The floor this year at PAX East included a section indie developers dubbed the Indie Megabooth- 16 independent developers showing off twenty of the latest and greatest indie games on all sorts of platforms. One of those titles was Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack, the follow up to PSN title Tales from Space: About a Blob, now available for the Playstation Vita. I decided to pick up the title to play during my free time at PAX East, and I’m really glad I did.

Much like the Katamari games, Mutant Blobs Attack  requires you to eat everything in sight to proceed through the level, as long as it’s not bigger than you. But, while Katamari is a 3rd person perspective three dimensional game, Mutant Blobs Attack is a 2D sidescrolling platformer, more like Loco Roco.  As a blob, you’ll also gain powerups to allow you to fly, float, and magnetize yourself to walls.

The game utilizes the Vita’s controls without overdoing it and becoming cumbersome to play. You control the blob throughout the levels using the analog stick, but there are also a few random levels that require you to tilt the Vita around like a ball maze to try to move the blob to the goal. The back touchscreen don’t come into play at all, but the front is used to manipulate the environment to proceed.

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Formerly known as True Crime: Hong Kong, Sleeping Dogs was showcased at the SquareEnix booth on the show floor this weekend at PAX East. I got a chance to sit down with some of the people who worked on the game, and learn more about this open world crime drama.

Based loosely on Infernal Affairs, Sleeping Dogs takes place in modern-day Hong Kong, and revolves around police officer Wei Shen who goes undercover to take down a Triad organization. The developers I spoke with emphasized that the game will be very serious, with emphasis on a dramatic storyline.

On the outside, Sleeping Dogs may look like Grand Theft Auto set in Hong Kong. But they’ve really taken their time to make sure that while this game is very much a sandbox, it’s not a reskinned GTA clone. I got to check out a demo of a racing mission in the game, and the driving system is very precise. I didn’t feel like I was flying all over the road, and since several developers of Need for Speed had a hand in creating Sleeping Dogs, it makes sense that the driving be top notch.

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There’s a lot at PAX East, which takes place this upcoming weekend, to be excited for- the show floor will be jam packed with tons of exciting games, the concerts at night will be rockin’, and there’s endless free play areas for console, PC, tabletop, and card games.

But one other thing you should definitely make some time for is the panels- they’re a chance to catch up with some of your favorite people in the industry, learn more about making videogames a career, or ask your favorite developer or community manager a question. Here’s some of the panels I’m most excited for this weekend.

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PAX East rapidly approaches, which means you’re probably starting your packing list right about now. And whether you’re a PAX East veteran or attending for the first time, it may be tricky, downright overwhelming even, figuring out exactly what to bring with you.

Well, allow me to pack for you. Here are some things you must absolutely bring with you this weekend. This stuff, and underwear. You may need underwear.

Portable gaming device

Believe me, whether you’re waiting in line to play a game on the floor, sitting and waiting for a panel to start, or killing time in the bathroom line, you’re going to want a portable gaming system with you.

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Lawnmower Challenge, another selection for this year’s Boston Indie Showcase at PAX East, has done something interesting: it’s taken a chore that most consider a sweaty nuisance, and turned it into a mind-bending puzzle game.

In Lawnmower Challenge, your quest is simple: mow all the grass. However, these aren’t your average suburban lawns. There are locked gates that can only be unlocked with a key, unmowable sections that need planting, and gates that can only be opened from a certain direction. These all would be simple obstacles to overcome if you weren’t going for a perfect score, as your steps are counted and the fewer you take, the more stars you’ll earn.

Don’t let the simple controls and cute graphics fool you; it’ll take considerable planning to complete each level at three stars.

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Imagine being turned into a jumping bean by an evil wizard, and on top of all that having your girlfriend kidnapped. Worst day ever, right? That’s what our hero, Emilio, is faced with in Bean’s Quest, a bouncing 16-bit platformer included in the Boston Indie Showcase, which will be shown off this weekend at PAX East.

Using the touchscreen controls of your favorite iOS device, you control Emilio as he bounds, bounces, and boings his way through each level, collecting diamonds as well as his missing pet axolotls along the way. Emilio never stops jumping, so all you have to do is move him left or right, but simple controls don’t make this game a breeze.

The difficulty in Bean’s Quest lies not in completing each level, but completing each level under the required number of bounces to obtain a perfect rating. If you’re going for all the diamonds and axolotls as well, it gets even more difficult. I found myself repeating levels over and over to try to get a better score and collect all the goodies, and with 150 levels to traverse, replay level for Bean’s Quest is pretty high.

Bean’s Quest also features an original soundtrack, as well as Game Center integration.

The game is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It’s on sale right now, so jump on over to the iTunes Store and pick it up for $1.99, or check it out on the show floor this weekend at PAX.

The full version of little logic puzzler Girls Like Robots is not released quite yet, but I got a chance to check it out before it hits the show floor at PAX East this weekend.

The gameplay of Girls Like Robots is simple: make all the square people happy. Each level is a grid, with different amounts of spaces to place your square shaped friends in the right arrangement so that everyone plays nice. There’s the girls, who love being surrounded by robots. The nerds love being surrounded by girls, not other nerds. Girls won’t mind being around nerds if there’s some pie present, but the robots HATE pies.

