It's Monday, we're all back in our respective homes, and have just posted the remainder of the GDC straggler stories. PAX East and GDC were both insanely busy this year, so much so that we found ourselves wondering if we were actually posting too much event coverage. Regardless, good times were had by all, and like every year, it was awesome to see both familiar faces as well as meeting all sorts of new people at GDC. I've said before, and I'll say it again, if you're involved in game development in any way, GDC is an event you need to get to. GDC 2014 will take place from Monday, March 17 to Friday, March 21, 2014... So plan accordingly!

PAX East kicked off with a bang as Blizzard announced Hearthstone, a cross platform collectable card game. I got to spend a little time with it, and while I can't really speak to the depth and strategy involved without getting deeper into the game, the production values seemed out of this world.

Word of a few game releases also came from the PAX expo floor. Ms. Splosion Man got dated, and details leaked on a iOS port of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Oh, and Ms. Splosion Man was even released while we were at GDC. As an aside, I spent the whole plane ride back to Chicago playing it.

I got a quick look at Magic 2014 at the Wizards of the Coast booth, although I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least vaguely disappointed with how close to 2013 it is. New cards, sure, but as a long-time Magic player I wish there was more refinements to some minor things that'd vastly improve gameplay for familiar players. Following that, I stumbled across the developers of Organ Trail [$2.99] who were excited to show off a teaser for their upcoming Wizards & Warp Drives, a D&D-style shooter-ish spin on FTL.

We recorded our podcast with me chiming in from Boston, then I quickly hopped on a plane for San Francisco where GDC started. This year we experimented with 100% video coverage, and I think it went really well. The first game we saw was Snow Siege by Milkbag Games which was a crazy mash-up of tower defense, card collecting, and Tetris. From there, Kepa came by to show us Wayward, the entirely randomized roguelike spiritual successor to Mage Gauntlet [$2.99]. I'm particularly excited for this game.

We spent some time with Cubemen 2, and if you liked the original Cubemen [$1.99 (HD)] you're going to be in for a treat as the theme of the sequel definitely seems to be "even more and even better." If you're into ragdoll punishment, the next Stair Dismount is totally going to be your thing. I mean, punishing your dude in Stair Dismount [Free] was great, so it'd stand to reason that doing anything to that formula is going to be even more fun.

Fans of Knights of Pen & Paper [$1.99] were in for a treat with this GDC as a new update was revealed with all sorts of cool new features. Also, while iMech Online has been in development for ages, it definitely looks like it's getting way closer to release with our hands-on where the developers seem confident that we'll see the game in the wild next month. Oh, and while Magic 2014 and Hearthstone might've been overshadowing PAX East, the talk of the collectable card town at GDC definitely was GRL Games' Rocket Patrol. Oh, and while we don't typically cover kid-centric stuff, Hakitzu is definitely worth a look as it's a puzzle game that actually teaches you how to code.

I've been really stoked for any news on the release of the upcoming Leisure Suit Larry remake, and we got an extensive hands-on at GDC. CEO and Larry enthusiast Paul Trowe walked us through the game, which admittedly might be a little less than work safe in our video. (And as an aside, if Larry is up your alley, take a look at the just-released iOS port of Fester Mudd: Curse of the Gold.)

I was impressed with the demo we saw of Third Eye Crime, as the Spymouse [Free] style gameplay melded incredible well with a noir-theme. Speaking of games with cool atmosphere, Tengami knocked it out of the park with a puzzle adventure game that's actually set in a pop up book. It's really clever how all the interactions both look and feel. Additionally, while the dual stick shooter aisle of the App Store has been a little defunct as of late, we were happy to see some new contenders such as Annihilate which definitely gave us some Geometry Wars vibes.

Las Vegas will be joining the ranks of other iOS board games, which is an always welcome sight with how well they work on touch platforms. From there in our rapid-fire meeting schedule we hopped about as far as you can get from board games to the platformer genre with the sequel to Trace [Free], aptly named Trace 2. Switching gears with something that feels a bit more natural on the touch screen we spent loads of time with Halfbrick's upcoming Fish Out of Water, which puts you in charge of flinging fish for a set of picky judges ready to rate you on your performance. I spent the whole week insisting the game needs more sparkles.

