The Best New Games At PAX Unplugged 2024

I spent the weekend at PAX Unplugged 2024 trying out a whole host of upcoming, unreleased tabletop games. From light family games about dancing lemurs to in-depth strategy games, and some truly exciting surprises, these are the best new games at at PAX Unplugged 2024 - read on for the games you need to keep an eye out for when they release this year!

Zenith

Zenith, an upcoming board game from PlayPunk, immediately caught my attention with its innovative, team-based gameplay. In the game, you and a teammate play a sort of tug of war for control of the planets of our solar system against your opponents.

With multi-purpose cards that you can play to gain resources, utilize special abilities, and more, I was truly engrossed during my demo play through. There’s a really nice push and pull here. Keep an eye out for Zenith, hitting shelves this Spring.

Butterfly Garden

Another entry in the ever-growing genre of calming games about birds, gardens, and bugs, Butterfly Garden from Capstone Games reimplements the classic tile-laying game Indigo. Wonderfully puzzle-y, you’ll lay down tiles opening up paths for your butterflies to fly along, hoping to guide them through winding lines toward your exits.

Fun, easy breezy, this would be a great game to play with the whole family. This should be releasing within the next few months.

Crafting The Cosmos

Crafting the Cosmos, an upcoming game by Office Dog, Asmodee North America’s developmental studio, is a game about taking the very essence of the universe - namely elements, gravity, and even time itself, and putting it all together to forge your own galaxy. I got the chance to play through a demo round of the game with the game’s designers David Gordon and TAM, and found the gameplay intuitive but think-y at the same time. Each turn, you’re moving colored marbles around a central track, gathering resources, and plotting them on the board. Visually stunning, this has some of the cleanest design of any game I tried at PAX Unplugged. Keep an eye out for Crafting the Cosmos this March!

Whisker Wars

When Mike, Sean, and Logan from Glasshouse Games reached out to ask if I’d be willing to try out their upcoming Whisker Wars, I didn’t realize I was agreeing to sit down to play a game that would so thoroughly blow me away! In Whisker Wars, you’ll draw cards from a central deck, each depicting adorably angry woodland creatures waging all-out medieval warfare against one another. On your turn, you’ll draw your cards, lay them face-down in front of you, and then reveal. With hidden cards and a tricky decision-tree, I can’t wait to jump back in. 

This is Glasshouse Games’ first game, and it’s heading to crowdfunding soon - and I’m calling it now, Whisker Wars and Glasshouse Games, are absolutely going to become household names.

Overgrown

Nature is healing! Another incredible surprise, I stumbled upon Overgrown completely by accident at PAX Unplugged. While my days were full of meetings, each night I walked the gaming hall looking for games to jump into. And on my second night, I happened up Overgrown and its creator Bryan Bell, founder of the new studio Good Time Hat. In Overgrown, players take on the role of - get this - nature, taking over an abandoned city after some horrible disaster. 

In the game, you’ll lay down a small empty frame upon a grid to collect resources which you’ll lay on your board in combinations to turn them into overgrowth. One of each of the three resources (water, sunlight, and soil) placed next to each other on your board combine to turn into a single tile of overgrowth, opening space back up on your board. And multiple overgrown tiles further combine into a single densely packed patch of greenery. You can also attract wildlife for bonus points. With a nice quick pace, and light puzzle placement, I was completely entranced by the game - and can’t wait for it to hit crowdfunding this year!

Survivalist

With a gorgeous, stark black-and-white game design, Survivalist is all about surviving in the harsh wilderness. Designed by Ryan Courtney and Bob Hewitt of the newly formed Homestead Games New Zealand, Survivalist is played over a series of seasons. You’ll spend the early game gathering useful resources, and crafting those into necessary tools, while preparing for a final showdown against the game itself. 

Designed purposefully to be difficult - and therefore show the peril of trying to make it out in the wilds - players will compete not to see who can survival the final encounter, but who can survive the longest. I didn’t get a chance to play through the full game, but in my brief demo I was immediately intrigued by both the seamless gameplay loop and the game’s one-of-a-kind artwork and design. With a planned release for early next year, this will be on my watch-list for sure.

Disco Island Escape

This is another game I happened upon while wandering the gaming area after the Expo Hall closed, and I’m so glad I did! Disco Island Escape designer April Mitchell taught me how to play this fun family-friendly game about dancing lemurs trying to make it off a volcanic island. In this game, you’ll draw cards and play matching colors to chart a course for yourself around the board. Bump into another lemur and you’ll send them back to the start while your lemur flips to their Groovy side, allowing them to move faster.

Perfect for families with kids who can handle a little bit of strategic thinking (but not too much!), Disco Island Escape invites players to boogie down, with each color card also sporting a dance move to encourage the kiddos to get up and dance while they play (I did not dance, sadly, as it was the end of a long day). Published by Hootenanny Games, Disco Island Escape’s very newly available for purchase.

Malediction

Finally, there’s the upcoming Malediction, a new card and miniature game by Loot Studios. This game is the real deal, and truly one of the best new games at PAX Unplugged 2024. The elevator pitch is, essentially, Magic: The Gathering meets Warhammer. For a certain subset of our readers (myself included), I don’t have to say anything more! In Malediction, you’ll choose one of four factions, and build up a force of miniatures and a deck of cards.

But here’s the fun twist, along with spells and little combat tricks, the cards in your deck also include profile cards for your miniatures - and you can’t bring them out onto the battlefield until you draw their card and pay the resource cost to field them. While the core boxes will come with cardboard cutouts, the game will also include the STL files needed to 3D print some of the most engaging looking models and terrain I’ve ever seen. I played an incredible demo, and took home some samples to try out more fully. Expect a full report before the game launches on GameFound!

What do you think of our picks for Best New Games At PAX Unplugged 2024? What are you most excited for? Let us know in the comments below!