Being the biggest gaming event that our country has to offer, you know to expect a few things when you attend PAX Aus. Firstly, your step count will be through the roof as you inevitably do laps of the convention centre, dabbling in the tabletop section before realising that yes, you do want to have a crack at winning a pin playing Mario Kart World. Secondly, your carefully curated schedule, which sees you attending every panel on your checklist and staying together with your group, will be shattered entirely as soon as one person in your group spies some gear that speaks to their hyper-specific gaming niche. Lastly, your Steam wishlist will be overflowing with new indies well before you swing by the retro area for the last time and finally call it a day.
That last part was particularly true for us here at Team Teal, as Zach, Kieron, Ash, and Adam spent three days combing the show floor at PAX Aus 2025, coming away with a list of upcoming titles that should be on everyone’s radar. So affix that well-earned pin, mourn over your perfectly planned schedule, and cast your eyes over the best games we played at PAX Aus 2025.
Zach
Pro Jank Footy
Pro Jank Footy is an over-the-top arcade, retro-style depiction of Aussie Rules football with a hilarious roguelike twist. Designed to be simple to play like the Aussie Rules games of yore, it features the frenticness of NBA Jam and a power-up card system that lets players gain an advantage or wreak havoc on the field. After a goal is scored, the opposing player selects one of three power-up cards, with many cards built around Australiana, and it’s bloody hilarious. Power-up examples include turning every player on the ground into seagulls, or one player turning into Dad’s Car – a beat-up sedan built for the ultimate don’t argue. Some cards will see matches hit breaking point – Wind Blast makes every kick go backwards, while Big Fence sees goal posts wrap the boundary line. It’s an absolute blast in co-op and was the highlight of the show for me. The game’s Adelaide-based developers Powerbomb Games and Tinker Town, and publisher Umbrella Entertainment tell me that they’re targeting a release on consoles and PC around Gather Round during next year’s AFL season. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it early next year.
How Was Your Day?
From the New Zealand team, Mad Carnival, How Was Your Day? is a point-and-click adventure billed as “Groundhog Day meets Stranger Things” but with a personal and cultural twist. Set in the 1980s and inspired by the developer’s Fijian and New Zealand heritage, you’ll play as 13-year-old Fijian girl Diya, who has recently moved to the fictional New Zealand town of Lakeview and finds her beloved pooch, Beans, is missing. To make matters worse, the day before Diwali, Diya gets stuck in a timeloop that sees the same day repeat itself, and the only way to break the cycle is to step out of her comfort zone and actually talk to her parents – a teenager’s worst nightmare. With every loop, more pets disappear, the lights in the sky get stranger, and Lakeview’s hidden secrets are uncovered. It’s a super interesting premise, and it’s great to see more games showcasing cultures that need more representation in the medium. Plus, it’s got an art style that reminds me of the Little Golden Books I used to read when I was a kid growing up in the 90s.
The demo, which is available on Steam, gives players a look at the game’s beginning and starts with Diya waking up to some 80s-themed music after hitting the snooze button one too many times. It’s not long before Diya and Beans are on their way to school, avoiding the strange lady who lives next door and making friends with the kid on the lemonade stand. But that’s the last time we’ll see Beans, with Diya’s canine companion seemingly vanishing and turning her world upside down.
In typical adventure game fashion, Diya will need to solve puzzles to progress the story, but one of the coolest features is the assortment of mini games inspired by iconic video games like Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Frogger. The demo didn’t feature voice acting, but Mad Carnival are planning to include authentic voices for the full version, something that will enhance the cultural immersion. Right now, there’s no release date, but the team is targeting a late 2026 release, hopefully around Diwali, so this is one to keep an eye on.
Brief shoutout – Lone Pine
Developed by Queensland’s Bang Bang Bang, Lone Pine is a point-and-click adventure that tasks players with photographing mysterious and undiscovered cryptids in the fictional Lone Pine National Park. But when a storm hits, our protagonist, Izzie, discovers there is more to the park, and she tries to uncover the mystery while making her way home. A short sampler was available to play at PAX, which showcased one area that highlighted some of the game’s mechanics and the vibe it’s aiming for. Definitely one to watch for adventure fans.
