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This year, Raider King was able to send a representative to PAX East for the first time. While we were there, we got a chance to try out several upcoming indie games from many up-and-coming developers. Because there were hundreds of games and people at the convention, we sadly weren’t able to try them all. However, of those we did get to try, there were some real hidden gems. If you didn’t get a chance to go to the event, or just didn’t have time to try out a ton of games, then please consider checking out the following list of the most promising games at PAX EAST 2025.
Ra Ra Boom
When booking appointments for games to check out at this year’s PAX East, one of the first games to catch my eye was Glylee’s Ra Ra Boom, a 2D Beat ‘Em Up about ninja-cheerleaders who must save the world from evil AI.
While I do not play this genre of game often, the premise and art style of the game had immediately caught my eye, as the game’s sprites and art both look absolutely stunning with their bright colors and fun character designs.
The demo of the game available at PAX contained two levels, including the tutorial, while this provided enough time to get a good feel for how the game will play, I also didn’t get an opportunity to try out each character, as you can only switch upon dying (which I did twice).
Though I cannot speak for every character, I am glad to say that the two I got to try out played quite differently from each other. With Ren, the most ninja-y of the pack, having charged attacks which focused on moving her across the screen, while Vee was more focused on pure damage. I can see the game having plenty of replay value if the other two characters are similarly varied.
As someone wholly unfamiliar with the 2D-Beat ’em Up genre, I struggle to compare the depth of the gameplay I experienced with others on the market. However, what I experienced with mechanics such as air-dashing and mixing up charged attacks in the middle of a normal attack combo left me satisfied by the end of the demo.
According to the representative at the booth I was at, Ra Ra Boom’s story and presentation was heavily inspired by Saturday morning cartoons of the 1990s. He also shared with me an amusing story about how one of the voice actors had auditioned with several voices, only for the developers to insist she use her normal voice due to her Australian accent.
While it would be hard for me to judge the story presentation and characters as a whole from the short two scenes I saw in the demo, I was quite amused by the game’s opening cutscene and can find myself becoming fond of Ren when I get the chance to play the full game.
Overall, Ra Ra Boom’s demo was one of the highlights of my PAX East experience, and I fully plan to pick up the full title when it eventually releases on Steam
A Corgy’s Cozy Hike
As I browsed the halls of PAX East this year, my eyes were naturally drawn to the booth for A Corgy’s Cozy Hike by Scalisco. Like most gamers, I have great nostalgia for the era when 3D platformers were at their peak. So I naturally went over to play through their demo.
Said demo was one of the shortest I experienced at PAX, lasting only a few minutes, simply as a way of allowing the player to get a feel for how the game and what their dog protagonist will be able to do. The demo had gliding, wall climbing, and even a poop on command button for some humor.
While there wasn’t much to what I was able to play, it was fun to see what gameplay mechanics the developers were slowly introducing in this small tutorial area, such as the ability to pick up a stick with your mouth and bring it over to a fire to light it up.
While I don’t have much to say about the actual demo aside from being able to comment on how smooth it felt, I do have plenty to say about the experience I had at the game’s booth. As while I was there, a father-daughter duo were testing the demo beside me.
The child who was there was having an absolute blast with the game and was practically begging for more once they had gotten to the end. it was perhaps the most joyous I had seen anyone be at the convention during that entire day.
Sometimes, as gamers who play a wide variety, we can lose our focus and forget about the primary audience that would play a title and what their opinions on it would be. So being able to see a child who not only enjoyed the small demo they got to play but also yelled out “I want to play more” put into perspective how good this title could be for that demographic.
After going through this experience, I fully intend on downloading the full Steam demo for A Corgy’s Cozy Hike to get a better grasp on this title and maybe play the full game when it releases in Q2 2025.
Spider Lily
On the Friday of May 9, I had the privilege of visiting Falsework Studio at PAX East to get a look at their upcoming game, Spider Lily, the debut game from this budding studio.
Spider Lily is probably the most interesting game I saw at PAX that I didn’t technically get to play. The game promises to be an immersive platformer, however, the team behind the title informed me that they wanted to get a demo out before the time of PAX East, but that just wasn’t in the cards for now. Instead they provided a small environmental showcase and a conversation about the game’s development.
Before I speak of said environmental showcase, I would like to go over my conversation with what is clearly a very enthusiastic team.
