The wait is over! We’re very proud to announce that Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is wiggling its way onto your PS Vita starting with today’s PlayStation Store update.

To start things off – an apology to those of you who own the PS3 version of the game, whom we promised a reduced price last week if you also purchase the PS Vita version. We ‘clucked up,’ and the planned 20% discount will take a bit longer before this is set up in the US PlayStation Store. We will let you know when the discount goes live.

That said, building upon our 3x IGF Finalist browser game Rocketbirds: Revolution! and Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken for PS3, this new PS Vita version utilizes many of the PS Vita’s awesome features. For those of you who are reading about this title for the first time, in this game, you’ll take control of Hardboiled Chicken, the original Cock of War (a chicken so tough, he survived being boiled as a fetus), to lead the rebellion against the draconian penguin oppressors to overthrow their hold on Albatropolis! It’s an old-school cinematic action-adventure set in the Rocketbirds universe, a world filled with some violent and downright despicable birds.

We’ve built out a two-player co-operative campaign with a story all its own and six characters to choose from, which we’ve named the Dirty Half Dozen. You can play as pint-sized Budgie commandos on an entirely different mission to save the general’s bird-napped daughter. Besides the ad-hoc and online co-op campaign, the game also sports jetpacking sections, stab-action in the new Hardboiled difficulty setting, mind controlling Brainbugs, some pretty nifty PS Vita controls and sweet, sweet music videos set to the tunes of the sci-fi rock band New World Revolution.

Yes, it’s on PS Vita, which means you can play Rocketbirds anywhere you go, whether you’re guarding a Penguin fortress or waiting for your train. Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken for PS Vita is available exclusively on PSN for $9.99. Strap on your jetpack, get pumped up. and let’s start a revolution!

The game is already available in Asia, where it was bundled with the PS Vita over Christmas, while it was also available exclusively to Asian PS Plus members. Since then, it became one of the top three most-downloaded PS Vita games on the PSN Top 10 PS3 and PS Vita Games in December list in Hong Kong, which is awesome!

In this game, you’ll take control of Hardboiled Chicken, the original Cock of War (a chicken so tough, he survived being boiled as a fetus), to lead the rebellion against the draconian penguin oppressors to overthrow their hold on Albatropolis! It’s an old-school cinematic action-adventure set in the Rocketbirds universe, a world filled with some despicable and often violent birds.

The game sports jetpacking sections, stab-action in the Hardboiled difficulty setting, mind controlling brainbugs, some pretty nifty PS Vita controls, sweet music videos and an Ad-Hoc / Online cooperative mode with its own separate campaign!

There’s something tragic about the idea of flightless birds. So if they did grow to man-sized proportions, and they possessed the technical know-how, I’m sure they would build jetpacks and mini helicopter packs for aerial navigation and zeppelins with big screens in order to expunge their oppressive propaganda. We hope you’ll enjoy the game’s jetpacking stages!

The stab-action forms part of the Hardboiled difficulty setting, where Hardboiled gets limited ammo, a deagle and an uzi, but one very large knife. To do this correctly, you’ll need to use the weapons icon, which is located at the top right of PS Vita’s front touchscreen. Tapping the icon will auto-switch you between your last two weapons so you can quickly switch between the knife and your gun to close the gap between Hardboiled and the Penguin that’s trying to shoot you. You can also slide this icon to cycle between the weapons in your inventory, or open up your inventory with the d-pad. In Hardboiled mode, you’ll also need to defeat a different end boss than in Normal mode… but I feel I’ve given too much away now.

Everyone knows that Penguins are highly allergic to mind-controlling Brain bugs. If you obtain these, you can throw them at the feet of Penguins to make them do terrible – but useful – things for you.

The single player game takes you through 15 chapters of Penguin destruction. For PS Vita, we wired the screens to the built-in motion sensors, so you can tilt the detailed, non-scrolling screens at will.

In the tenth chapter of the co-op campaign, you and a friend can choose two of the six Dirty-Half-Dozen Budgie Commandos to go and rescue the General’s daughter, who has been bird-napped by Penguins in Albatropolis. Of course, you’ll be able to connect with a friend via Online or Ad-Hoc mode for cooperative play.

To thank the guys and gals who already own the PlayStation 3 version of the game, we will be offering a discount on the PS Vita version. You’ll also be able to unlock the new Sniper Budgie if you downloaded the PS3 demo, along with the new Agent-H Budgie (based on Herwig Maurer, the guys behind the sci-fi rock band responsible for all the music used in Rocketbirds) if you purchased the PS3 version of the game. Agent-H budgie is wielding a custom Photon Blaster – with sound effects created by H himself!

The wait is over! We’re very proud to announce that our cinematic platform adventure title Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is fully cooked and ready to serve up exclusively on PSN starting with today’s PlayStation Store update.

