It’s been a while since Super Crate Box originally debuted as a PC download and put the two of us here at Vlambeer in the worldwide spotlight for arcade games. Today, Super Crate Box is available on Mac, Steam and iOS. With the launch of Playstation Mobile, it’ll be available for PlayStation Vita and other PlayStation Certified Devices, too.
For the uninitiated, Super Crate Box is an action-arcade game in which you control a little guy tasked with collecting as many crates as possible while fending off enemies and avoiding your impending death. Every crate you pick up randomly changes your method of attack, so you’d better be ready for anything.
When Sony reached out to us a few months ago to have Super Crate Box launch with PSM, we sent a request to friends and fellow coders to help us out developing it within the limited time we had left to launch. We received some great, professional applications and a single e-mail from a fan. The fan turned out to be an avid Super Crate Box player, and an experienced programmer to boot. He made a small side-note: he would only be able to work at night, because during the day he had a job as a bus-driver. Easy choice.
The game shaped up rapidly and before we knew it, a young man in his bus-driver uniform was working at the office with us to test an early build on a PlayStation Vita. Immediately we knew: we spent ages on perfecting the iOS touch-controls, creating what we still believe are amongst the best touch controls ever – but on PS Vita, Super Crate Box feels right at home; it’s portable, it’s fast and it’s precise.
We’re really looking forward to hearing about your high scores in the comments – the iOS version has 2000+ crates as highscore. After October 3rd, we’ll see for once and for all what physical buttons are worth.
For those of you who’re about to play the game for the first time ever: our sincere apologies for the discgun.
Also, be sure to keep an eye on PlayStation.Blog for information about how to get PSM games such as Super Crate Box onto your PlayStation Vita or other PlayStation-certified device after the PSM launch.
Need more information on PlayStation Mobile? Want to know more about supported tablets and phones? Head here.
Will it work for PS3 or its it for Playstation Phone only?
Will there be leaderboard support?
@1: It is available for the PSVITA and PS certified devices (smartphones/tablets). Dont know about the PS3 though.
Discgunbegud.
When I get a Vita at the end of the month, this will be one of the first games I play. Looking forward to it.
Yup needs leaderboards bad. @Vlambeer you should talk with FuturLab they have some online leaderboards in one of their launch titles
Bought! Loving it!
It’s going to take a bit of time to adjust from PC controls, but so far it’s brilliant.
One note: did you guys adjust the timing of the weapons at all? I used to be able to get two shots in a jump with the revolver or pistols, but now the timing seems different, and I can only get in one shot on the small enemies’ heights.
Free to Play on Steam, $1.99 on iOS, and it’s how much on PlayStation Mobile? What’s with the price increase?
@7 — Yeah I think they really need to adjust the pricing of these games. They are essentially PS Minis, and many of them are available cheaper elsewhere. If Sony wants people to impulse-buy these games like they do on Android and iOS (devices which you’re probably carrying around more often than your Vita), they need to hit the $2-and-under price point.
I also want to know why this is $3.49 on psm when it’s free on steam and $1.99 on iOS for the exact same game. I know on minis and psp there was a more expensive certification process so price parity was not possible. What’s the excuse here? It’s a $99 SDK and the cert process is similar to iOS. Is this a case of developer’s greediness?
Also, I won’t bother with any of these games until they have trophies. Yeah, I said it.
It’s kinda tough sometimes, deciding whether or not to buy a full retail vita game off the store because of the prices, but I can see myself doing it much more often with these type of games. Physical controls make all the difference.
@10: You should be ashamed.
@12 no, it’s a selling feature for me. Don’t like it? I don’t really care. You should be ashamed that you’re flogging the blog with your agenda.
it’s great, but why not leaderboards? Hopefully this will come in an update, because online leaderboards are supported in PSM.
@13, and you’re not? I find it very sad that you won’t PLAY GAMES anymore without external trophies. That shows that you care not about games but the satisfaction you get from showing your friends that you did well on it.
@13: Justify your horrible opinion all you want. Doesn’t change the fact that you would write off a game for not having trophies. Which is ridiculous. There’s no way to spin that to be anything but ridiculous. Games are about the actual game. Trophies are just a modern addition, that adds something nice to aim for, but doesn’t affect the quality of a game at all.
A crappy game with trophies is still crappy. A fantastic game without trophies is still a fantastic game. Yet you’d consider the crappy game before the fantastic one solely because of trophy support. Which is ridiculous.
“For those of you who’re about to play the game for the first time ever: our sincere apologies for the discgun.”
I laughed while reading this. Great to see such a fun game come to even more platforms, especially ones with physical input. I really enjoyed the iOS version and the newly released Steam version too.
Congrats Vlambeer and another successful launch!
“For those of you who’re about to play the game for the first time ever: our sincere apologies for the discgun.”