The first thing producer Matthew Doyle spoke to me about was what the primary gameplay loop of the game would consist of. According to him, one of the central mechanics of the game would essentially be an escort mission where the player must carry a fish along to tidepools to keep it alive. An intriguing premise for a game, for sure.
Of course, while Doyle was the one to speak to me at PAX, he made it clear that the driving force behind the game is the project’s lead artist Yuehao Jiang, as the game is being designed around her amazing artwork.
According to the team, Chinese culture and its influence were very important to the development of this game. As well as Japanese landscape rocks, which the team’s booth at PAX was decorated with. All of these stones were designed by Yuehao Jiang, which gave attendees the opportunity to see her art up close as well as truly made the booth stand out from others at the convention.
Said landscape rocks will also have gameplay mechanics tied to them. In my conversation with him, Matthew Doyle described situations where the player would need to rotate them in-game. He even directed me to details on them, such as a carved face and ear, to demonstrate this point.
After admiring the art and being shown more in a showcase book, the developers kept on them, I was given a chance to briefly mess around with the environmental showcase that was set up at the booth, which was sadly the one disappointing part of this experience.
Unfortunately, the small environmental showcase I was able to control for a few minutes was less than impressive, as the main character’s model merely slid across the floor and frequently made the equipment chug. However, I find it hard to judge them negatively on this, as it wasn’t even a true demo.
Overall, I am quite excited to see what the team behind Spider Lily is able to produce. Their planned release date is in 2026, and we at Raider King hope that they can put together a truly masterful project.
Nekomancer of Nowhere
One panel at PAX that I was immediately drawn to was the one for Nekomancer of Nowhere. Which has a small CRT screen set up that was covered in Post-it notes, which had doodles of the game’s protagonist. With a charming booth like this set up, I absolutely had to give the game a try.
The core gameplay mechanic in Nekomancer of Nowhere has the player cast spells via drawing shapes on their screen in a way that is very comparable to Capcom’s Okami. During the demo, I had access to a spell which flipped the player into a parallel version of their current room and a spell that defeated enemies by resurrecting them.
Each room in Nekomancer will require to player to both defeat all enemies and reach the exit via continuously casting their warp spell in order to make it past various obstacles which block your way. It’s a simple type of puzzle where each room only takes a short amount of time to solve, but the process of doing so is incredibly satisfying.
With a puzzle game designed like this, one of the most important things is making sure puzzles have a certain “Aha!” factor upon solving them. While this can be a bit difficult to describe in action, the final room of the tutorial certainly gave me this feeling as I had to figure out how to get to the other side of the room which was covered in a foggy abyss, requiring me to make a few precise room flips and cross some stairs.
That may not seem like much, but getting that brief moment of satisfaction from the tutorial convinced me that the developers of this title knew exactly what they were doing and has me excited to see what types of puzzles they concoct for later stages.
Luckily for those of you curious, there is currently a demo for the game available on Steam, which contains several later stages of the game as well as the tutorial which I played. If you are at all curious about this game, please check that out.
I was charmed enough with the game and the crew working at PAX that I bought a keychain and a Steam code for the game right there at the panel.
Nekomancer of Nowhere is currently scheduled to release within 2025, and I will absolutely be downloading it when it eventually releases.
Hoard’s LLC: Limited Labyrinth Corporation
Sometimes, working for a large company can make you feel like nothing more than a monster stuck within a labyrinth, which is exactly the premise of Hoard’s LLC: Limited Labyrinth Corporation, one of the games which I got to try at PAX this year.
Hoard’s LLC is a game about a Minatour named Barry who must construct passable labyrinths while trying to convince his fellow employees to form a union. In order to do that, the player must solve room after room of puzzles.
The stages in Hoard’s LLC consist of puzzles where you don’t control Barry himself but rather the tiles on the ground. In order for Barry to move at all, you MUST form a complete path from the starting point of the stage to the exit point. Whenever selecting a tile, the player will rotate four of them at a time, so you must be careful about which ones you’re grabbing and think ahead.
The panels that the player can move consist of pathway tiles, blank tiles, and spike tiles, which Barry cannot walk over. There are also several types of tiles that the player cannot move at all, These ones come in two varieties: Ones which you cannot select at all (preventing you from rotating the tiles around them), and ones that are completely stationary but allow you to rotate tiles next to them.