It all sounds really cute and whimsical, but quickly you’ll realize that this little puzzle game is, well, a puzzler. It’s hard! Just like in real life, you can’t make everyone happy, and you won’t be able to in Girls Like Robots either. Depending on which squares you’re working with, you’ll have to decide which arrangement will maximize points and keep anyone from getting too angry with one another.

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The official Doctor Who convention in Cardiff over this past weekend brought with it a lot of news and announcements about Season Seven, including who will be the next companion after Rory and Amy depart mid-season. It also featured the first promo video for the new season, and BBC has just officially released it online. Whovians, rejoice!

In the promo, The Doctor wears a hat, rides a horse, and generally causes trouble, flanked as always by Amy and Rory. As previous set photos indicated, The Doctor and his companions will visit the wild wild west, the snowy tundra, and an ancient civilization, and will content with old and new foes alike. The promo even features guest stars Mark Williams (known best as Arthur Weasley) and Ben Browder of Stargate. We also learn that Amy Pond isn’t too great at handling a gun, and what exaclty The Doctor really would like for Christmas.

Amy and Rory will depart from the series in the fifth episode of the season in an episode featuring the Weeping Angels. The new companion, played by Jenna-Louise Coleman, will first appear in the Christmas Special.

Doctor Who returns to BBC One and BBC America this fall. You can watch the new promo after the jump.

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PAX East is a week and a half away and if you’re going to the convention now’s really the time to start planning what panels you’ll be attending, which booths you absolutely have to check out, and which musical guests you’ll be rocking out to at the nightly concerts. Luckily, there’s a nifty app called Guidebook, and the guys at Penny Arcade have released an entire digital guide for PAX East, so you’ll be able to plan your entire weekend right on your mobile devices.

Download the app via the appropriate app store and once you’re in, search for the PAX East 2012 guide. It has everything you’ll need to successfully survive PAX East: the entire schedule of panels, concerts, and tournaments, map of the area including restaurants and bars to check out, a full list of all the musical guests, exhibitors, and shuttle schedules to the various hotels and venues. Within the app, you’ll be able to design your own schedule for the convention, add to your “to-do” list, and track the #PAX hashtag on Twitter.

There’s even a section detailing the Boston Indie showcase, a fantastic bunch of games that everyone, attending the convention or not, should check out, since they’re all mobile based.

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Adventure games are great. Like, really great. Remember Myst? The Secret of Monkey Island? They just don’t make games like that anymore. Apparently, studios don’t think they’re in demand anymore. They’d rather produce Call of Duty 12.

Which is why Double Fine’s Tim Schafer, best known for amazing titles like Grim Fandango and Psychonauts, decided to do something about the lack of adventure games on the market lately: he started a Kickstarter project.

Kickstarter, for those of you who’ve never heard of it, is a really cool concept where fans can contribute their own cold hard cash to causes they want to see funded. In this case, Tim Schafer wanted $400,000 to create an adventure game, developed by himself and a small team over a six to eight month period.

The process of producing the game would be documented by Two Player Productions, known best for Season 1 of PATV, Penny Arcade’s inter-office television series. Minimum contributions to the project started at as little as $1, but fans who donate $15 to the project will receive a copy of the game via Steam for PC and Mac, exclusive access to the Beta on Steam, access to the video series, and access the private discussion community.

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The second game I picked up from PAX East’s collection of indie games, known as the Boston Indie Showcase, was the survival shooter platformer known as Super Crate Box.

Super Crate Box brings classic arcade gameplay back to your iPhone and PC with its retro art style, chiptune soundtrack, and basic mechanics. Your mission is simple: navigate your way across, up, down, and around some platforms (and a fire pit!) to collect crates filled with goodies that are essential to your survival. Collecting crates not only unlocks new weaponry, including a grenade launcher, land mines, and dual pistols, but new level maps as well. But getting these crates isn’t easy. There’s swarms of enemies to navigate around, and sometimes your weapons just won’t be enough.

This game infuriates me. And not because it’s bad, it’s actually really fun. It’s just hard. I did some quick research, and other players have had similar problems. What’s different about Super Crate Box is that you can’t kill enemies by just jumping on their heads. This familiar mechanic extends back, for most of us, to our earliest childhoods, smashing goombas and other critter enemies in games like Sonic or Mario.

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This year’s Boston Indie Showcase, the impressive list of independent games featured at PAX East in April, is a bit different than in years past- because the games are all mobile based, we’ll all be able to play most of them before the show even happens. Pretty cool, right? Here’s the first of the Boston Indie Showcase that I’ve tried out for myself, a word game that goes beyond Scrabble and Boggle.

SpellTower is like Words with Friends meets word searches, and will appeal to anyone who loves any kind of word puzzles. It’s a pretty simple concept: create words using the letters you’re given. In Tower Mode, you’ll only get 100 letters, but as much time as possible to rack up as many points as you can. In Puzzle Mode, a row is added for each word you make. Rush Mode is timed, meaning the quicker you create words, the longer you’ll survive. Words can be created diagonally, backwards, and even overlap, so you can really get creative in how you form words and clear the board.

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