Yeah this is the first game were unlocking weapons seem to be a disadvantage. Mines or grenade gun and I am usually dead. Discgun bounce back is something I am getting used to after killing myself 1000 times.
Still love it. :-)
@ Rami, your post is very interesting: first, Sony reached out to you, so that must make you proud. Second, but should be first, there are only 2 of you in your company? plus the new guy who drives a bus during the day? That really says a lot about the small indie developers who as a whole are revolutionizing the gaming industry.
Thank you for sharing your backstory and best of luck to you and other indies like you on this new platform. We Vita owners are a pretty demanding, critical lot, so please excuse the daily bickering.
Loved hearing about the back story. A couple of questions about this game, and PSM in general:
1. what’s the native rendering/asset resolution?
2. what audio codec/bitrate is being used?
3. are there trophies?
4. does it also play on PS3?
If the native rendering resolution is decent, the audio is higher quality than the crap Unity defaults to, has a couple of trophies, and plays on PS3 then it’s worth a little more money. Then again, there’s also the physical sticks and buttons which made me love Pix’n Love Rush and other games even more than I did on iOS.
On the other hand, if it’s sub-480p resolution, awful-sounding 128kbit/sec MP3, no trophies, and has no PS3 support, then Sony has just shot themselves and indie developers in the face.
I’m a fan and want to be a cheerleader for this, but we need more information to do so :)
Thanks!
No trophy = no buy.
Now I understand why 2000+ is a lot. This game is fun. Super fun, but it’s quite difficult. Stupid disc gun and flamethrower. I found it almost unplayable on my Tablet, but it plays super smoothly on the PS Vita.
Thanks for a super fun game!
@20:
3. No.
4. No.
Don’t know about the other two.
You can just pretend that it has trophies.
@2, @5, @14
Leaderboards and Trophies are not currently part of the PSM development toolkit or SDK. We were contemplating adding them in for launch (we needed to hit the PSM launch date, so we had a really limited amount of time) – but instead we opted to focus on the core gameplay. Futurlabs implemented leaderboards of their own, we’re choosing to wait for Sony’s official solution. That way, your leaderboards and trophies will work the way they’re supposed to with your PSN-profile when those functions launch.
@6 Really glad to hear you like it. The timing is as close to the PC version as we could, but we found the shoulder buttons seem most reponsive for shooting. Use those?
@7, @8, @9
Super Crate Box PC was made by two people – me and JW. Together, we are Vlambeer. We’re two guys and we know how to make PC games from scratch. For the iOS version, we needed to get help in the shape of Halfbot, but we had all the time we needed. We want to make sure people working for us aren’t wasting their time, so we had to charge to be able to pay them their due. For the PS Vita / PSM version, we had two months and we ended up getting Mark’s help, amongst others, to work with a SDK we never worked with and create a full, polished version of SCB in just under two months.
We wanted to pay him and others properly for their hard work – in some cases people were basically working two full-time jobs for months.
So we’d argue it’s not greed: we release free games all the time (we have on of the only free games on Steam, Radical Fishing, Dinosaur Zookeeper, KARATE, Yeti Hunter, FFFLOOD, the original LUFTRAUSER) – we just want to be able to buy our meals & pay our rent and we’re happy. However, for people that work with us, we want to make absolutely sure that working with us was the best way to spend their time and they get what they deserve for their hard work.
@17 Thanks so much! <3
@18 The reason the unlocks are there is more to ease you into the game. If we'd start the game with the discgun available, nobody would ever score 10 crates. Except for Wario64. Maybe.
@19 We were extremely happy Sony considered us to sort of spearhead their new platform. It turns out Vlambeer has a lot of fans within Sony America & Europe – even so far that they were having an in-house contest (784 seems to be the highscore at the moment). Either way, they've been a blast to work with, especially being – indeed – just two guys that make up Vlambeer.
Sony never treated us as less than a full-fledged developer. When our Playstation Vita showcasing Super Crate Box at Eurogamer Expo in the UK was stolen, one Sony employee drove out during his weekend(!) to borrow us his personal Vita. We couldn't be more happy about cooperating with them, which definitely surprised us.
Thanks for your support – we hope to be able to bring you critical lot a whole more games to bicker about some day in the future.
@20 The PSM SDK should be available pretty soon, if I’m not mistaken. We definitely encourage you to go take a look. PSM runs on Vita and certain Playstation Certified phones and tablets – Playstation 3 is not part of the spec.
—
Thanks everyone. We’re extremely glad with how much love Super Crate Box seems to be getting and if you have any more questions, we’ll check back here but also on our Twitter (@Vlambeer) and Facebook (facebook.com/Vlambeer). You can always mail us with more specialized questions through one of the addy’s at vlambeer.com.
<3
I bought this without a second thought.
Great game and it deserves the support.