I'm really stoked for the above Breach & Clear, which Call of Duty's Robert Bowling gave us a full walkthrough of. I think this game will be a hit, although it remains to be seen just how well (or poorly) the free to play implementation will be. A similar hardcore-ish title that we saw next was Dead Squared which is a clever combination of roguelikes and first person shooters. ...And again, the variety we see at GDC is crazy as just after getting involved in a rogue-like, Brad from Be-Rad Entertainment was standing there waiting to show us AnonA, a game built at a NASA game jam with a gameplay mechanic that hinges on 3D printing.

Oh, and if you, like me, have been wondering what in the world happened to Drifter after they got all that money on Kickstarter... Well, the game has come out of hiding. It looks awesome, and I totally can't wait to play it. We got a fairly extensive walkthrough, take a look:

Be sure to take a look at the video for DeckWar. It's a pretty crazy game that I guess you'd describe as a CCG, but the way to cards link to the gameplay seems really unique. On the subject of unique games, there was also Vitamin Z, which is a fixed position shooter... Except you're shooting fruits and vegetables. From there we hopped over to Stellar Wars, which takes Liv Games' saga of sidescrolling battlers to space. Legendary Wars [$1.99] was great, and if you watch the video, all the improvements will be immediately clear.

Golf Star by Com2uS seemed really cool, as it's your typical golf game wrapped in this whole almost-MMO wrapper filled with items and avatars to unlock. It's all multiplayer-enabled too, so hopefully a community picks up after it launches. Following Golf Star we saw two other super casual titles from Trigger Happy, Feed Frankie and $1 Popcorn, each using swipe controls in slightly different ways.

I'm not traditionally that into sports games, but the above Football Heroes has me super excited. I don't watch football, like, ever, but if you make it arcade-y enough, I'm all over it. I'm also all over Gamevil's upcoming Diablo-like Dark Avenger. It looks awesome, and coupled with a super high frame rate I'm hoping it'll be as fun as it seems.

Drastically shifting genres again our next meeting was with Pixowl Games who showed us a substantial update for The Sandbox [Free]. Definitely give that a look if you're into that game. Island Escape seems interesting as well, they take super fast-paced mini-games with an over-arching story. I'm anxious to spend more time with it to see how it all pans out. Oh, and there's even something for Fred fans in the works with Skiing Fred which will join Falling Fred [Free] and others on the App Store soon.

Continuing the theme of sequels and spinoffs is Soccer Rally 2. Check out the above video. Meetings then took another turn to the RPG-side with Pylon, which puts Quantum Squid in the driver seat of making their own Diablo-like. And of course, it wouldn't be a GDC without an awesome Crescent Moon game. This year's was Exiles. Take a look:

Hopping genres as far as you can go once again, the next game on the lineup was Zombie Faceball which combines zombies and baseball. Hey, it could happen? Crystal Siege was the first traditional tower defense game we saw, and its video is totally worth a look as they're doing some neat things.

It was at this point that things were getting pretty late in the day on Friday, so we quickly recorded our podcast which features Halfbrick's Phil Larsen as well as our own Arn, Nissa, and Marianne. We recorded it live, so the quality is a little different, but it's still a good listen.

Once we all got home, we only had a few cleanup stories to post of games we saw really late in the week. The first of which was Bean Dreams, which is the sequel to Bean's Quest [$0.99], a title which is always on any short list of best platformers of mine. We got a look at The Other Brothers which is coming soon, and saved the best for last with five minutes of Oceanhorn. Be sure to watch this:

And last, but certainly not least, if you're interested in the developer side of things be sure to check out the live episode of Walled Garden Weekly. I'm on it, and we're talking about the various aspects of freemium. Alternatively, you could just subscribe in iTunes.

Alright, with this out of the way, now I can finally exhale. GDC and PAX East were awesome. I can't wait for them to roll around next year. Thanks for everyone we met with, my staff who busted their butts on all this coverage, and all of our readers who enjoyed our videos. This has been the craziest ten days in a really long time.

This is incredible. Blizzard Entertainment's big game reveal at PAX East is Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, a free-to-play collectible card game that's coming to PC, Mac, and eventually iPad. Let this one sink in for a moment: Blizzard, the studio behind some of the biggest and greatest PC titles ever, is going to put a game on iPad. Wild!

Set in the World of Warcraft universe, each Hearthstone deck will revolve around heroes of nine of the MMO's classes. At least 300 cards will be available at launch, and you'll be able to earn or buy packs. Also, you'll be able to put together your own decks and be able to "disenchant" duplicates and craft better, presumably original cards from them.

