which is a collection of indie games curated by PAX itself. Not only did we find a bunch of cool games to play, but we were also able to chat to the games' creators, as all Rising finalists are invited to attend in person to show their work to the public.
This year, though, Rachel and I decided to go one step further. We interviewed the teams behind four of the eleven 2023 finalists, asking the developers behind Go-Go Town!, Paper Trail, Slay the Princess and Xenotilt: Hostile Pinball Action about their experience of bringing their games to PAX, what they learned along the way, and what it’s like to spend four days standing on your feet talking to thousands of attendees (spoilers: it’s really bloody tiring).