[The folks at Haunted Temple Studios went from EA-sized teams to a four-man operation, and they talk to our own Chris Remo on the transition and what they've learned while making their turn-based strategy game Skulls of the Shogun.]

The members of Haunted Temple Studios spent years working together on massive teams at Electronic Arts' Los Angeles studio. Now, with their debut turn-based strategy game Skulls of the Shogun, the distributed studio's developers are relishing the greater individual input they have as part of a tight four-man team.

Targeted for release later this year on Xbox Live Arcade and PC, Skulls of the Shogun is influenced by classic 60s-era anime design and driven by a desire to push the turn-based tactical genre beyond its longtime Advance Wars touchstone.

Recently, we had a chance to sit down with three of Haunted Temple's four members -- programmers Borut Pfeifer and Ben Vance, and "founder of the studio, director, and only artist/art director" Jake Kazdal.

Topics discussed include the slow evolution of turn-based strategy on consoles, the technical challenges behind moving to a gridless design, settling on a visual style, and transitioning from massive development teams to a gang of four.

Turn-based strategy has a strong heritage on the PC, but this smaller scale take on the genre has been almost exclusive to portables lately. Why do you think there aren’t more games like this on consoles or PC?

Jake Kazdal: I don’t know. I don’t know why the genre hasn’t really evolved in a long time either. Fire Emblem or Advance Wars are practically the same as they were on the SNES. Really, nothing changed. The biggest leap forward recently was Valkyria Chronicles, which I thought was a brilliant game, and this borrows from that in certain places.

Continue reading "In-Depth: Skulls Of The Shogun Team On Going From EA To Indie" »

Posted by Ryan Langley at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Short but sweet update on the Nintendo front today, so let's get to it!

WiiWare sees two new releases -- Dive: The Medes Islands Secret for 1,000 Points, and Family Pirate Party for 500 Points -- more than a year after the release in America.

On DSiWare you can grab Gameloft's Crystal Monsters for 500 Points, Digital Leisure's Mega Words for 500 Points, and Puffins: Let's Race! for 500 Points.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Originally posted on sister site Gamasutra, Chris Remo speaks to Designer Ron Gilbert on the recently released action-RPG DeathSpank, now available on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network]

Designer Ron Gilbert is best known for his landmark LucasArts adventure games Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island, but his career has also encompassed children's games at Humongous Entertainment, and he served as producer on Chris Taylor's ambitious large-scale RTS Total Annihilation. His latest game, DeathSpank, debuts on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network a few weeks ago, and represents the addition of the action-RPG to his repertoire.

Unabashedly described by Gilbert himself as "Monkey Island meets Diablo," the game seeks to marry the storytelling charms of the adventure game genre with the simple but deep monster-grinding lootfests that so few games have managed to successfully capture.

After conceiving the concept of DeathSpank -- a tongue-in-cheek parody of video game excess -- in a Flash cartoon series on his personal blog back in 2004, Gilbert and longtime collaborator Clayton Kauzlaric realized it could actually support a real game.

In 2008, he joined up with Vancouver-based Hothead Studios to develop the game; in April of this year, with production largely complete, he left the studio.

Gamasutra sat down with Gilbert to discuss why he left, how DeathSpank originated, how the game's design evolved and crystallized, and what makes a good action-RPG work.

Continue reading "Features - Ron Gilbert On The Synthesis Of DeathSpank" »

Posted by Ryan Langley at 6:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Way back in April 2009 we reported on Explodemon! -- a new side scrolling action game from Curve Studios. Despite getting a lot of praise during its reveal -- it was a bit of a fake out -- the trailer was actually a pitch video, and the game itself had not really taken off just yet.

But now more than a year later, Curve Studios have revealed the first sceenshots of Explodemon! in action -- and it looks pretty much just like the pitch video! Explodemon is now set to be released in Q4 of this year, in the meantime check out the screenshots below.

Continue reading "Screenshots: Explodemon! (Curve Studios)" »

Posted by Ryan Langley at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Back in 2009 at the beginning of Konami's trench run into digital distribution Metalocalypse: The Dethgame was revealed -- a brawler based on the popular Adult Swim title developed by Frozen Codebase.

Nearly a year later we hadn't heard a thing about it -- but the sleuths over at Siliconera, after no appearance of the game at E3 or Comic-Con, decided to check up on it. Apparently, it's been canned -- Adult Swim pulled back the license and now it's axed.

It's been a very bad run for Frozen Codebase, almost every single one of their digital titles -- Screw Jumper, Zombie Wranglers and Kick-Ass The Game, Sandy Beach has been so poorly reviewed that they haven't been able to get better than a rating of 50 on Metacritic. The only one that has was Elements of Destruction -- and that was a port of a DS game by another developer.

Chances are this game wasn't going to be good either.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Due to my poor internet I've fallen behind on the XBLIG scene this past month -- but that's all fixed now, and in turn we realized we missed a big game a few weeks ago -- Lumi.

Lumi was the winner of this year's Dream.Build.Play competition. It's a great looking puzzle platformer where you must you attraction and detraction to your advantage -- holding onto rings of one colour as you fling yourself off with the opposite.

