Hello, PlayStation.Blog readers! Greetings from the magical winter wonderland* of Finland. I’m Jaakko from multiplatform game developer 10tons. Even though we’ve been around for ten years now, we’re genuinely excited to make our PS Vita debut this week.
The game we’ve chosen to be the spearhead of our entry to PS Vita is Sparkle. It’s a marble shooter puzzle game, and probably the most popular game we’ve ever made. The game is actually out on PS Vita in Europe already, and we’ve received a whole lot of positive reviews and feedback on it. Many noted that this particular subgenre of match-three is extremely underrepresented on PS Vita. Not anymore!
What sets Sparkle apart from many marble shooters are the big and brash power-ups, considerable level of challenge, and the slightly dark, mysterious theme. This type of game fits mobile gaming really well, and PS Vita is the ultimate device to play it on. Playing Sparkle with the touchscreen is fast and accurate, but if you prefer thumbstick controls, they’re there as well.
We’re also really happy it’s possible to offer free trials of games on PS Vita. We realize we’re probably not known among PS Vita gamers, and as a small developer we don’t have much in the way of marketing muscle. The free trial of Sparkle means anyone can check the game out and then unlock the full version for $5.99 if they like it. So give the game a spin — we think you’ll like it!
Going forward, we’ll be bringing a few of our other titles to PS Vita in the coming months, and we plan to have a free trial available for all of them. Next up is the spectacular, physics-based puzzle game King Oddball, hopefully some time in January.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments — I’ll be happy to answer them. Thanks for reading, and try Sparkle when it’s out later today.
*Currently, “magical winter wonderland” refers to a mess of ice and sleet.
I have been looking forward to this since I saw the trophy list floating out there, I also feel the match 3 is a tad skimpy on Vita. With a lot of Indy games coming out today Sparkle will be the first one I get. You said you’ve been around for years and have other games( I’m sorry I don’t know what they are), what else could you see porting over to Vita?
Thanks!
We’ve done a lot of puzzle games in recent years, and our current plan is to bring our most premium ones to PS Vita. So Azkend 2: The World Beneath and Sparkle 2 (guess which game that is a sequel to!) should be arriving in Q1 2014.
We’re also in the process of remastering a true classic hardcore top down dual stick shooter Crimsonland and we’ll bring that to PS Vita as well when we’re done. That one might be in Q2 though.