PAX Aus Indie Showcase 2026 - Thrive
The PAX AUS Indie Showcase is a chance to see some of the best new and upcoming titles from the ANZ digital and tabletop development scene, with past winners including such celebrated games as Hollow Knight, Unpacking, Copycat, The Drifter, Kingless and many more. The 2026 Indie Showcase is sure to once again be a highlight of the event and Player2 encourages visitors to PAX AUS to make their way to the PAX Rising area and check out the following title, as well as the many other excellent digital and tabletop indies on display.
Thrive comes from designer Sasha Markovic, who made the move from World Champion level competitive TCG player to designer on Flesh and Blood before launching Avant-Card Games, his own design studio. Thrive is their debut title which promises cute aesthetics with compelling gameplay.
Stephen del Prado: Hi Sasha, thanks so much for speaking to Player2 about Thrive! How does it feel to be one of only six tabletop Indie Showcase winners for 2026?
Sasha Markovic: ABSOLUTELY SURREAL! After nearly 4 years, 150+ prototypes, & thousands of playtests, it’s extra special because it’s our debut game.
Stephen: Tell us about Avant-Card Games, how did the company get its start and what inspired the design of Thrive?
Sasha: Frustration and curiosity were the catalyst for trying my hand at making a career out of my own games. Thrive was the prototype that ironically kept surviving and was most requested to be replayed by playtesters. It eventually became the game I couldn’t stop working on.
Stephen: How did you get into game design and what are some of your favourite tabletop games?
Sasha: Even though I studied game design and development (second major in a Comp Sci Bachelors), I broke through by joining Legend Story Studio to help design and develop the Flesh and Blood Trading Card Game after winning some of their early major events. It’s been my dream since I was at least 5 years old. My Mount Rushmore of card games are:
- Magic: the Gathering (the giant whose shoulders we all stand on)
- Netrunner
- Flesh and Blood TCG
- Marvel Snap (predatory monetisation mechanics aside)
Stephen: With this type of background in the industry, would you ever consider moving Avant-Card into the TCG/LCG space?
Sasha: This might be one of the most common questions I get asked: “Why didn’t you start with a TCG?”. I have a long-standing history with TCGs (close to 25 years now), plenty of experience with them across all aspects, and it’s a wildly successful business model. It makes sense for me to start there, right?
I definitely wouldn’t rule out a large-scale “lifestyle” game like a TCG, but I would first want to establish Avant-Card and prove that it can produce, deliver, and support a world class experience. I’ve observed that lifestyle games require critical mass to sustain themselves, and I don’t want to put the cart before the horse by publishing a game that lacks the infrastructure to support it.
One of the things Avant-Card stands and strives for is exploring formats outside the norm. Thrive is very much a product of that thinking.
Stephen: Animals are a quite popular theme in boardgames at the moment, did the theme come before the mechanics or was it borne out of the design process?
Sasha: Mechanics first. I believe bottom-up for game loop, then top-down for theme.
Stephen: Thrive has an inviting, colourful art style – who is the artist behind this and was it an intentional choice to juxtapose against the tension of the gameplay?
Sasha: If it weren’t for Francisco Riolobos you’d be looking at stuff like this:
The visual direction is absolutely intentional. Like the gameplay, I wanted it to look approachable on the surface but reveal a deeper layer once you get into it. Cute animals, deceptively tense. We have hundreds of illustrations in the vault, and many more in the pipeline. I can’t wait for you to see!
Stephen: What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced in getting Thrive to this point?
Sasha: When to stop designing. It’s something I still struggle with. The difficult part is never “What else can I add to increase depth?” it’s “What can I remove without making it shallow?”
Stephen: Did you have any ‘a-ha’ moments during the development of Thrive where something clicked into place?
Sasha: Instead of a single silver bullet, there have been countless golden BBs that have compounded in value to form the framework for not just how Thrive was designed, but how I look at game design as a whole. I’m incredibly happy about finding ways to weave lots of those “a-ha” moments into Thrive’s gameplay for players to experience themselves.
If I had to give one example that doesn’t spoil anything, it would be going from drawing random cards to having access to all of your cards from the start of the game. It shifted the nature of decisions from “What am I allowed to do?” to “What do I want to do?”, which gave rise to our first core design tenet: “Play your cards”.
Stephen: In terms of cutting off design for Thrive to hit a launch date, are there already ideas you’ve put aside for potential expansions?
Sasha: Funnily enough, knowing when to stop or cut off the design wasn’t about hitting a launch date or meeting a deadline. Even now, keeping things simple is a constant battle because adding more doesn’t always change or improve the experience. I believe that the purpose of new content is to alter how players make decisions. If it doesn’t meet that benchmark, it gets cut (even if I love it). However, if it does qualify, it usually deserves to be its own experience.
There will be plenty of additions to the Thrive ecosystem, a good amount of them have been playtested for years. One upside of the delays we’ve experienced so far is that the art pipeline has kept working, increasing the amount of production-ready content for when the time comes to press print, i.e. now!
Every Thrive release will be Expandalone™ (Expansion + Standalone), meaning they can seamlessly mix and match or be played on their own. There is no base game! Players won’t need to rely on a base game being in stock to jump in. Every version is designed to be welcoming.
The important distinction for me is that I don’t want new releases to exist simply because we need another product on the shelf. Each one should give you a genuinely different reason or way to play. The extra level of fun is finding how different copies of Thrive interact, especially in the long term when you will have plenty to choose from.
Stephen: Has there been any crowdfunding considerations for Thrive?
Sasha: I’ve deliberately avoided crowdfunding Thrive from day 1. I don’t agree with shifting the risk from the publisher to the players. I also dislike the delay between being excited (and paying) for something and actually being able to enjoy it. I’m more than happy to put in the work to overcome those challenges if it creates a better experience for players.
Stephen: What can PAX Aus attendees look forward to at the Thrive booth?
Sasha: To meeting Nutty of course!
We’ll be giving attendees an introductory taste of the world of Thrive – a full 15 minute 2-4 player game where you all scramble for acorns, followed by a peek behind the curtain at some of the bigger world we’ve been building around it!
PAX AUS 2026 Attendees can find the Thrive booth in the Indie Showcase section of PAX AUS from October 9-11. Make sure to follow the Thrive Instagram account and sign-up as an Early Bird over on the official site to stay up to date with all Thrive developments.
