Hey PixelJunk fans,

Well, Q-Games has been busy again, and not just on PixelJunk. You may have noticed some new additions to the PlayStation 3’s XMB (Xross Media Bar) with the latest firmware update to version 3.00.

Well, we’re behind the “star dust” and if you haven’t noticed it yet, you’re in for a nice surprise. We wanted to implement something like the beginning of the movie Gattaca but they wouldn’t let us go quite that far, so we settled on the subtle but pretty dust effect you can see now. If you shake the Wireless Controller, you can move them about a bit, as if they are being carried by eddies in the wind.

Also, there are these new things called Dynamic Themes, and we’re proud to say that this is a system we were involved in developing. Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) wanted to spice up the background a bit and static pictures just didn’t cut the mustard. So we collaborated with them to make a system where developers can display what they want and animate and move them around. This definitely adds a little life to the PS3’s background so be sure to try it out.

In fact, go ahead and download our PixelJunk Monsters Dynamic Theme which is now available for $2.99 on the PlayStation Store. Soon you’ll have the little Tikiman running around amongst the trees behind whatever it is you are doing in the XMB. This is actually the very first theme ever made with the system because we used it to test out the features!

So go for it and grab a bit of PS3 history for yourself.

Oh and one more thing…PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe is coming to PSP very soon featuring a brand new island, more maps, new monsters & towers. We’ll have more info on that later!

In true PixelJunk fashion we have made the game co-op, so get a friend around, grab an extra controller and anyone can just dive right on in. We’ve tried to make co-op as de-stressed as possible, so even if your player’s ship gets hit by something or overheats and starts crashing towards the ground, you can pop out your extendible hook thing (no official name for this yet – “Grabber” perhaps?) and grab your friend (he’s a bit heavy tho, so watch out), then you can carry him to the nearest pool of water and dunk him in to restore his health. If you don’t manage to grab him in time, he’ll just re-spawn near you and you’ll be docked a life.

The game is an old-school shooter at heart (hence the name), it is the PixelJunk take on those old retro shooting games such as Defender, with a little bit of Choplifter and Thrust! thrown in for good measure. We have giant bosses for you to fight against, multiple weapons to pick up and try out, shields you can grab, all kinds of stuff to give people with an itchy trigger finger a lot of fun. However, at the same time we have added a puzzle element (that we tend to do with most of our games) so even those without an itchy trigger finger will be able to play the game and have a lot of fun. This puzzle element obviously revolves around the sandbox fluid simulation we have implemented, and it is incredible to watch in action.

As with PJ Monsters Deluxe I’m not sure what the release date will be, but we are working very hard on it so hopefully it won’t be too far off!

What’s not on show at E3 however, is the internet co-op play we have implemented so I thought I’d spend a little time explaining what we have implemented as it is pretty cool.

To begin with, in order to meet up with friends (or strangers) you need some kind of lobby or chat room system so we have implemented that – you can create rooms freely, bookmark rooms to go back to easily, set up your preferences for what maps you want to play so people can search for your room more easily etc., all the standard stuff. There is a cross-translated menu for saying simple things no matter what language the other player understands and of course you can type messages in freely. Each room can have up to 8 players in it.

However, we’ve gone a little bit further with a feature we haven’t seen implemented before; when two people start up a co-op game a little running “ticker tape commentary” starts scrolling across the top of the chat window, so the people who aren’t playing yet can read a blow by blow account of what the two players are up to in their game. It’s surprisingly entertaining to watch while you are waiting for someone to start up a game with you. I’m hoping this gives the chat rooms a warmer, more community-like feel so people will enjoy just hanging out in their favourite rooms.

Within the game itself, you can talk to your partner-in-crime by using a new ring menu that gives you a set of simple icons you can string together that are surprisingly effective at conveying what you want your friend to do. It’s a lot of fun running around and directing the other player while you dance on towers.

I’m not sure when it will be going on sale, but when it comes out this game is a must-have for all law-abiding PSP owners everywhere, it’s dangerously addictive and now it has gone mobile you can play it everywhere!

A couple of weeks ago we unveiled PixelJunk 1-4 in trailer form to the masses and had a HUGE response! I suppose we deserved it because we simultaneously launched our naming contest for the game as well. For those who missed it we decided to let you, the fans, have a go at naming our game for us. It all began to snowball as news sites picked up on the competition and our servers crashed a couple of times from the load!

In just one week we got over 100,000 visitors to http://pixeljunk.jp and 10,000 people offered up ideas for a name based on the trailer. Even though the trailer’s resolution left a lot to be desired, we got a ridiculous amount of praise… and the team’s ego has been inflated a bit, which is a good thing, because now we’ll have to work extra specially hard to live up to everyone’s expectations! :-)

Anyway, we are now proud to announce that the name of the game has been picked! It will be called PixelJunk Shooter. Andy, the artist behind the style of the game, has knocked up a stunning logo that emphasizes the liquid element really well, as you can see below!

