PAX East 2015 just ended and we’re here to give you the highlights of one of the year’s biggest gaming conventions.

Gigantic

Born out of a love for MMO raids, pulled out of pools of MOBA action, and crystallized with cartoonish art style, Gigantic hit the scene hard at both PAX South and PAX East. Its uniquely fun combination of different game modes, interesting characters, and fast paced gameplay make it a good contender for the next big competitive game in esports.

In Gigantic, you’ll play 5v5 in a third person action perspective. The goal of each map is to kill the other team’s guardian, a gigantic monster, while protecting your own. To do this, you’ll need to capture a number of points on the map in order to give your guardian power to attack the opposition’s guardian. Once a point is captured, you can summon a monster to buff that point or protect it. Every kill you get also nets you Focus points that you can use to upgrade the monsters on your captured points or use to unleash a powerful attack on your enemies. You can also upgrade your own abilities in your match to get stronger passive abilities and upgrade your attacks. Once your guardian gets enough points, he’ll attack the other team’s guardian, leaving it open to attack on a weakpoint, although sometimes, your guardian has enough power to kill the weakpoint itself. Once three of the guardian’s weakpoints been attacked, your team wins.

Sound complicated? It really kind of is, but don’t worry, it gets a lot more intuitive as you play. And with over 10 unique playable characters each with their own attack abilities and styles, you’ll be learning a lot.

Gigantic aims to be out by fall, launching exclusively on Xbox One and Windows 10 simultaneously as a free to play game. You can sign up to test the game right now on their site, though, so do that and hope for the best! This was seriously one of the most fun online games I’ve played in years.

Platform: Xbox One and Windows 10

Release date: Fall 2015

Chariot

One day, a game developer decided he wanted to create a co-op game that wasn’t just the single player campaign, but with two people. Something unique in which both players maybe had to care about the safety of an item and had to work together to solve puzzles and carry it to safety.

Luckily, he worked for a game company and made it happen.

Chariot finds a princess and her boyfriend transporting her father’s remains to a long rumored, but lost family burial ground. They’re accompanied by the king’s ghost, often criticizing how often they let his remains hit the ground a little too hard or telling the princess’s boyfriend he should have fallen down that pit instead of her. Along the way, they’ll have to fight off looters who want to attack the wagon, pull it across tough terrains, and solve puzzles using their ingenuity teamwork.

Playing it with two players sitting next to each other is the best way to experience Chariot. There’s no competitiveness involved and you really have to work together with your partner to get anything done. It encourages talking out approaches to the puzzles or using powerups to get the chariot over a gap. The game has a great flow to it, with the puzzles being seamless with the rest of the level. Along with puzzles there’s opportunities to do fun stuff like ride the wagon down hills or hang off the wagon to collect some items.

Chariot is an awesome game to experience with a friend. It’s out on PSN, Xbox Live, and PC right now, so go pick it up, grab a buddy and get to work.

Platforms: PC, Wii U, Xbox One, PS4

Release date: Out now

Pollen

Pollen bills itself as an Oculus Rift experience for life on a space station. Their promotional material asks for recruits to join them on board to conduct experiments. The environments are incredibly reminiscent of Alien: Isolation.

But I can’t figure out what the hell the point is.

I asked the developer when I played the demo, but was only told that everything was interactive. I wasn’t told about a particular point or goal or objective. During my very brief time with the demo, I kept waiting for something to go wrong. Some kind of spaceship accident or collision with an alien life form. Hell, even another person spilling coffee would suffice. Instead, I purchased a can of beer from a vending machine, went to the gym to shoot a basketball, looked at newspapers, and played a virtual game inside the game that was more fun than the game I was playing.

I’m still not clear on whether or not there’s a twist or some hook to keep me interested. It’s not an action game, it’s not a horror game, it’s not an ironig simulator, it’s not even a game right now. Granted, this is all based on what I’ve seen from the demo. Maybe there’s an incredible build up to the turn that they’re planning for months that actually sprawls out in to the real world when it becomes a dystopian space adventure where you need to navigate the station to safety before getting caught in a fatal, orbit-altering gravitational field.

Or maybe it’s actually just about being a space man and nothing more.

Platforms: PC

Release date: 2015