Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
As my adventures at PAX East 2025 continued I slowly made my way into the Expo Hall, after a long night out enjoying the annual Pokecrawl, to check out more fun experiences. Fridays at PAX East are quite a bit busier than Thursdays so I purposefully have a bunch of preset interviews and a plan for panels and vendors to visit to keep it smooth.
Wandering around in between games I do quite enjoy visiting interesting vendors like Many Worlds Tavern, Wild Bills and The Cookie Brigade. I also make it a point to head to The Behemoth booth as they always have a fun booth and amazing items to check out and buy if desired.
Friday was also a cosplay day for me at PAX East. I went as President Loki from S2 of the Loki series. It was a big hit and I had a blast walking around and checking out games in character as President Loki.
And what a great pool of games I sat down to check out! Very diverse titles like Monster Train 2, Glaciered and Skateboard Knight gave me different experiences to try out on my busy second day at PAX East.
Monster Train 2
A couple of years ago the insane deck-building, train-riding, adventure-filled game Monster Train arrived and made a big splash. The sequel, Monster Train 2, was at PAX East and it was constantly busy so I was grateful to get a chance to check it out.
In speaking to the developer on hand I found this is more of an iterative sequel than a fully new experience in the universe. The focus was on more heroes, enemies, more abilities, enhancements, and loot, and quicker gameplay cycles.
This was apparent in the playthrough. I felt that right away I had a lot of options and cards to deploy and as I progressed through the demo I was able to acquire a lot of interesting powers, items and new cards to deploy as my train moved from location to location.
While the core game is the same – navigate the map, enter battles, place soldiers on each level, and protect the Pyre from destruction – there are some new tricks on the Monster Train. These take the form of new Room and Equipment Cards.
Room Cards add impressive boosts to your train, allowing you new strategic advantages over your foes. Equipment Cards can be applied to units, giving them a variety of bonuses to aid you in battle.
There are also five new clans with different units, heroes and powers that add variety to this already exciting game. While I would have liked a more substantial evolution of the Monster Train formula I still had a lot of fun with this game and look forward to the release of Monster Train 2 on May 21 for PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X|S
Glaciered
A very interesting title I checked out was Glaciered from Studio Snowblind. This odd game is set underwater at the end of time, 65 million years in the future. The player is in the role of a Tuai who has evolved to “fly” underwater.
The game was tough to understand and get into, but the gist of it is that the world is covered in ice and a strange force is threatening the ecosystem. As the game started a strange voice was leading my Tuai along as I started to explore the world.
It is a 3D ecosystem so I was able to fly all around the screen in all directions using a simple wayfinder to move to my next goal. I had a taste of combat with wing projectiles and melee attacks taking down a vicious sea creature.
While the game looked great, I was not pulled into the world immediately, and was actually confused about the objectives in the short, timed demo. I can see some potential here, but there was no wow moment in the parts I played at PAX East.
Glaciered will be released later this year for PC via Steam. Hopefully over the next months they can tighten up the experience to help it get noticed when it releases. There is a demo on Steam, so give the game a try to see if it something that hooks you more than it did me.
Skateboard Knight
One of the more enjoyable games I tried at PAX East was Skateboard Knight, a completely silly side-scrolling adventure that was fast-paced and a blast to play. Developed by Maroru Games, this bright and colorful game has a knight – well – skateboarding across the screen automatically while enemies come at him non-stop.
It plays like a side-scrolling shoot-’em-up with enemies on different levels coming along in waves. The knight has to shift in order to shoot and avoid the baddies. While it seems simple, in execution there is fast pacing and frantic energy that make the action feel tense and exciting.
As enemies are defeated, experience and money are dropped which lead to level-ups and currency to buy things at wandering mobile vendors. The leveling happens on the fly and there are options to add powers, speed up skills, and enhance actions among many other choices.
There are also obstacles, bosses, and the odd skateboarding princess who drops buffs or health as she rolls by. The game is frankly ridiculous but also super fun to get lost in.
I can see this as a fantastic game for the Steam Deck to pass away time just having fun boarding and blasting away enemies. The game is presented in runs, so the fun is in seeing how far you can get, and see if you can pass level 20 where the Knight evolves to a new class based on the chosen skills.
Skateboard Knight was a crowd-pleaser with onlookers and fans checking out the game all through PAX East. It will be releasing for PC via Steam and for Mac in early 2026. I suggest taking the demo for an, err, spin, to try it out yourself!
