A standout new game at PAX this year was Enfant, developed by the NSW team Zebrar. In the game, you play as an Elephant who is looking for his herd in a sort of post-apocalyptic world, where there are signs of humanity amongst the decaying leftovers of its structures.

Speaking to one of the developers before trying the game out, he said it was inspired by 3D-action adventure games, such as Jak & Daxter 2/3, but with a more Metroidvania twist on the genre. And the biggest positive feedback I gave him when I finished the game was that his pitch was spot on.

I very quickly started to get somewhat distracted when I was playing Enfant as there was an optional quest to find some frogs, and there’s an adorable cutscene that plays each time you find one where our protaganist picks one up, and that was worth hunting for them alone, however, I eventually realised I’d been playing for a while, and it’s a convention space, so I wanted to finish it and give the next player a go at Enfant.

Making my way through what seems like it’d be the opening section of the game, or at least a proof-of-concept for it, there are a couple of basic mechanics introduced. You can open the protagonist’s backpack and move items around in a grid structure like in the Resident Evil games, and you can have one thing equipped to the side of the pack for quick use. At the start of the demo, this is a lamp that you can use to burn down vines, but you also have to deal with it going out if you jump into water. In the later section of the demo, you can put a knife-like object there to cut through tougher vines. You also can hit things and enemies, and, of course, being an elephant, you can suck up some water in your trunk and let it loose.

The demo featured a good mix of platforming, combat, and puzzle-solving elements, which ticked all the boxes I know I love in the best games of the genre. Being inspired by the Jak & Daxter series is a good place to look for those elements. There wasn’t too much to the combat here, but I could see it getting more complicated as the game continued, and maybe adding in a weapon — maybe a staff would make sense here?

The art-direction is also very engading, espeially the character designs and the animation on the protaganist was very good, to the point I begun to do some camera swinging as they squirted water around, or sat by a campfire, and could see some small attention to detail in the face that showed this a character the team are already building a lot of personality, even with small details into.

Every year at PAX, there’s one surprising game that I didn’t know anything about, hasn’t got a dev team I know of, and I can’t wait to see how the game evolves. This year, that’s definitely Enfant.

[Explosion Network attended PAX Australia 2025 with a provided Media Pass.]