PAXU Recap - 2025
- Joseph Frederick
- Dec 28, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
Hey folks! It's been awhile since I've posted here but PAX Unplugged just happened a few weeks ago and I wanted to share my experience.
PAX Unplugged (PAX) is a convention held in Philadelphia at the end of each year that's all about board games and TTRPGs. It's quickly growing into one of the largest board game conventions in the United States. To my knowledge it's only surpassed by GenCon in terms of most attendees but wins out in terms of vibes in my humble opinion.
I have been to Origins and GenCon twice now but despite people nagging me, I've never attended PAXU before this year. Even though it's a much closer trip for me than GenCon or Origins, it usually happens in December which is normally a bad time for me and my family with all the holiday activities and travel. But this year PAXU was in November, so at the very least I planned to take a day trip up to Philly to experience it. As I was making these plans the submission for the PAX Rising Showcase had just opened. The Rising Showcase is a spotlight for a handful of indie publishers that PAX selects each year to put on display in the middle of the exhibit hall. It's a great was to get your foot in the door, not just in the board game industry but to become a full blown vendor at PAXU in the future as well. I submitted Topping. In October I got word that Toppings was chosen to be in the showcase along with five other incredibly talented indie publishers. Which gave me a little more than a month to start prepping, looking for staffing help and promoting. 😬
Luckily I had friends with lodging already at the convention hotel that I was able to stay with. Otherwise finding a hotel in the area would've been a nightmare. We set out from the Washington DC area early Thursday morning and got to Philly in an easy two and a half hour drive.
When we arrived we wen straight to the convention loading docks to unload only to find out once we got inside that the showcase hadn't been set-up yet. Luckily, Lucky Duck Games was nice enough to let me keep my wagon of supplies with them while we waited. A few hours later and we were cleared to start setting up. Set-up was a breeze and I got to meet a few of the other showcase publishers.
With the booth set-up, we explored what we could while most everything was still being set-up. We got to meet up with friends and played some games. We made sure to get a good night sleep so we'd be ready for the big day. On Friday morning the the exhibit hall and 10am and it was go time! It was pretty much non-stop demos until 6pm each day.
The reception of Toppings was more than I could have hoped for. People were really excited to see the close-to-final game. It was great hearing "Oooos" when people passed by and "Aaahhs" when I showed them some of the cool things in the game. Josh and Jim Firkins of The Dapper Meeple Podcast came to our very first demo of the show.
Since Toppings is still pre-Kickstarter campaign, my main goal for the weekend was to get the word out and get email signs ups. Overall I was quite happy with the amount of emails and followers I got on the Kickstarter Preview page.
One of the ways we engaged with attendees was by letting people spin a pizza wheel to win prizes like stickers with their favorite toppings or a $5 gift card to one of the local pizzerias at the convention marketplace. Any show like this is incredibly hard to do on your own and I definitely couldn't have done it without the help of my amazing staff. A HUGE thank you to Jess Altman, Kyle Cushman, Patrick O' Brian, Sam Winfield, Jake Brooks and Suzie Nieman. 🙏
Also, GeeksvsGeeks were nice enough to do an interview with me about Toppings.
Outside of the exhibit hall hours, I got a chance to play a few games. Some released and some yet to be released. Here's what I played in no particular order.
Deer! By Jordan Thomas - A fast-passed game about trying to collect deer cards by being the first to grab them but be careful, grabbing the wrong cards can cost you. Jordan plans to run Deer! on Kickstarter in 2026.
Wriggle Roulette, by Bruno Faidutti and Jun Sasaki - A fantastic group-based push-your-luck game from Oink Games.
Pip-It, by Jay Bell - I love me a good dice manipulation game and Pip-It by a friend of mine Jay Bell is something special. I have seen a lot about this game through its development but I finally got a chance to play it at PAXU and it did not disappoint.
Lion Dancers, by Pauline Kong and Marie Wong - I had a chance to meet Amanda Panda of the BGG Podcast and play this beautiful prototype. Lion Dancers will be on Kickstarter in 2026 from Hot Banana Games
Paper Jam, by Gene Koo and Joe Kell - Color Jam is coloring with friends with a twist. Each crayon and section of the coloring book has an assigned number that has to match the crayon. But when you use a crayon, the crayon's numbers move down a row. Leading to a thinky puzzle about what to color where and when.
One of the highlights of PAXU was attending the Night Market. A thing I didn't know existed until the day of. It's basically a market of hand-made and small-print-run games directly from the designers that made them. Here are the games I picked up:
PAXU was a surprisingly refreshing convention experience for me and I'm already thinking about next year now!
Cheers,
Joseph F
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