Ash
BraveCart
PAX 2025 was a long-awaited return for me. I had missed a few years, then COVID happened, and the births of my children meant that weekend-long interstate gaming escapades were far harder to achieve – but with my 7-year-old daughter in tow, this was my (our?) year. The doors of Saturday morning had barely opened, and I was already in the coveted pit o’ indies, looking for the next sleeper hit to take the world by storm. Where was the next Dredge? Untitled Goose Game? Where was the Aussie version of Balatro?? While I swept my eyes across the different banners and setups, my daughter idly started playing the game that was immediately next to us. I checked my phone, looking at what Aussie social media had to say about locally-sourced gaming goodness – before realising I probably should triple-check that my daughter was playing something age appropriate. Luckily it wasn’t Super Murder Death Exploder, but rather a shopping-cart puzzle game titled BraveCart.
Remember those ice-sliding puzzles from the Game Boy era? Where moving in a direction on a grid meant travelling until you slammed into either an obstacle, or a wall? Think of that, only with a delightfully Aussie shopping trolley spin. And my little girl was crushing it. Guided by Scrappy the receipt, your adventure starts off simple enough – navigating around hay bales and slamming out of the exit door – before you find yourself in treacherous car parks, avoiding explosion-prone (legally distinct) Cybertrucks and eluding underpaid trolley return clerks. Careening around collecting coins and saving other lost trolleys, I took the time to speak with Rick from Hojo Studio about the mission statement of such a game – and was tickled by the promise that Bravecart aims to be a narrative-driven, cinematic turn-based puzzle adventure. About shopping trolleys. Perfect.
We returned two more times to play more BraveCart, with my little girl begging for just one more go, eventually seeing ever-more challenging levels with collapsing barriers and 1-way doors – with Rick clueing me in on how the game is not only coming to Steam, but mobile devices as well. The simple swipe-and-crash experience begs to be mastered, flexing that delicious identity as being simple to learn but fiendish to master.
While we are not expecting BraveCart in 2025, the word from Rick was that 2026 looks to be the year to watch, with a demo planned eventually.
Oh, and a level editor is also on the cards. Or should I say…on the carts.
Schrodingers Cat Burglar
A thought experiment turned puzzle game, Schrodinger’s Cat Burglar is not just a cute puzzle game with cats – it’s a gateway to an odd conversation with your kids. Yeah, explaining why your cat behaves differently when being observed takes a bit of work, but you can handwave it simply enough by blaming quantum mechanics. Exist in two places at once, enter a state of non-phasic existence – co-op play! Schrodinger’s Cat Burglar plays like a greatest hits medley of all my favourite puzzle mechanics.
The simple quirk of being able to split into a set of kitty cat doppelgangers makes every room a mind-bending perplexment, as you figure out where you (and yourself) need to go. Then fold in the oddity of becoming theoretical (when someone has their eye on you), and you have a recipe for infinitely plausible quantum possibilities. The depth on offer within the demo was astounding, so the idea of the game becoming even more involved and weirder has me deeply curious what will come next.
And you know what they say about curiosity.
Brief shoutout – Lighthaze World
While not an upcoming title, but a released one, Lighthaze World caught me by surprise for an odd reason. It starred a very familiar toilet from my hometown. Turns out this spectacular, relaxing puzzle game is packed to the gills with local flavour from Tasmania, brimming with inside jokes that only a local would get. It was a laugh to realise that I had travelled all the way from Launceston, just to see the Launceston mall lovingly reproduced in 3D. It helps that the game is a blast, also. Stellar work by developer Radiobush.
Kieron
Reaprieve
I knew that Reaprieve would be inarguably my shit well before I laid actual hands on it, thanks in part to seeing it presented two separate times during events hosted by the fantastic Freeplay team, including the most recent Parallels night during Melbourne International Games Week.
When developer Thea Francisco (10PM Club) presented earlier in the year, it was a focus on the phenomenon of nostalgia, in particular its relationship with death. That talk actually inspired my favourite submitted piece this year – my review of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. But at that point, I still had little idea of what Reaprieve was. Now that PAX Aus 2025 has come and gone, and with it a proper, playable build on the show floor, my excitement has only grown.
Casting them as a Grim Reaper of the internet age, Reaprieve asks the player to pore over the online footprints of the recently deceased, deleting or saving the digital ghosts they leave behind in order to lubricate their souls’ journeys to the other side. But what’s worth preserving and what’s best lost to time? That’s for you to agonise over, all the while managing your work-life balance in a super stylish and darkly absurd world. Hell yeah.
Reaprieve is currently still in pre-production, but you can find out more about the team and the game, and maybe even throw your hand up to help playtest it, right here.
Tingus Goose
I distinctly remember walking past Tingus Goose in the always-packed Rising section of PAX Aus 2025 and thinking, “Christ, there are kids around!”
Not the kind of reaction I’d usually give to an idle clicker-type game.
