PAX Unplugged is this weekend, and it’s safe to say that we’re a little bit excited. Who are we kidding?
We are REALLY excited!
This will be our second year attending our local board game convention, and we’re much more prepared than we were last year. We went to PAX for a day to see what these board game conventions were all about. Needless to say, we were hooked – Not just as avid tabletop consumers, but also as designers.
The potential at these events is crazy! So this year, we’re preparing for a longer experience with a more serious gameplan. Yes, we hope to play some of the hottest games on the market, but we’re also planning to attack our PAX experience with more than a consumer mindset this time. Here are the four main areas we’re focusing on this year at PAX.
UnPub ProtoAlley
One of the ways that we’re excited to promote Alynthia at PAX is through UnPub’s ProtoAlley room. This room is designed to be a space where unpublished games can be trialed and playtested.
While this won’t be the first playtest event that we have ever been to, we definitely haven’t been to one in a venue of this size. We’re excited to see the fruits of presenting Alynthia to a new, but semi-local group of board game activists. Unpub also focuses heavily on providing feedback to game designers through their events, and we look forward to receiving that as well.
Want to try Alynthia at PAX this weekend?We will have a table in the ProtoAlley from 3:00pm – 7:00pm on Friday and from 10:30am to 2:30pm on Saturday.
The Exhibit Hall
An exhibit hall is one of the most magnificent parts of a convention, and board game conventions are no exception. Concrete halls filled to the brim with new games, old games, and hidden-gem games. Scattered throughout the sea of awesome, you can also find endless board game accessories and concentrated pockets of board game community.
We’re planning to head to some large publisher booths to gain inspiration, manufacturer booths to talk shop, and reviewer booths (here we come, The Dice Tower) to talk up Alynthia. Did you read our post on Kickstarter games that we backed? Well, the creators of Atlantis Rising (Elf Creek Games) are going to be there, so they can expect a visit from us, too.
Panels
One part of PAX that we definitely missed out on last year was the panels and live discussions. We won’t let that happen again. As soon as the schedule was announced, we scoured and found every panel that looked interesting. While we won’t be able to get to every panel, we’re excited to check out what we can!
Some of the panels that we’re looking forward to are:
- How to Make Games That Last
- Growing the Market: Creating Products in a New Age of Gamers
- The Resources That Changed My Game Design Life
- Networking As An Introvert
Freeplay
Any PAX Unplugged day wouldn’t be complete without hours of time spent in the freeplay hall. What else are you supposed to do after the exhibit hall closes at 6pm? Another 6 hours of glorious gameplay, that’s what! This is the chance we’ve been waiting for all year, and we’re so excited to play some games we haven’t been able to get our hands on yet.
PAX has an amazing library of games that are available to play during freeplay. And we love the potential we have to introduce Alynthia to our gaming community! This was an area we focused on last year and want to explore even further this year. One way we worked on this was by announcing our game on the PAX Scheduling BoardGameGeek forum.
Expect us back in the coming weeks to talk about how it went and our tips for attending a large board game convention when you’re not exhibiting.