The competitive side of the game will feature one-on-one fights via Battle.Net, which, if you didn't know, is the service Blizzard uses for its PC games. We're not sure what the iPad version will use -- details are still coming out from the event.

Chances are we'll have a lot more on this one as the day goes on. Hearthstone is due out at some point this year. The iPad version will follow the PC and Mac release. A playable build is apparently available on the PAX East show floor, so we'll probably have more on this for you later.

UPDATE: Hey, you can register for the beta right now.

That headline is a mouthful, but if you read it you know basically everything you need to know about the next few weeks. Now, let's get into a bit more detail. This year we're once again going to be at GDC, and I'm a bad enough dude to do the ironman competition of back to back conventions so I'll be at PAX East as well the immediate weekend before GDC. If you're a TouchArcade reader, this means starting next Friday-ish you'll be in for a explosion of previews and other news about upcoming games as everyone at these two events show us what they've been up to. For an idea of what that's going to look like, check out our previous GDC coverage. This will be our fifth year at the event, which still seems kind of crazy to me.

If you're a developer attending either event and you have a cool new game to show us, feel free to get in touch with me to schedule some kind of meeting. I've found the easiest way to go about doing this is via instant message I prefer Google Talk as everyone and their brother seems to have a half dozen different Google logins these days. My username on Google Talk is the same as my email address which you can get by solving this CAPTCHA.

Be prepared to pitch me what you're going to show us, as we're typically totally slammed at these events and are going to be a bit more choosy with meeting requests this year. If you don't have a game to show us, but are interested in getting some drinks or otherwise just hanging out, I made a Twitter list of everyone from TouchArcade who is going to be at GDC. We'll probably be spending lots of time at Denny's if previous years are any indication.

Generally speaking, we hang out in the lobby of the Marriott during the day, in the very back sitting at one of those tables with the plasma TV's over them. It'll make sense when you get there. We use the Elgato Game Capture HD to snag direct capture footage of iOS games these days, so please make sure your game works with screen mirroring via video out. It likely already does, but we've run into weird issues with games from developers who didn't even know their game didn't work with the Apple Digital AV adapter because there wasn't much reason to test it out.

We're doing our party a little differently at GDC this year, and in a weird stroke of pre-planning decided to rent out an actual venue instead of taking over the Marriott lobby. The party will be held at 111 Minna Gallery on Tuesday the 26th at 7:00 PM. Space is a little limited, so head over to the party site to request an invite. There will probably be an after party of sorts too, and the best way to find out about that is probably by following us on Twitter.

If you're going to be at GDC and you're interested in hearing me talk about iOS games, you'll have three opportunities to do that:

• Monday @ 11:15 AM: There's More to Life Than Press Releases and Promo Codes - An hour long talk by yours truly
• Tuesday @ 4:30 PM: Walled Garden Weekly: LIVE - A special live episode of Walled Garden Weekly with special guests Keith Shepherd of Imangi Studios and, um, me.
• Friday @ 2:30: Your PR Is Broken: Journalists Speak Out - A panel where I rage out about embargoes and other silly things.

Last, but certainly not least by any stretch of the imagination, is stickers. So, when I posted about getting 2" x 2" custom app icon stickers it was mostly driven by the fact that a few people on Twitter were talking about how it'd be cool to get enough people to make them that we can actually have a sort of sticker trading GDC mini game. And, well, that's exactly what has happened. The dudes from We Heart Games are maintaining a checklist and there's a stupid amount of stickers on there now. I'm sort of blown away by the response, even big publishers are getting in on the game, or at least, are emailing me about it.

To get stickers on the cheap, head over to Sticker Mule. If you click that link you'll get $10 of credit on your first order, and if you use coupon code TOUCHARCADE you'll save another $25. From there, you basically can spend anywhere from $15 to unlimited dollars on however many stickers you want. This coupon code is only good until the 15th, so hurry it up!

I think that's everything. Just to sum everything up:

• We'll be at PAX East and GDC.
• Contact me on Google Talk for meetings.
• Sign up for our party which is on the 26th
• I'm doing a few things at GDC, come to them.
• Buy stickers, use coupon code TOUCHARCADE

Also I'm big into ante league if anyone feels like bringing their deck.

One of the (many) cool things about PAX East is that it hasn't been entirely overrun by iOS-related things like GDC and WWDC. I'm not saying that's a bad thing by any means, but it is nice getting a chance to see what the rest of the industry is up to. Anyway, when the Mac App Store launched, we did some barebones coverage of some Mac games, and a few sales. We also made some suggestions that the Mac App Store could serve as a glimpse in to what could potentially be coming to the iOS App Store.