But in this beefed-up, premium PC redo of the deeply weird idle mobile game of the same name, you’ll bear witness to and willingly facilitate the cultivation of an increasingly long goose sprouting from the womb of a pregnant human. That goose will then begin to sprout extraneous goose heads, other animals, live musical acts and biblically-accurate angels from its uncomfortably long neck, and begin to vomit live human babies to bounce down through said carnival of bodily horrors to generate cash.
More happens, but I reckon I need to stop there. If you’re intrigued, there’s a demo that you can download and play on Steam right now. If you’re disgusted, there’s a demo that you can avoid on Steam right now.
Brief shoutout – Pinball Hero
Look, I’m just gonna say ‘pinball roguelike’ and you’re either gonna keep scrolling or shit yourself (complimentary).
Adam
ShatterRush
I’m kicking things off with a reductive comparison just to set the tone, but stick around, because this one is a banger on multiple fronts.
ShatterRush looks and feels like the team at Tetra Studios got tired of waiting for Titanfall 3, so they decided to pick up the tools and do it themselves. More accurately, ShatterRush – the 16-player multiplayer first-person shooter – feels like a wicked combination of Titanfall and The Finals, which is exceptionally high praise for an indie title that’s only seen seven months of development time.
The meat and potatoes of ShatterRush’s gameplay are its buttery smooth movement and tight gunplay. Taking the parkour approach to getting around, players can run, double jump, slide, wall-run, mantle, and – most importantly of all – grapple around the map. And let me tell you, that grapple is ace. Far from the static and stiff examples seen elsewhere, this is a movement tool that feels vital to getting the drop on your opponents.
That’s not the only bit of Titanfall DNA here, either, because once you’ve racked up enough points, you’ll have the option to call in a big old mech to pilot around and scare your foes with. These bad boys are massive, have an awesome weight to them, and gave the match I played a real sense of escalation. The Finals inspiration is certainly felt in the gunplay, but it’s also demonstrated with the excellent level of environmental destruction on offer. I only played a single match, so I couldn’t speak to the tactical applications of it, but the wall-busting tech was impressive, and it showed a lot of promise.
I left my match of ShatterRush impressed with what I saw, but I was most taken aback by the inclusion of split-screen multiplayer, which the devs promised me would be an option even if you were playing online as well. We’ve got plenty of party games that offer similar online capabilities, but very VERY few shooters, so this is a feature that could keep me coming back time and time again. There’s an open pre-alpha live right now, and I suggest you run, don’t walk.
The INDIGO Initiative
Something I appreciate about The Talos Principle is that it takes the migraine-inducing puzzles I love from games like Portal and sets them in a variety of interesting and beautiful locations. It’s not that I have a huge issue with Portal’s test chambers, but there’s something nice about feeling your mind turn into a smoothie in the open air.
Developer Caustic Reality is taking a similar approach with its first-person puzzler, The INDIGO Initiative. The physics-based problems I solved during the 15-minute demo certainly tickled the frontal lobe, with an element-copying gun working in tandem with a telekinetic glove to offer a few creative solutions that elicited that coveted “aha” reaction.
What I’m really impressed with in The INDIGO Initiative is its story, setting, and atmosphere. I was told through an in-game recording that a mysterious catastrophe befell the globe, causing nearly the whole of the earth’s population to vanish. Searching for answers, protagonist and scientist, Dr Kepler, travels to alternate realities in order to stabilise the fabric of reality.
Not only does this premise allow the team to stretch their creative muscles when it comes to otherworldly locations (like the familiar yet alien ancient ruins I wandered through), it also creates an intangibly eerie aura that follows you as you solve puzzles and flip switches.
Caustic Reality has been working on the game for less than a calendar year, and it already shows incredible promise, so this is one I’ll be watching with great interest.
Brief shoutout – Key Fairy
You’ll hear me crowing about Key Fairy for a long time to come, so I figured I’d just dip a toe in here. A combat-free bull-hell game is an interesting enough concept to get you in the door, I’m sure, but it’s the fluidity of its traversal that will have you sitting down and playing until today is tomorrow.
The largely monochromatic, hand-drawn art style is incredible, the music is reactive and awesome, and the writing is genuinely hilarious at times. I’ve got a whole lot of positive things to say about Owl Machine’s debut title, so stay tuned.
By now we’ve rested our feet and we’re back on the grind, now with a Steam Wishlist a mile long and an unquenchable thirst to play Aussie indies. PAX Aus 2025 was a fantastic showcase for ANZ games, and we’re collectively eager to play all of these and more once they’re released.
Did you attend PAX Aus 2025? What was your highlight of the show? Let us know in the comments or on our social media.
