Futuridium EP Deluxe: A Psychedelic New PS Vita Shoot ’em Up

Hi PlayStation.Blog readers! I’m Mauro Fanelli, cofounder of the two person italian indie studio MixedBag, and I’m super excited to be here today to announce that our first game, Futuridium EP, is coming to PS Vita in an all new, enhanced, expanded, turbo charged edition titled Futuridium EP Deluxe.

We started working on Futuridium as a side project with the idea of paying an homage to the retro classic Uridium, a 2D top-down shoot’em up by Andrew Braybrook (and one of our favorite Commodore 64 game from the 80s), with a total reinvention aimed to mix its fast paced action and the unique feeling of flying back and forth on enormous space dreadnoughts with full 3D gameplay and a retro, flat shaded look with tons of glitchy graphic effects.

We put together a prototype of the game with the basic game mechanics in place and… it worked! That’s not always guaranteed in game development, so we continued to build on the formula, polish, play, rebalance, play a lot more, and, when we were presented with the opportunity to bring the game to PS Vita we were like… ok, it’s a perfect match, can we please start working on it NOW?

In Futuridium you are a lone starship pilot who gets lost in a dimensional loop just before a big space battle. With a limited and constantly depleting energy bar, your only hope is to fly as fast as possible over enormous space dreadnoughts and destroy power cubes to replenish your energy tank and reveal the dreadnought’s power core, which must be destroyed to move on to the next ship.

You have no power-ups and limited control over your speed, so you can only count on your reflexes, your dual lasers, the nimbleness of your starship, and the ability to turn 180° on the spot — an essential technique when navigating the dreadnoughts’ intricate passages.

Futuridium’s gameplay is heavily score based; you can gain big multipliers by destroying cubes and chaining cubes together. You can play it safe, but only taking big risks and learning the right path on the dreadnoughts will lead you to the top of the online leaderboards.

So what are we bringing to this new Deluxe version on PS Vita? Tons of new stuff:

• New gameplay modes
• New levels
• New game mechanics
• A graphical overhaul
• More music
• More speed
• More enemies
• Trophies!
• New ways to crash and explode in a trillion colorful cubes… did we mention the game is super difficult?
• Silky smooth 60 frames per second action

On the musical side, we’re adding new tracks to the 45 minute long original soundtrack, by the very talented musicians Qubit and le dégout. Here are two tracks for your listening pleasure:

Thanks for reading, we’ll share more information about Futuridium EP Deluxe in the coming weeks and we’ll be back soon with another game announcement. Until then, check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and our blog.

See you in the comments section — I’ll be glad to reply to all your questions!