Indie Selections For 2011 'PAX 10' Showcase Announced

The organizers of the 2011 Penny Arcade Expo have once again selected ten indie games to be showcased in free booth space at the annual show in August. Over 100 entries were submitted for entry in this year's PAX 10, and the lucky winners were chosen by a panel of game industry experts. The PAX 10 has been a part of the annual gaming convention since 2008, when winners included Audiosurf and The Maw. "Every year the showcase of new indie gems are one of the highlights of the show,” said Penny Arcade president of operations and business development Robert Khoo in a statement. "In always chasing the next big blockbuster, too much of our industry is dedicated to making the same game over and over again. The PAX 10 is one way that indies with innovative game concepts can get in front of the community." The 2010 Penny Arcade Expo saw nearly 68,000 attendees, just under the record 69,500 that attended this year's PAX East sister convention in Boston. This year's featured PAX 10 titles are: * A Flipping Good Time (PC) - Digipen Institute of Technology Players will have a flipping good time in this fast-paced free-flowing 2D platformer as they flip and fly through an expansive underground world using the fluid nature of gravity to avoid hazardous terrain. * Antichamber (PC) - Alexander Bruce Journey through the depths within a non-Euclidean labyrinth where geometry and space follow unfamiliar rules, and many obstacles are a matter of perception. Players must create, destroy and manipulate matter in this mind-bending psychological exploration game. * Atom Zombie Smasher (PC, Mac, Linux) - Blendo Games The zombie apocalypse is upon us! Take strategic command of mercenary forces to conduct massive rescue operations using military forces such as snipers, artillery crews, and orbital bombardments to hold back the undead while the civilians escape. * Fez (XBLA) – Polytron Guide Gomez, a 2D creature, on a voyage of discovery into the mysterious 3rd dimension. Change his perspective and look at the world in a different way. * Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony (PC) - Final Form Games A neo-classical top-down shooter for up to 4 players set on 17th-century British Colonial Mars with a new twist on the genre. There are no shared pools of health or lives; so long as any player survives, the team can be brought back from death. * Snapshot (PC) - Retro Affect Pic, a robot camera, can actually absorb objects into photographs, removing them from existence! By pasting pictures back into the world, captured objects - everything from doors, light, even copies of yourself - can be used to solve puzzles. * Solar 2 (PC) - Murudai In this open-world, sandbox game set in an infinite abstract universe, players are the planets. Play constructively: grow your system, nurture life and attack enemy life in huge battles. Play destructively: crash into objects and cause chaos, use orbiting objects like wrecking balls and steal planets. * Splatters (PC) – SpikySnail You play as a group of semi-suicidal, liquid filled Splatters that get their kicks by igniting in colorful confetti bombs of liquid. Crash into spikes, ride the slides, Air-Strike into bombs or do just any stunt-combo you can think of. With every new maneuver learned, each show becomes more spectacular. * Vanessa Saint-Pierre Delacroix & Her Nightmare (PC) - Bad Pilcrow Standing between Vanessa and freedom are platforming mechanics. The twist? Her two-dimensional world lies on the surface of a three-dimensional cube, and players must rotate each face to find clever solutions to a wide variety of problems. * Word Fighter (iOS & Android) - Feel Every Yummy A one-on-one word battling game that mixes rules from popular word games like Boggle and Scrabble and wraps them around a competitive fighting environment. Think "Street Fighter" meets "Words with Friends", or word games mashed together with "Super Puzzle Fighter".