The Novus Prime Universe Expands with Novus Prime: Escalation for PlayStation Home on March 31st

We’re excited to announce Novus Prime: Escalation, our biggest expansion yet for Novus Prime in PlayStation Home, is going live on March 31 with tons of new content. The Hellfire Games team has been working on Escalation for quite some time, and we can’t wait to see it go live! Until then, I’d like to give you a sneak peek at what to expect in Novus Prime: Escalation.

Multiplayer Sci-Fi Action, Escalated

At its core, Novus Prime is a free-to-play multiplayer space combat shooter that can be played cooperatively or solo. As a pilot recruited by the Earth fleet against the insidious Bot armada, you’ll learn the basics of space flight, personalize your ship with custom weapons and special add-ons, and embark on missions to earn XP and level up.

With Novus Prime: Escalation, we’re essentially doubling the game’s content in one huge expansion. It’s our biggest update yet, featuring new missions, enemies, weapons, companion bots, avatar items, leaderboards, voiceovers, a completed pilot outfit, a new personal space with zero-gravity simulator, and more.

We listen to our players to provide the strongest content offering possible in each update, and Novus Prime: Escalation outdoes every previous update so far. We hope you’ll like the latest content, and if you’re new to the Novus Prime universe, we hope you’ll stick around and check out what’s still to come!

The Metagame

Because our game lives in PlayStation Home, the full Novus Prime experience doesn’t end with completing missions and leveling up. The Novus Prime space station serves as a social hub for players to meet up and hang out, enjoy a nice spacewalk, shop for new items, and upgrade their ships for battle. Novus Prime: Escalation takes that experience further with a new personal space, the Officer’s Quarters, and a private hangar where players can play custom games with friends, view their customized ship up close, and track their score on a private leaderboard.

From concept to completion, a lot of work goes into creating new spaces for our players! We’re fortunate to have some über-talented artists on hand to create some of the best looking environments in PlayStation Home. For example, here’s the concept art for the Officer’s Quarters below:

And here’s how it looks in-game, complete with spacewalk simulator and decorative Novus Prime artwork on the walls:

We asked our community on the PlayStation Forums what they wanted to see in this update, and the majority wanted more missions and their own personal apartment. So, ask and ye shall receive, plus a whole lot more!

Developing for PlayStation Home

One of the great things about developing for PlayStation Home is the ability to continually gather feedback directly from our players in-game and make timely updates to make sure we’re providing our community with the most satisfying game experience possible. It’s super-gratifying to jump into the Novus Prime space immediately after an update goes live and talk to players about the new content as they check it out in real time.

Novus Prime launched in PlayStation Home in December 2010 and already boasts a very active community, with dedicated players constantly competing for the top leaderboard spot and new names showing up each week. It’s feedback from players like you that keeps us cranking out quality content each month, so keep telling us what you want to see in the next update!

We’re having a blast working on the premier sci-fi multiplayer experience for PlayStation Home, and we hope our players love the new content coming soon in Novus Prime: Escalation on March 31. Thanks for stopping by to read about the expansion, and join our Facebook page for the chance to win some awesome giveaways!