The developers won $40,000USD for this game at DBP, and is currently available on Xbox Live Indie Games for 400MSP. Download the trial here.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 6:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

While North America's PSN Store update was a bit lacking this week, Europe more than makes up for it.

For PSN games we have Earthworm Jim HD, complete with trial version for £7.99/€9.99, and Premier Manager, which I assume is part of the long running series of Football / Soccer, for £13.99/€17.99.

There are also two new PSOne Classics -- Rayman 2: The Great Escape, one of the best PSOne platformers out there, and Pong -- the mid-90's PSOne variant of the classic bat-and-ball game. Both are £3.99/€4.99 -- I recommend the former.

Three new minis join the ride too -- Brick Breaker, Labyrinth and Tetraminos all from Big Ben Interactive. They're all pretty recognizable knockoffs, but they are just £2.49/€2.99 each. Heracles Chariot Racing has also had a permanent price drop -- was £3.49/€3.99, now £1.99/€2.49.

And lastly, the PAIN Pinball Abusement Park DLC is available for £1.59/€1.99.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The second part of the Summer of Arcade is here -- Hydro Thunder Hurricane is now available for 1200MSP.

The next selection of Game Room titles are also available -Jail Break from the Arcade, Activision Decathlon, Asteroids Home Version and Frostbite for the Atari 2600, and Auto Racing for the Intellivision.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

No new PSN or PSP minis titles this week, a surprisingly empty week for the PSN Store.

Four new PSOne Classics, all based on Disney licenses -- The Emperor’s New Groove, Hercules, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story Racer all are $5.99 each.

Deals this week include Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (now $4.99, original price $9.99), Section 8 (now $9.99, original price $29.99), Blast Factor (now $4.99, original price $12.99) and the rest of the Blast Factor DLC is cheaper too -- grab it all for $6.49, original price $12.99. Two new demos as well -- Flower and Section 8 now have demos which you can check out.

Other than that -- Pinball Abusement Park DLC for PAIN for $1.99. Described as "a giant table inspired by the crazy theme of the Abusement Park, filled with tons of ways to bump and Ooch your score up onto the Global Leaderboards". Zen Pinball also has its new Mars Table, which you can get for $2.49.

Lastly, the new PlayStation Plus month has now started -- this month you'll get Critter Crunch for PSN, Syphon Filter for PSOne, and Kahoots for PSP Minis all for free. You can also grab Crash Bandicoot 3 cheaper -- PlayStation Plus price $3.00, original price $5.99.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The top-quality WiiWare title Swords and Soldiers is getting a HD reimagining for PlayStation Network!

The new title will feature all the side-scrolling RTS gaming you can muster -- plus the addition of online multiplayer, which was disappointingly missing from the WiIWare version.

No idea of the release date, but expect the game in the coming months.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Konami's sequel to the run-right-and-stab title Rush'n Attack was at the San Diego Comic-Con -- and it's looking pretty damn good.

The A.I might be a little dim-witted, but I wouldn't expect much from an E3-like demo. This trailer shows you some of the map you'll have to crawl through and variety of ways to take down enemies without them seeing you.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 6:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The upcoming Castlevania: Harmony Of Despair is a unique title in which you can view the entire level all at once if you wish. A new Xbox Live Indie game that goes by Platformance also does this -- but on a much smaller scale.

The game is simple -- beat the level. That's it, but to do so requires some serious platforming perseverance. Its short but sweet, and the different variety you get from the difficulty levels is great too. Can you beat the game without dying?

Trial's very short, but the game's only 80MSP. Download it here.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So you can jump now, that's all well and good, but what will the next Bionic Commando Rearmed title also give us?

From the looks of the video above, the game's graphics have been dramatically upgraded -- no longer required to keep the look of the original in check. There's more stuff in the background, and more stuff to do. Sooner rather than later please.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Late last week SCE's Korean branch revealed a list of upcoming games with PlayStation Move support -- one of them being Australia's own Firemint with Flight Control HD.

Our friends at PSNStores contacted Firemint with some additional information -- the game is set for a September 15th launch in Europe and Australia, and will allow both Move and Dualshock support. As per all PSN titles, it will also include Trophies.

Not sure how well the game will go as it changes from finger flick to thumb stick, but I'm eager to give it a go.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Boatload of games this week, let's get right to it!

Two sweet looking WiiWare games this week -- Dive: The Medes Island Secret by Cosmonaut Games looks like a fascinating puzzle-platform set in the sea depths, which you can grab for 1,000 Points. The other title is Heavy Fire: Special Operations, a great looking shooter for 500 Points.

On DSiWare we have Gameloft's Pokemon-a-like Crystal Monsters is available for 500 Points, Nintendo's own crazy Face Pilot is available for 500 Points, Other Oceans' Puffins: Let's Race! for 500 Points, Ubisoft's Petz Hamsterz Family for 800 Points, and Absolute BrickBuster for 200 Points.

Oh hey! A new Virtual Console title! Sunsoft's Aero The Acrobat is now available for 800 Points.

Posted by Ryan Langley at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)