Of the handful of things I appreciate about Pax Playground, the most significant is the way it reminds me of recess. Its very existence is playful — this is, after all, a Pax game that lasts twenty minutes and bucks tradition by refusing to touch history with a ten-foot pole, let alone compose loopy footnotes about it.

More importantly, David Masnato, who previously did the art for Matilda Simonsson’s Turncoats and Pax Penning, uses Pax Playground to reproduce the anxieties of childhood. Like a child, you step into the game buoyed by possibility — and weighted down by it. As a game about play, it’s playful; as a game about becoming yourself, it’s as fretful as a kid trying to decide which sweet to pick out at the store.

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