Pax Australia: the eight best indie games to get addicted to next year

The Penny Arcade Expo (Pax) is one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world, bringing together classic consoles, the latest shooters, mobile games, PCs, Macs, tabletops – and the people who love them. For the latest event in Melbourne, Pax Australia, the biggest companies in the world – including Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony – came to show off their wares, but the most interesting stuff was relegated to one corner of the exhibition hall: Pax Rising, where independent developers let you play their latest games. Australia used to have several major international studios producing games but from 2008, several mainstays shut their doors – Sega, THQ and 2K among them – due to the global financial crisis and the rising Australian dollar. What's sprung out of this collapse is a series of small innovative Australian studios, most of them with between three and 30 employees. We've had smash hits such as Fruit Ninja, Crossy Road, Flight Control and Shooty Skies sell millions of copies around the world each year – but there are many more games that fail than succeed.