The lucky winner, picked from a hat of about 8 other people who voted for the same name, is Mario Paquet from Canada! We chose the name because: 1) it’s simple, 2) it describes the main thing you do in the game, and 3) it makes a great logo!

The other runner-up names were:

• PixelJunk Depths – Thomas Ella
• PixelJunk Atlantis – Takuhiro Hara
• PixelJunk Caves – Chi Lo
• PixelJunk Blaster – Edward Stumpfel
• PixelJunk S.O.S! – Derrick Kross

Other people voted for these names of course, but the above runners-up were picked out of a hat for each name in turn, so congratulations! T-shirts will be winging their way to you.

The most popular name suggested by a long shot was PixelJunk Elements, but we decided that it didn’t capture the shooting side of the game well enough and at the worst people might think it was a game about the weather. “Depths” almost became the chosen name but our producer at Sony Santa Monica, Deborah Mars, sounded like she had a lisp when she said it, so we dropped that one early on. We needed to choose a name everyone can enunciate. ;-)

Thanks for the incredible response and vibe we got from everyone. We are going to make this game a smash hit! If you manage to get into E3 next week you’ll be able to play a newer demo than the one shown in the video which has a number of cool new things in it… including co-op play!

We pulled out all the stops and decided to make this the ultimate version of PJ Monsters, so we didn’t just add a new island, we’ve gone through and added new monsters, new towers, and a whole new island. On top of that we’ve added loads of goodies, concept art, and a bunch of new tunes and even some art videos from Otograph. We’ve basically gone and packed it with everything we could possibly think of, so we are calling the game PixelJunk Monsters DELUXE!

The original islands are also in there but they have been “remixed” to include the newer types of monsters and get you to use the newer towers. I’ll write another blog entry in a short while where I’ll go through the new towers and their abilities, but they are a lot of fun to use and add a whole new layer of strategy to the game.

Oh… on a final note, we’ll be supporting WiFi multiplayer, so you can play with other people on their PSPs. There are some cool ideas in this and a fun little icon language to let you talk to each other while playing but just this alone requires an entire blog entry so I’ll come back later with more details and pictures of how it will all work.

Thanks to all the PixelJunk fans for their support, it keeps us motivated!

And… to top it all we are also launching a naming competition! Yes, you heard it right, instead of choosing the name ourselves for PixelJunk 1-4 we would like YOU to name the game for us. This is for those real PixelJunk fans out there, because your name will go into the credits of the game and be immortalized for all eternity (or for a few years at least).

Anyway, first things first, go to the site and look at the concept art, watch the work-in-progress video, and think up a name: http://pixeljunk.jp/namingcontest

It’s looking pretty nice so far we think. We’ve implemented a fluid simulation sandbox with lots of different fluids and interactions and it’s simply a lot of fun to play just by itself, but on top of that we have a really cool “thrust” based game where you can shoot at monsters and carry stuff around to solve the puzzles in each area. The goal is to save the survivors, but what are they survivors of? As you delve deeper into the caverns you’ll learn more about what their predicament is – yes, this time there will be a bit of a story; which is a first in the PixelJunk series so far.

Oh, and we’ll give out free t-shirts to the winner of the naming contest and also to the five runners up, so definitely submit an idea no matter how silly you think it might be, we might just use it. We will pick the winner from a hat containing the names of all the people who submitted the same idea, so send your ideas in by May 11th, which is the closing date for the competition. We will then choose 5 runner up ideas and do the same thing for each one. We’ll then design a logo for the name and announce the winner a few weeks afterwards.

Good luck!

“SCEA Is Not Responsible For Nor Is A Sponsor Of This Contest.”

Just a quick blog update today to let everyone know the expansion pack for PixelJunk Eden hits PSN this Thursday, April 16! In three days you can download PixelJunk Eden Encore for only $5.99.

If you haven’t played the original, then now is the time to start doing so because the Encore expansion pack is something you’re not going to want to miss out on! We’ve put a lot of effort into making Encore have the best of everything from the original game, with great pacing, well-designed levels and heaps of new ideas… have a read of my earlier blog entry for more information about what we have added.

So now I wonder who will be first to discover the cool Easter Egg (appropriate time of year too!) at the end of the game…

In other news, PixelJunk Eden was nominated three times at the Independent Games Festival a couple of weeks back. Yes, even though Sony Computer Entertainment publishes PixelJunk titles in the West (well, who better to turn to in order to release a PSN game, right?), PixelJunk is completely independently funded and created by us here at Q-Games. Unfortunately we didn’t win an award but just the nominations made us happy enough as it was our first time at such an award show.

We’re busy working the fourth installment for PixelJunk and I’ll post more info about that in a little while. All I can say is that the game is really unique and a lot of fun – and very pretty to look at.