As it stands, that still hasn't really happened, but what has been curious to watch is how popular iOS apps trickle out to other App Stores. The App Store in this particular instance of note is Intel's initiative called "AppUp". Originally targeted at netbooks, AppUp is home to apps that basically run on almost any Windows-based PC with plans for supporting the MeeGo tablet platform.

It would be easy to write this off as yet another clone of the App Store, but consider this: AppUp likely has the absolute largest pool of potential customers out there. The apps they're selling are targeted at the meager system specifications of your typical netbook, which means most of them will also likely run on any reasonably recent PC. Also, they've managed to meet the benchmark of a legit App Store by offering Angry Birds as well and it's hard to deny the power of Intel as a company when it comes to shaping the world of computing.

I'm not sure where AppUp will go, but I have to admit I do find the whole thing oddly intriguing. If you're on a PC, give the client a download and check it out. I can't wait to see how all of these different markets settle out in the next 5-10 years and what effect they have on the App Store. AppUp seems to have a significant advantage due to the sheer number of capable hardware out there, Intel just has to make people aware of the service.

On the first day of PAX East I met with Rob Lemon and the rest of the Gilded Skull game to get a closer look at a fairly functional build of Galactic Keep: Dice Battles. Inspired by table top RPG's, Galactic Keep is set in a sci-fi fantasy universe and as the title would hint, weighs heavily on dice battles amongst the various enemies you come across on your adventure.

The game is still in development, but you can get an idea of what's to come by this brief teaser trailer and series of screenshots:

The developers have been very active in the thread on our forums where they've been answering questions and holding various contests to include forum members in the game's development. Galactic Keep: Dice Battles is still a ways off, but as a fan of dice powered RPG's, I cannot wait to finally have this game on my phone.

PAX East officially came to a close this evening, following three solid days of gaming insanity. The Penny Arcade Expo originally started as a small gaming convention on the west coast in 2004 has grown in to an unstoppable juggernaut that is by far the convention to go to if you're a gamer. The entire event actually has a fairly interesting history behind it, especially considering its meager beginnings with only a few thousand attendees. But, like most things Penny Arcade touches, (such as the Child's Play charity) it's not entirely surprising what a runaway success the event has become.

PAX East is a spinoff of the main west coast PAX (affectionally referred to as "PAX Prime") and as such, was a much more intimate event. This didn't stop anyone from having a great time, whether you're in to pen and paper RPG's, card games, board games, handhelds, or console and PC gaming, PAX East had something to offer. If you're an iPhone developer, there are much better events to go to such as GDC or WWDC, but if you're a gamer of any kind, you really owe it to yourself to at least give some serious consideration to attending the nearest PAX.

Attending the event with a media badge is a little awkward, since as someone who loves every subcategory of gaming, there's nothing I would have liked more than to spend the whole weekend playing Magic: The Gathering, D&D, and every pick up game of Settlers of Catan I can get my hands on... But, in the age old TouchArcade tradition of taking one for the team, I did everything I could to meet up with everyone who contacted me including fan favorites like Venan Entertainment as well as fans of the site who just wanted to talk iPhone and forum drama.

We're going to have more followup posts in the upcoming week as everyone gets back home and starts sending us assets for things from PAX, but in the time being, here are some things to look forward to:

Space Miner is getting a substantial update. We absolutely loved the game in our review, forum members are crazy about it, and it's one of the few iPhone video games I've played in a very long time that I enjoyed so much I immediately restarted on the next higher difficulty upon completing the game.

If you're like me, and have almost extracted everything possible out of Space Miner, you'll be happy to know that they're expanding the end-game to include more licenses, weapons to buy, new alien tech to find, and new Plus+ awards to earn. They're calling this a "HD update", as in addition to the gameplay tweaks, they've also implemented new shaders and other graphical effects to make the game look even better.

But wait, there's more. If the included difficulty modes weren't enough for you, they're also implementing a HardcORE perma-death mode. While there's no doubt that perma-death gameplay modes aren't for everyone, I really like the thrill that comes from the potential of losing everything from dying, and judging by the popularity of iPhone rogulikes, I doubt I'm alone on that.

