The patch will be releasing VERY soon, with Japan getting the first patch release on October 23. If all goes well with final testing, you will see the patch in SCEA and SCEE territories on October 30. If there are any delays to the above mentioned dates, we will be sure to update the blog to let you know about it, so stay tuned!

The Q-Games team has been hard at work on the PixelJunk Monsters patch and has packed a TON of great features into this great game. I’ll give you a quick breakdown of some of the new features you will expect to see:

Game Difficulty settings
You can now choose between three different difficulties of gameplay! There is a Casual mode, the Regular/Ranked mode, and Hard-core mode. The great news here is that you can use any combination of difficulties to complete your progress through the islands! Is there one particular map that’s too hard? Try it in Casual mode. If you Rainbow the level, that rainbow counts and will remain on the map no matter what difficulty the other rainbows were achieved at! Only the Regular difficulty will register on the ranking boards, though.

Tower Menu selection
You can now set the default menu to appear when selecting a tower! How many times have you sold off a tower and run over to another tower to quickly upgrade it and accidentally sell it by mistake? I know I’ve done that many, many times. Now you can choose which option appears as the default, instead of the last action you selected.

Tower Balancing
Those of you who have purchased Encore know about the reduced cost on the Ice Tower, and balanced functionality of the Tesla tower. This patch applies those changes to BOTH islands, not just the Encore island.

Video Recording / YouTube Support
Ever since Q-Games included this feature into PixelJunk Eden, we knew it needed to be in Monsters as well. You will be able to record up to 10 minutes of gameplay and upload it directly to your YouTube account, or send it to your video folder on your PS3’s XMB.

XMB Custom Soundtrack Support
You can now make your own custom soundtrack to listen to as you play PixelJunk Monsters and Encore! I’ve personally been enjoying listening to the PixelJunk Eden soundtrack while I play Monsters, as well as listening to the PixelJunk Monsters soundtrack within Eden! It’s great how well those fantastic soundtracks work in other games.

With these features being added, and several other small bugs being fixed in the game, we think you’ll have a great time playing PixelJunk Monsters and Encore all over again.

I think that’s about it … But it feels like I’m missing something … Hmm … I can’t quite put my finger on what I might be forgetting. Wait a minute … I remember now …

TROPHIES
Trophies are now added for both PixelJunk Monsters and Encore. We weren’t able to retroactively apply Trophies to the previously played data, but Q-Games didn’t want to force people to play everything all over again. They came up with a great idea by creating Trophy Challenges. These challenges have specific maps with set rules or objectives that will reward you with Trophies if you complete them properly.

Recently, Jeff Rubenstein got to visit Q-Games in Kyoto (the lucky so-and-so) and shot an interview with Dylan to talk more about the patch for PixelJunk Monsters. Check it out …

What we’ve learned from Part 1: We’re all fans of Lost, fan mail rocks, Dylan’s marriage is fine, Encore hint revealed, coinage of new word “WikiTiki.”

We’re happy to announce that the game will be releasing this Thursday, May 8th for $5.99. And we promised you some juicy new info about the expansion. Well here is what we can tell you: There is a secret landmass located between Tiki & Toki Islands. Suffice it to say you won’t get any of us to dish on this one. But if you clear all stages, well…you’ll find out.

And now back to the interview:

6. (Matt) What was your first “epiphany” gaming moment when you realized this was going to be your career?

(Dylan) When I made a Pac-Man clone on my friend’s ZX-81 (an old 8-bit computer made by an English boffin called Clive Sinclair). I found it fun programming the AI for the little ghosts in BASIC. It was awful AI and took up way too much CPU time, but it started me on my long and winding path to make games for a living. That was about 1982 and I was ten years old.

7. (Matt) What game did you wish you made & why?

(Dylan) Out of existing games by other people? The original Made in Wario/WarioWare. I had an idea that was almost exactly the same which I pitched to Sony Japan in 1998 but it got lost in the rush to make the rubber ducky bath demo on the PS2.

Out of non-existing games? I really want to make a character-based side-action shooting game with platformer elements, but right now our line up for PixelJunk Series 1 is pretty much decided so maybe that will have to wait for Series 2.

8. (Matt) What career would you be in if you weren’t in the games industry?

(Dylan) A novelist, probably sci-fi. I really like Iain Banks stuff. If I failed at doing that I think I would open up a proper fish and chip shop in Kyoto during the day, and a really cool laidback bar in the evening. Maybe those three things should be my retirement plan. I’d also really like to make some kind of tv drama – something really dramatic and dark – for Japanese TV as all their stuff is so light and frilly. They could never do something like Lost or Prison Break…everyone smiles too much.

9. (Matt) If you could play co-op mode on Monsters/Monsters Encore with anyone, who would it be & why?

(Dylan) The Queen of England. Why? Well, it would be a hell of a laugh and I think she’d enjoy it, too. The Kings and Queens of the world don’t get to wage war anymore so we should encourage them to release their stress by playing RTS games. (I am watching another TV series besides Lost called The Tudors and it is really good.)

10. (Matt) Can you honestly, in all truthfulness, really get rainbows on everything?

(Dylan) Me personally…oh yes, definitely. It takes a few tries for a few of them, but I am quite the master. I know how the towers fire and where best to place them for maximum damage. Sometimes you can even time the building of a cannon tower so it pops up just as a big crowd is passing by and fires right into the middle of them inflicting a lot more damage than when if it fired as soon as the crowd hit the radius line. My wife also got all rainbows, by herself, not in cooperative play.

(Matt) Seriously?

(Dylan) Seriously.

…
Still always spreading the PixelJunk love,
-Deb, Matt, Dylan and the whole team at Q-Games