PAX East 2025 Day Two
Day two for PAX East 2025 is now a wrap.
The opportunity to explore more booths comes, and the ability to hit up the same giveaways for day two makes it easier. Today is a great day to start with what you want to see first, then do some additional exploring.
I used it to start by finding the booths with daily giveaways to get my tickets first.
After visiting the booths, I wanted to repeat my exploration of new exhibits that I may have missed originally. The need to rush to find the best stuff is no longer over my head, allowing me to keep an eye out for anything new that might pique my interest.
Killer Mystery
In our exploration, we came across a booth for Killer Mystery. They are a subscription solve the mystery box.
I like the approach they have to their model. They have seasons for each of their stories. If you miss a season, you can just order the entire one as one kit. Or if you don't want to subscribe to their current season and want to get it all at once, you can get the entire season once it's complete.
That's a model I can get behind.
The option between either doing the subscription or having everything all at once is great for people in both categories.
If you do get an entire season at once, unless you want to spend hours upon hours working on it, don't expect to solve the killer mystery quickly. They're designed for you to take your time to learn, take notes, and make connections to find the killer.
New at PAX…
Here at PAX, they brought a limited box that is designed for a shorter time to solve the mystery. It also brings the opportunity to play the game differently, as it comes with a sealed envelope with all the characters. If you choose not to play it as a complete cooperative, you open the character envelope randomly, hand them out, and the person who gets the killer card can help misdirect everyone else away from the killer.
It overall looks like a fun game, and knowing that they are working on other products that allow for a shorter but still a completion of the mystery is great to know.
Combo
While wandering around with my cousin, a girl at one of the tabletop game demo stations grabbed our attention to try Combo.
At first glance, I normally would have kept walking, but I've been trying to keep an open mind for trying new things. With this in mind, I turned to my cousin and asked, "Want to give it a try?"
He shrugged and said, "Sure."
It's a relatively simple game with elements of poker. Each player puts down a card, and you all try to build up points based on a combination of four cards from everyone.
In this case, there were three of us playing, the girl showing us the game, flagged another random guy to join us. The games are best played with three or four players.
In our case, having three players, we put down one card each going around clockwise until we all had three cards our in play. With each round, we're trying to use each other's cards to make a hand. Using poker terms, you're using four cards to get a straight, flush, four of a kind, or a straight flush.
If your cards are a part of the best possible hand, you get points from those cards.
It was a fun game, and my cousin ended up purchasing it, which allowed us to play it several times while at PAX with others.
Alienware Part 2
We returned to the Alienware booth to get more tickets to hopefully win an Alienware laptop, and to try out "Revenge of The Savage Planet" again.
Alienware Booth Day 2
On my second attempt to play the game, they didn't have the controller connected to the laptop, causing me to struggle to figure out why nothing worked. Eventually, I remembered that the USB-C cable they had connected to the headset was the one used for the controller. Swapping those out fixed the issue.
I was worse than yesterday.
This time around, I couldn't get the character to interact with anything. Now looking back, I have a feeling the buttons weren't mapped right on the controller with the game.
After a short time, I gave up and moved on.
Later, we showed up for the giveaway. After several close calls on our ticket numbers, on the grand prize for the Alienware Area 51 Laptop, my cousin's number was called.
Yep, he won a brand new 18" gaming laptop. Unfortunately, they didn't have it there to give to him, they'll be shipping it directly to his house.
Considering the fact that he was looking to get a new laptop for work, his circuit design work, it was amazing timing. I was pretty stoked for him to win.
Family
Selfie photo with my family.
Today, both my niece and my sister joined us. Having them around, along with my cousin, was the best part of the entire weekend.
Family time is the best time.
It was nice to catch up a little and have some fun while we can. It's like our yearly bonding time. I know my cousin looks forward to it because it's the one time of year he knows he can see not just me, but my niece and my sister, without someone having the leave early the next day.
PAX day two was a great day. We got to play games and spend time as a family.
