PAX Australia's turning 10, and putting on a big birthday show for the occasion

PAX Australia is 10 years old this year, which means it is officially old enough to solve a mystery by cycling around with its friends while uncovering the town's dark secrets. It is also old enough to put on a gaming convention with a stacked lineup of exhibitors.

Bethesda and Sega will both be at PAX Australia in 2023, with Sega showing both Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, which tells Kiryu's story between Yakuza 6 and 8, and retro platformer Sonic Superstars. Devolver Digital will be there to showcase heartmelting action-adventure The Plucky Squire, being developed by All Possible Futures, and New Zealand developer PikPok will demo sidescrolling zombie survival game Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days.

Our favorite part of PAX is always PAX Rising, where you can play upcoming indie games and meet their makers. This year that will include: The Dungeon Experience, a fantasy adventure theme park with a mud crab as its Dungeon Master; The Drifter, a point-and-click murder mystery in which you are the murder victim; darkwebSTREAMER, a horror game about the nightmare of having to play videogames for a living; and Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero, a third-person action game in which you are a combat wombat.

Southeast Asian indie games delegation SEA What I Made! (SWIM) will also bring 15 games from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, in genres that apparently range "from turn-based RPGs to Southeast Asian-inspired Diablo-likes and even restaurant management sims."

As always, tabletop games will be included as well, with the first demos in Australia of trading card game Star Wars: Unlimited, as well as opportunities to learn to play Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.

Opening the convention will be this year's storytime speaker Erika Ishii, who you may know as the voice of Valkyrie in Apex Legends, Hermes in Stray Gods, Ruth Dzeng in Cyberpunk 2077, and like half of the Spacers you shot in Starfield, you monster. Ishii has also starred in actual-play RPG shows like Dimension 20, Critical Role, and the Worlds Beyond Number podcast, which is great and you should listen to it.

PAX Australia will run from Friday October 6 to Sunday October 8 at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, and both three-day badges and badges for Saturday have already sold out. You can still buy tickets for Friday and Sunday from the PAX Australia website.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.