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PAX Rising Showcase indie titles for PAX East 2025 unveiled

The PAX team has picked out the dozen indie games set to be featured for the latest PAX Rising Showcase.

Ozzie Mejia

April 3, 2025 11:00 AM

PAX

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Every year, the team at PAX peruses through hundreds of submissions from across the indie gaming world. Each year, roughly a dozen titles are featured and made playable at a special booth on the PAX East show floor. The PAX Rising Showcase has been an institution since 2010 and the time has come to name the titles set to be spotlighted at PAX East 2025.

The following titles have been named for this year's PAX Rising Showcase and will be on display at PAX East 2025:

• Bogdan's Cross (Federico Breser & 1st Level): Players take on the role of a shepherd named Bogdan in this third-person adventure, where he'll grow into the role of a Templar knight who helps shape the order's future. Bogdan's Cross is coming later this year to PC.

• Bytebond (DVD Unicorns): A pair of friends must come together in a computer world to try and overcome a malfunctioning CPU. Players can dive in by themselves or through couch or online co-op and solve puzzles, survive hostile computerized forces, and explore different corners of a sophisticated PC. Bytebond is coming later this year to PC with a playable demo on Steam now.

• Cappy & Tappy: Temples of Peril (First Pancake Studios): A dangerous temple filled with traps awaits, but a pair of friends are ready to approach that danger head-on... well, one is, anyway. One player will take part in a side-scrolling platformer while a friend assists from the outside by dropping Tetris-style blocks to help create a path forward. Look for Cappy & Tappy: Temples of Peril to come to PC in 2026. A playable demo is up on Steam right now.

• CYBRLICH and the Death Cult of Labor (Polyhedra Games): Developer Polyhedra Games pays tributes to the original Doom and the "boomer shooters" that it has begat. Players take on the role of a muscled-up barbarian hacker who carves up hackers across a corporate headquarters. With a simplistic sketch art style, CYBRLICH and the Death Cult of Labor will look to appeal to fans of old-school shooters and younger generations alike. It's coming soon to PC.

• Don't Wake the Beast (Artificial Disasters): Crawl through dungeons that change layouts over the course of each run in this roguelite stealth adventure. Why stealth? Well, it turns out that the more treasure that you collect, the likelier you are to wake the sleeping dragon guarding all of those spoils. It's coming soon to PC.

• Electro Bop Boxing League (Developer Dob Games): There's nothing like giant robots who rock 'em and sock 'em. Get into some robo-boxing matches in this auto-battling rhythm sports game where players will outfit their bots with different abilities and components to help rocket them to the championship. Up-and-coming fighters won't necessarily have to wait until PAX East to give this a look, because Electro Bop Boxing League will come to PC on Friday, April 18. Those who can't wait that long can step into the ring with the demo right now on Steam.

• Nocturne (Pracy Studios): Staying on the topic of rhythm games, Nocturne is a unique traditional RPG that has players battling foes through rhythm-based combat. Wrapped in a story about a world under threat by a malevolent AI, players will meet characters, explore new lands, and overcome challenges by sticking to the beat. Nocturne is coming soon to PC with a demo available now on Steam.

• ON ANY JOURNEY (FUNBREW GAMES): In this co-op adventure, players jump into the roles of Mateo and Kai, as they journey across a 2D world and help each other reach new areas and battle unique foes. With a gorgeous hand-painted art style, ON ANY JOURNEY will tell a touching coming-of-age tale of friendship with some arcade bullet hell stages mixed in. ON ANY JOURNEY is coming soon to PC.

• Oneway.exe (Disordered Media): The horrors of the internet are on full display with oneway.exe, a single-player horror game where scenes of abject terror are mixed in with the omnipresent images of the internet age. Oneway.exe is coming soon to PC with a playable demo available right now on Steam.

• Perfect Tides: Station to Station (Three Bees): Point-and-click adventure Perfect Tides first released in 2022, becoming an under-the-radar indie darling. The time has come for a sequel with Station to Station taking place three years after the original. Help Mara navigate the perils of young adulthood when Perfect Tides: Station to Station comes to PC in the future. Those who want a taste of the game can try out a playable demo on Steam.

• We Harvest Shadows (David Wehle): Developer David Wehle is no stranger to PAX with his previous effort, The First Tree, part of PAX West's Indie Megabooth back in 2017. We Harvest Shadows goes in a noticeably different direction, taking players through the challenges of living a solitary life on the farm. Not only is the harvest proving tougher this time, but something may be lurking out there. We Harvest Shadows is coming soon to PC with a playable demo available now on Steam.

• Whirlight - No Time To Trip (imaginarylab): Inspiration can take many forms in Whirlight - No Time to Trip. In this point-and-click adventure, players guide Hector and Margaret across more than 100 explorable locations in search of the elusive pieces to Hector's latest and greatest invention... whatever it is. Things are bound to get weird when Whirlight - No Time to Trip comes to PC later this year. A playable demo is up on Steam now.

The PAX Rising Showcase has often been a good place to get a first look at the biggest indie hits of tomorrow. Among the PAX Rising Showcase alumni are Slay the Princess, Summoners Fate, Peglin, Art of Rally, and Tumblestone, just to name a few. PAX East is just around the corner, set to run from May 8-11 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. For more on this year's selections, be sure to check out the PAX Rising Showcase website later today.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?