RPS@PAX 2022: We chat to TinyBuild about Hello Neighbor 2, killer vacuums, giant spiders and a very big bear

If you thought Larian's walled castle booth at this year's PAX East was impressive, wait until you clap eyes on TinyBuild's full-on PAX carnival. It was here where we saw Potion Craft's delightfully detailed little magic tent, for example, as well as the world's largest luminescent, inflatable spider, who was on hand repping their new arachnid-based multiplayer lightsaber game, Spiderheck. To talk more about the stand and the publisher's upcoming slate of games, we spoke to CEO Alex Nichiporchik, all in the company of his good (and grizzly) friend Larry the bear.

There were just over half a dozen TinyBuild games on show at PAX East this year, including Hello Neighbor 2, the upcoming sequel to Dynamic Pixels' creepy survival stalk'em up, as well as Tinykin, a Pikmin-esque 2.5D adventure game - and if you haven't played the Steam demo yet, I'd highly recommend it. Arena shooter Rawmen was also in attendance, as well the aforementioned Spiderheck and Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator (the former of which also has a Steam demo you can enjoy at home). Also available in demo form are TinyBuild's freshly announced rhythm action game Rhythm Sprout: Sick Beats & Bad Sweets, and Justice Sucks, a stealth game about a killer robot vacuum cleaner.

TinyBuild also announced a brand-new game at PAX East this year: Asterigos: Curse Of The Stars. Made by Acme Gamestudio, this is a third-person action RPG that draws on both Greek and Roman mythologies, and will no doubt draw a lot of comparisons to Ubisoft's Immortals: Fenyx Rising when it comes out later this autumn. Based on the short demo I played, Asterigos is looking a lot more linear than Immortals (and doesn't have any wise-cracking gods narrating your every move either), but its blocky, cartoonish visuals, third-person combat, big bosses and 100+ collectibles will surely stir more than a few memories there. Still, the combination of both Greek and Roman mythologies is an intriguing mix, and I'm keen to see how they'll weave these two different but similar pantheons into the game's wider story in the months to come.

I also talked to Nichiporchik about Hello Neighbor 2's sinister new villain and whether he thinks AI-driven baddies will ever overthrow their more authored counterparts in the future. I was also curious to know what it was like launching a game like Asterigos at the show itself, and how different it was to a more traditional kind of game announcement.

This isn't the only interview we did at PAX East either. If you're in need of some more live dev chat, why not take a look at us talking with the director of Cursed To Golf, the folks at Larian about Baldur's Gate 3, and more over on our RPS@PAX tag?