First things first, what have we added? Well, basically we have added five whole new stages, each one choc-a-bloc full of ideas and gimmicks. We also designed five brand new backgrounds for them (each background for a garden is programmed uniquely just for that garden’s style – just in case you hadn’t noticed that in the original), and Baiyon went away and created five brilliant new tracks of music to match it all up.

To make things a little easier we are going to retro-patch the original Eden to have a new feature we created for Encore. This is the three-seed smart-bomb power your Grimp now has. Simply put, if you jump into three full seeds in a row, all the “Prowlers” on the screen explode into a big cloud of pollen. Everyone who boots up their original Eden in a few weeks will be patched and get this feature, so look out for that!

Thinking up new stages for Eden was hard work. We put a lot of stuff into the original game, especially the gardens onwards from garden 04, and we racked our brains for new and interesting ideas to put into this expansion pack, and we think we found some pretty cool ones! One of the first stages has you in a Garden where all the plants are huge and thick, and at the same time there are loads of them, all intertwined. This is a type of stage we didn’t have in the original game – falling isn’t much of an issue in this garden because the vines are practically everywhere.

Also, in another garden we have implemented a zero-G item that once you collect, lets you float and control your Grimp with no fear of falling (well, until the effect wears off of course) which is crazily fun with three players! At the same time that garden is full of some pretty cool puzzles to solve, and we really go to town with the no gravity mechanism. In one of the final gardens we have implemented an entire “mirror” garden that you go in and out of freely via portals scattered throughout. It’s a lot of fun making your way back and forth between the two subtly different “mirror” gardens – what might be a cannon in one is a teleporter in the other; what is open space in one, might be closed off in the other. It’s a lot of fun solving the puzzles.

Right at the end of the game, if you collect all the 25 new Spectra we’ve added, we have put in a big present for our fans – one that will enable you to play the entire game again in a completely different way, so that’s really something for everyone to look forward to.

What else can I say really? This expansion pack isn’t just “some extra levels”; it is full of rich design and will give you weeks of fun, so it’s definitely worth $5.99!

Sorry about the lack of information as of late, but busy doesn’t even begin to describe my work for the past few months…what with the exciting new project coming along (hint: yes, we’ve heard your requests!), and at the same time implementing some of our most crazy ideas for the new gardens in Eden Encore.

Eden Encore will be coming out very soon in April. Get ready for zero gravity, mirror worlds, all new music from Baiyon, and we’ve added something extra special at the end which is a Big Secret(tm) and is a present to all the fans. On top of all this, we’re flying along with the next new PixelJunk title (we’re calling it #4 for now) and even experimenting with future PixelJunk ideas too.

But things just keep getting more exciting because PixelJunk Eden has been nominated in not just one, but three (!!!) categories at the upcoming Independent Game Festival’s award show in San Francisco, CA. We are also nominated for the GDC Choice awards too, which are held during the same week. So GDC is going to be pretty crazy and even busier than normal, and I am looking forward to it a lot! Oh, and before I forget, on Friday, March 27 at GDC, Baiyon will be doing a talk about Eden and the use of CMYK in his graphic design work. I’ll be there in the audience listening in of course, so if you’re attending GDC, be sure to come check out this talk.

Anyway, back to work. I’ll pop back soon to detail more specifics about Eden Encore, so watch this space!

Two blog entries in almost as many weeks! Hopefully you aren’t too bored of me yet!

This is just a short one though, to inform you that at last the patch for PixelJunk Eden will be released on Thursday, January 15. For those of you from the EU, it will be out shortly thereafter, so stay tuned.

In this patch we’ve listened to your comments. We’ve gone ahead and fixed and added a few things to try and get as many people to play Eden as possible, as it really is a remarkable game…if I do say so myself. I simply want as many people as possible to experience it in full (if only we could release it for free and still make a living like some Star Trek-like future).

As you move through the gardens, you’ll encounter more and more interesting ideas and concepts. In order to help people having trouble right at the beginning, we’ve changed the large crystals so they replenish a whole half of your oscillator (time) meter. Even if you run out of time, we allow you to continue from the last Spectra you collected. To preserve the pride of those who gained trophies without continues though, the ‘garden complete’ trophy is only available if you don’t use the continue system. You don’t need trophies to move forward into the game and explore new gardens, so dive in and try out some of the crazy stuff we put in the game (such as the infamous Garden 7 with its rotating gravity).

Also, I’d like to use this blog entry to announce that we are preparing an “Encore” version of Eden. At some point over the next couple of months, I’ll come back and tell you more about what’s in that! In the meantime get in your practice with this new patch so you are ready for the crazy stuff we have prepared for you in the expansion.

Oh, and before I forget, we fixed the multiplayer camera! It is now as smooth as a baby’s bum – get some friends around and give it a whirl!

Enjoy!