But wait, there's even more. (I realize I'm starting to sound at Billy Mays at this point.) Space Miner Blast is in the works, a spinoff game that they hope to be done in a month or so. Venan is taking the basic framework of Space Miner, and turning it in to an arcade style action game where you fight an onslaught of robots and asteroids and get upgrades on the fly. Details are scarce right now, but I can't help but give a massive thumbs up to turning Space Miner in to a pick up and play action game.

Best of all, Space Miner 2 also apparently is currently on the whiteboard at Venan. Right now we know even less about the sequel than Space Miner Blast, but I've been assured it will be even more awesome in every way imaginable. Finally, Venan is looking forward to the iPad, but really want to get physical devices to test on before committing to anything.

Overall, PAX East was amazing, and as I mentioned earlier, you've really got to figure out a way to go to one regardless of what kind of gamer you are. If you have the choice, I'd attend the main PAX Prime, but if traveling across the country is an issue, PAX East is just as good. Stay tuned to TouchArcade, as we will have more details on the games I've mentioned in the PAX posts as soon as we get them.

PAX East started this afternoon, and after crowd surfing my way inside the convention center, I met a bunch of cool people and saw a few neat iPhone games. The craziest thing about PAX, compared to the conventions we usually go to, is that this is a convention for gamers by gamers. GDC, WWDC, and the other events we go to are all a great time, but unless you're a developer, there's not much reason to go. Anyone who likes games of any kind will feel at home at PAX.

So because this isn't specifically a "show off your iPhone game" event, my meetings today were mostly brief, and resulted in making some great contacts and waiting for everyone to get back to their hotels (or back home in some cases) to send over some preview versions, screenshots, or gameplay video.

Two games to look forward to finding more about are DrNanoX and Galactic Keep: Dice Battles. Mission Critical Studios' DrNanoX is a third person shooter with some puzzle elements set inside of the human body. The setting of the game reminded me a lot of the 1987 sci-fi comedy "Innerspace", as the game focuses on being shrunk down and solving medical problems from the inside of the body. Levels range from wandering around arteries to saving a patient's brain.

The developers are putting the final touches on a new gameplay trailer, which I'll post as part of a PAX East followup. The game is still in development, but it sounds like they're on the home stretch and it should be available on the App Store soon.

If you're a regular reader of the TouchArcade forums, you will likely already be aware of Galactic Keep: Dice Battles. We've mention the game numerous times on the front page, and there's a massive thread in our forums with the developers keeping everyone updated on the game's status. I saw Galactic Keep in motion today, and while the screenshots of the game look cool themselves, it's even better in motion.

We should have more details on Galactic Keep: Dice Battles early next week, and maybe even a gameplay trailer or actual hands-on footage. From what I saw today, the game is turning out to be even more than I was hoping for, and likely will be a required purchase for anyone interested in old school dice-powered RPG's.

Finally, I met with Namazu Studios and they showed me their recently launched iDuel Online [Free]. The game seemed similar to games like Epic Pet Wars, My Brute and other online battle games that have become so popular, but iDuel Online seems to have much more interactivity to it as you battle against players in real time. The game even was able to work via the absolutely abysmal 3G connection I had at the convention center.

There's all kinds of character customization, online leaderboards, items to equip your dude with, and everything else you'd expect out of a game like this. iDuel Online is free to play, and is supported by in-game advertisements and entirely optional micropayments to buy in-game items for a slight edge over your opponents-- Although the developers assured me players who don't buy these premium items will still remain competitive with those who do.

It was nice meeting everyone today, and I'm really looking forward to the next two days of PAX. I still have room in my meeting schedule, so if you're in the Boston area (either for PAX or not) and want to show off your iPhone game, don't hesitate to contact us. Send an email to tips@toucharcade.com or shoot me an IM on AIM if you want to meet up.

Following GDC, the next stop on the TouchArcade summer road trip is PAX East in Boston, MA. I'll be there for the whole weekend, and would love to meet up with any iPhone developers that have anything new, cool, and/or exciting to show me.

My schedule is wide open right now for meetings, and I plan to spend the whole weekend bumming around PAX if you would like to meet up. Passes for the event are already sold out, but if you're local to the Boston area and have a game you'd like to show off, don't let that stop you from contacting us.

Send an email to tips@toucharcade.com or shoot me an IM on AIM if you want to meet up. If you're on the other side of the country, I'll also be at 360iDev from April 11th to the 14th in San Jose, CA. We'll post something else when we're ready to start booking meetings for that event.