While the gameplay of Hoard’s LLC is simple, the game still has that “Aha!” Factor I mentioned before where it is incredibly satisfying to finally solve the puzzles. Sometimes it can feel like pushing against a brick wall, but finally seeing Barry move at the end of each stage was an absolute joy.
I can fully admit to not being the sharpest tool in the shed, so several of the puzzles in the demo took me upwards of thirty moves to solve, but knowing that the game also has a star system for players who can solve the rooms in a low number of moves like seven has me excited to learn and try them again.
Hoard’s LLC is expected to release in the August of 2025, and I, for one, cannot wait to see what types of labyrinths the development team will make us switch the tiles around in. If you want to try it yourself, the demo is currently available on Steam
Scramble Star Crossing
Single-player stage-based puzzle games weren’t the only type available to demo at PAX this year, as I also got a chance to sit down and play the competitive puzzle game Scramble Star Crossing by Dusk Sharp.
Following in the footsteps of games like Puyo Puyo and Puzzle Fighter, the gameplay of Scramble Star Crossing is all about matching the colors of stars and chaining together combos as you desperately try to prevent your entire screen from being covered in junk.
What separates Scramble Star Crossing from other, similar games, though, is how the player interacts with their board. Here, the player can grab any star in their line of sight and throw it to any other section of the board, You can also grab multiple stars at a time (as long as you are grabbing the same color).
This means the gameplay loop of a match consists of the player grabbing as many stars as they can and quickly piling them into a huge chain over and over again. You can’t spend too long getting these chains ready, though, as your opponent is surely doing the same and will cover your screen incredibly fast.
Judging a puzzle game like this from a single-player vs CPU match would be near impossible, luckily there was no shortage of people at PAX and I was able to get to play a real match, allowing me to witness exactly how chaotic a single match can be as me and my opponent constantly went back in forth between who was close to death.
Because the extra tiles sent to your screen are never a junk tile, but rather a normal star color, a skilled player can hopefully navigate around the situation and counter it with a chain of their own. This exciting back-and-forth is what made the game truly stand out to me.
Playing a multiplayer game like this in a convention atmosphere, where your experience will be almost entirely determined by the stranger next to you, means your experience may vary. Luckily, the person next to me was polite and also significantly better at the game than me.
I may have lost both of the matches I got to play of the game, but I will be sure to play more and actually win when Scramble Star Crossing releases on Steam. Scramble Star Crossing currently doesn’t have a scheduled release date, but I look forward to seeing the developers’ work on the game in the future.
Projekt Godhand
I can also admit to being a major weeb and being easily drawn to games with anime-like cover art. This often brings me toward various rhythm games, such as one I saw at PAX this year: Projekt Godhand. A game which proudly displayed the tagging “Ultimate Tool-Assisted Keyboard Destruction” within its banner.
What makes Projekt Godhand stand out from other rhythm games on the market is that, instead of requiring the player to press a specific key on their keyboard for notes, they can instead press any key on the left or right side of their keyboard.
To fully explain how this works, if there are two notes on the left side of the screen, the player simply needs to press two buttons on the left side of their keyboard. The same principle applies to the right side of the screen and any number of active notes.
The game, of course, also has the typical rhythm game fare of notes you must hold on to, as well as button-mashing notes. These notes can really mess with the player’s head as there will be situations where, despite needing to hold two buttons on the left side of your keyboard, you will also need to be ready to press other buttons on that side.
While one would think not having to worry about which specific buttons you are pressing would make the title too easy, veterans of the genre can rest assured that the fast-paced button mashing of this title lives up to its slogan of “tool-assisted bullshit.”
As someone who frequently plays rhythm games, I wanted to throw myself into the deep end of this title by picking one of the few songs in the demo that hadn’t yet been cleared by someone at the convention. I was quickly overwhelmed as my screen got nearly flooded by notes.
While initially overwhelming, though, it wasn’t a completely impossible experience, and I soon gained my bearings. While I didn’t clear the song with a particularly high score or ranking, I still felt like I did a decent job and had a fun time with it.
Speaking of said, one must comment on the music within a rhythm game while judging it. While I only had a chance to hear two songs, one of which was the tutorial, the music I heard in the title was enjoyable. The tutorial song itself, being a full vocal song with lyrics about how to play the game, was also an incredibly charming experience from start to finish.
Projekt Godhand was actually released in early access during PAX on May 8, 2025, so if this game appears interesting to you, we would recommend checking out the title’s Steam page.
