One of my goals this year for PAX East was to play every single game featured in the Boston Indie Showcase, a hand-picked collection of excellent mobile games created by independent developers. After checking out all the other games featured in the showcase, I was excited to see what Not Without You had in store for me on the show floor.

Out of all the games in the Boston Indie Showcase, most of which were very puzzle-heavy, Not Without You was definitely the most challenging of them all.

The blue furry creatures of Not Without You need your help escaping from the lab, which would be easy peasy, if the creatures didn’t move in tandem with one another. Using the environment and obstacles placed in your way, your task is to arrange these creatures in the right formation to lead them out of the lab doors in as few moves as possible.

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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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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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Repo Man (1984), not to be confused with the movie about two guys who go around repossessing people’s internal organs when they miss a payment, is a Punk Rock classic starring Emilio Estevez as a clean cut kid in the dirty business of repossessing cars in the seedy underworld of Los Angeles.

Otto Maddox (Estevez) has just been fired from his job as a supermarket stock boy due to his lack of respect for authority. Later that night at a Punk Rock house party, he also finds out that his girlfriend Debbie is cheating on him with his best friend Duke. To make matters worse, Otto also finds out that his hippie parents gave away money that was promised to Otto for finishing college to a sleazy televangelist. What’s a broke, depressed punker supposed to do now?

After a long night of drinking and wandering the streets, Otto runs into Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who pleads with Otto to help get his pregnant wife’s car out of a bad area and deliver it to the hospital where she’s going into labor. Otto initially refuses to take the job for less than $20 and finds out that he has been suckered into stealing a car.

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Jeff is a jobless 30-year-old slacker man-child who does indeed live in the basement of his mother’s house. He is an expert at marijuana smoke rings, daytime television and pickup basketball but whines and protests when asked to perform a simple household errand for his mother (a wonderful Susan Sarandon). Lost and paralyzed, he casts desperately about for clues on what to do with his life, as per a favorite movie, 2002′s Signs, M. Night Shamalayan’s ridiculously self-serious examination of the eerie and paranormal.

So far the title character sounds like a cliché of the zeitgeist, but as played by the shambolically charming Jason Segel, and in the witty, expertly paced hands of the Duplass brothers, this movie is joyful entertainment from start to finish. Jeff is earnest and open-hearted. When the universe sends a sign, he follows. Never mind that every step ends in folly and humiliation. It is enough for him that there is a path.

That path merges him directly into the way of his distant, scornful brother, Pat (Ed Helms, channeling a lower-runged, far angrier version of his uptight corporate drone in The Office). Pat is an underling who has to spend his days in a hideous paint company shirt and tie, lives in a low-end apartment complex with his sweet and pretty wife (Judy Greer) and is suffering an early midlife crisis manifested by the purchase of a Porsche he can’t even begin to pay off, but hey, at least he has a job.

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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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2012 is here, and yet we haven’t been evaporated just yet. Don’t tell that to the folks who have Willem Defoe dancing around and chewing up the scenery in the newest trailer for 4:44 Last Day on Earth.

The film takes the “end of days” premise to a new level of technology and immediate information. Here’s the quick premise for the flick.

In a large apartment high above the city lives our couple. They’re in love. She’s a painter, he’s a successful actor. Just a normal afternoon – except that this isn’t a normal afternoon, for them or anyone else. Because tomorrow, at 4:44 am, give or take a few seconds, the world will come to an end far more rapidly than even the worst doomsayer could have imagined.

The final meltdown will come not without warnings, but with no means of escape. There will be no survivors. As always, there are those who, as their last cigarette is being lit and the blindfold tightened, will still hope against hope for some kind of reprieve. For a miracle. Not our two lovers. They – like the majority of the Earth’s population – have accepted their fate: the world is going to end.

The flick hits theaters on March 23rd, but you can check out the trailer after the jump.

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In the past 20 years, Kevin Sorbo has become a pretty prominent name in the geek community, spanning over a few different subgenres. Of course, he got on the map by playing Hercules for 5 years straight, and then captaining the space ship in Andromeda for another 5 years.

Since then, he’s been drifting in and out of the comedy and geek genre with films like Meet the Spartans and FDR American Badass!. Now he’s getting a little more play in a film that may not take itself seriously enough. It’s called Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury, and its cynical tone puts films like Tropic Thunder and Machete to shame. Here’s the premise:

A Vietnam Veteran Sal Bando (Sorbo), tortured by his past as a Poolboy, returns home to Van Nuys, California, and a country he doesn’t recognize, in which it seems only Mexicans run pool-cleaning companies. Bando sets off on a brutal mission to reclaim his “rightful” vocation and enact revenge on the man (Trejo) who killed his wife and son.

Not only will fans get cult hero Sorbo in the lead, but Machete himself, Danny Trejo drops in as the film’s main villain. You can also check out a few other special cameos in the trailer after the jump. Poolboy hits DVD and VOD right now, where those are sold.

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Given that the Mayans had a portion of the population convinced that this is the last year on the planet, it makes sense that Hollywood would be willing to exploit the apocalypse by taking it to the world of Romantic Comedies. That’s exactly the plan from with Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.

From writer/director Lorene Scafaria, who last brought us Michael Cera and Kat Dennings running around New York City in Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist comes yet another lengthy-titled film. This time, the twist is a bit more enticing. Here’s the rundown.

Steve Carell and Keira Knightley star in the comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which marks the feature directorial debut of screenwriter Lorene Scafaria. Set in a too-near future, the movie explores what people will do when humanity’s last days are at hand. As the respective journeys of Dodge (Carell) and Penny (Knightley) converge, the two spark to each other and their outlooks – if not the world’s – brighten.

A full cast of funny, with folks like TJ Miller, Patton Oswalt, and Rob Huebel making the end of the world a bit funnier. Take a look at the trailer after the jump, and catch the flick on June 22nd.

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Even though some may criticize us for a bit of self promotion, I don’t care. When one of our team does something cool outside of their work at The Flickcast, I want to make sure to bring it to as many people’s attention as possible.

Case in point today is The Flickcast co-founder Chris Ullrich’s new venture into indie comics and comics publishing. The first comic out of the gate for this new venture is called Believer. Here’s the synopsis:

Believer tells the story of Jack Hollenbeck, disgraced Los Angeles police detective turned tabloid reporter and occasional private investigator who is hired by a mysterious woman and her aging father to locate an an ancient object of incredible value . . . and incredible power.

During the course of Jack’s investigation and search for the object, he soon realizes things are not what they seem as sinister forces, human and otherwise, converge on Los Angeles to prevent him, by any means necessary, from finding the object.

Aided by a woman he doesn’t really trust and relying on his wits, a few friends in the police who don’t hate him, and his knowledge of ancient magics he’s extremely reluctant to use, Jack must brave all manner of hardship to find the object before someone else does and uses its power to enslave mankind.

Believer was written by Chris Ullrich and Joseph Dilworth with pencils by Kris Carter. Economics being what they are in the startup world, the creators are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to help raise finishing funds for the comic series. Why not give them a buck or two?

You can check out some preview pages for Believer after the break.

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