The best games we played at PAX East 2025

PAX EAST returned to Boston this year with nearly three hundred exhibitors for four days of video games and gamer culture. With over 100,000 attendees, it was a weekend full of games to play, people to meet, and spectacular cosplays to marvel at. DailyTech attended this year’s show and went hands-on with several upcoming games that should be on your radar. From an RPG about exploring the digital afterlife to a roguelite about exploring trains, here are the most must see games we played at PAX East 2025.

Fresh Tracks

Fresh Tracks, from developer Buffalo Buffalo, was one of those games I just couldn’t stop talking about. At first glance it’s a rhythm based, skiing roguelite, but you only need to watch for a few minutes to see it’s so much more than that. Under gorgeous Nordic skies, with skis underfoot and sword in hand, you are on an adventure to stop Mar, the Queen of Terror. As you move, jump, lean, and slash to the rhythm of all original songs it’s easy to get lost in the beauty of it all, though the gameplay was challenging enough to keep me on my toes. As it’s a roguelite, you take on multiple runs, with and learning the patterns like an expert Guitar Hero player seems like great fun. The mix a heavy emphasis on a mythological story with gorgeously intertwined sites and sounds felt like it married some of the best parts of Hades and Sayonara Wild Hearts, and put this squarely on my Steam Wishlist. ~ Justin Koreis

Battle Train

Battle Train is a turn-based deck builder and roguelite from Nerd Ninjas and Terrible Posture Games where players build their ultimate train, all while competing on a game show to become the Supreme Conductor. In an interview with DailyTech, Jessica Woodard, producer at Terrible Posture Games, described it best: “Have you ever in your life felt the deep and abiding urge to take a super-powered steam train, pack it full of explosives, and run it as fast as you can into someone or something?” That’s Battle Train in a nutshell. In each run, players are tasked with ensuring they have enough resources to spend their cards, properly place tracks so they can destroy their opponent, and save up enough money to purchase upgrades. On top of that, each map will have specific cards unique to each level, so it’s always a surprise what you’ll get. ~ Luis Gutierrez

Tunnels

I’m not a big fan of horror games, but in my defense I have a good reason: They scare me. That said, the idea of Tunnels, a terrifyingly immersive VR adventure into claustrophobic caves filled with monsters, was just too interesting to pass up. The demo began with a simple descent into some caves, as I climbed down hand-over-hand from the view of a Meta Quest 3. After a simple tutorial walked me through the basics of running, crawling, and using my flashlight, I was soon squeezing my way through narrow passages and spelunking through the darkness. Suddenly, a strange snarling and crawling shape darting out of view set the hair on the back of my next standing. What followed was a tense cat and mouse game as I tried to evade the creature. The only thing that could keep it at bay was my flashlight, and just thinking about it now the paranoia of hearing it echoing in the distance, and wondering if it was coming up right behind me has my pulse racing. If you have the constitution to handle that, there will be both a full single player story mode and a free-to-play multiplayer option. If you are going to be eaten by monsters in an abandoned mine, may as well do it with friends, right? You can find out when Tunnels launches exclusively for the Meta Quest 2 and 3 on May 15th. ~ Justin Koreis

Let Them Trade

It’s hard to go wrong with a chill city builder and Let Them Trade from Byterockers has coziness in spades. Like an adorable and streamlined Civilization, you work on behalf of your kingdom creating towns and industry. Everything drops onto hexagonal tiles in a grid, with an adorable woodcraft aesthetic, and zooming out the camera to reveal it all takes place on a kitchen table was a fun touch. You work for the king, and each city you construct has it’s own economy that can be largely left alone, or micromanaged if you are the sort that likes to tinker on a granular level.

My first goal was to build a few simple townships, one with a potato farm based economy, the other a lumber industry, and connect them so they could open up commerce and trade. I loved watching the little units rolling their cards from town to town, and upgrade trees to unlock things like sawmills created opportunities to branch into different strategies, though without the complexity of the most hardcore games of the genre. Another scenario asked me to build a fishing village then, in a surprise twist, the king dropped an extra and unexpected construction project for some sort of tower. This came with a list of materials needed, but no clear directions on how to get them, creating a nice (but reasonable) puzzle to solve to advance. Let Them Trade oozes charm, with a demo out now and a planned full release later this year. ~ Justin Koreis

VILE: Exhumed

Related Topics:eastGamespaxplayed

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