Building upon our critically acclaimed browser-based game Rocketbirds: Revolution!, it has been a real adventure for us working on Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken. When it came time to put together the launch trailer, it made me realize just how far the Rocketbirds have come! The one thing I really wanted for this launch trailer was for it to use the awesome Rocketbirds theme song, which New World Revolution put together especially for the game. So here it is — enjoy!

For those of you who are reading about this title for the first time, Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken takes you on a cinematic platform adventure through Albatropolis, a land overrun by an evil totalitarian penguin regime. You must take on the role of Hardboiled Chicken, the original Coq of War, and hunt down the corrupt penguin leader, Putzki. Along the way, you’ll have to kill many penguins, solve puzzles, incite revolution, and maybe possibly pilot a few jetpacks. Each chapter will unlock new cut-scenes and music videos that will unveil secrets about Hardboiled’s mysterious past and shed light on the real culprits behind the regime.

We’ve also built out a full couch Co-op campaign with a story all its own and six characters to choose from, which we’ve named the dirty half dozen. Play as pint-sized Budgie commandos on an entirely different mission to save the general’s bird-napped daughter.

As a bonus, Los Angeles based Sci-Fi rock band, New World Revolution, created exclusive music just for the game. Each track is artistically orchestrated to enhance the back story, humor and puzzle elements throughout both campaigns. You can find the Rocketbirds Soundtrack on iTunes.

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is available exclusively on PSN for $11.99. We’ve jam packed this title with awesomeness and polished the heck out of it – so strap on your jetpack, get pumped up, and incite revolution! Thanks for following us through the game’s development and I hope you enjoy it! This game is also part of October’s Only on PSN program.

Today I’d like to share a bit about the game’s two-player couch co-op mode, since we are particularly happy with the way it’s turned out. But first, check out some gameplay in our new Rocketbirds co-op video.

We had always wanted a couch co-op mode for the game ever since we started development on the PS3 (because, well, co-op is fun), but didn’t know how and if it would work for our non-scrolling platformer. Simple questions needed answering, such as; “What should happen when one player leaves the current screen the other one is still on it?” After a few quick tests we decided to allow screen changing only when both players exited the screen in the same direction. In the end this allowed us to create some pretty cool new puzzles for the game!

We also decided to make the characters pint-sized and called them the Budgie commandos (a parakeet is called a “Budgie” in the world of Rocketbirds). When stacked, the Budgie on top becomes the turret (Master-Blaster style), able to piggy-back along while the Budgie on the bottom handles all the running and positioning. When stacked, the Budgie team can reach higher places, which also paves the way for some interesting new combat strategies.

The co-op mechanics worked so well that we ended up creating entirely new puzzles, crazy battles, and a separate back-story just for this 10-chapter mode. In the co-op mode, the General’s daughter has been bird-napped and held ransom by those sneaky, totalitarian Penguins. The dirty half-dozen Budgie commandos have been dispatched into Albatropolis to “find her and bring her back (dramatic pause) alive”.

We’re bringing Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken exclusively to PSN in the US on October 18th. We’ll be back soon with more!

With our first post in July, we introduced you to our upcoming title Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken, and for our second post in September, we touched a bit on the genesis and character design of the Rocketbirds. In this third post, we wanted to talk a bit about the cutscenes and music videos we created for the game.

But first, here is the preview trailer of the game!

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken takes you on a cinematic platform adventure through Albatropolis, as you hunt down the Penguin’s corrupt leader, Putzki. Along the way you’ll have to kill many penguins, solve puzzles, incite revolution, and maybe pilot a few jetpacks.

Originally, for Rocketbirds: Revolution! (the Independent Games Festival 2010 triple finalist browser game) we created the first opening sequence (‘Robot’ music video) as a way to keep people interested while the first game assets were being streamed to people’s computers. When we’d completed it, it worked well to bridge the waiting time (it’s a lot more entertaining than watching a download status bar), but it also helped us infuse attitude to the game’s presentation and provide people with a more complete gaming experience. This has prompted us to provide all our cutscenes in this cinematic format – and yeah, making them was a lot of fun too!

Our movies start out as rough thumbnail sketches, which we cut and scan together into storyboards and weave into an animatic, which allows us to time the shots with the music. During this stage, most of the creative magic happens, as we can work and iterate very quickly. Once we were happy with the shots, we’d start fleshing out all the required assets for each shot and bring all the pieces together. Here are the comparative shots in those clips:

The other type of cutscene we call “talking heads” – these type of scenes are pretty easy to do since we use the actual fully-rigged game character assets to act out the scenes. First, we start with the script and storyboard and do the voices – then produce an animatic to check the timing. Some of these clips remain animatics until almost the very last moment, so we can stay flexible in moving / removing these to suit the structure and pacing of the game.

We introduce the game’s two antagonists in the animatic strip above. Just like Hardboiled Chicken, both Putzki (Penguin) and Brno (Albatros) needed to be larger than life. I thought it’d be funny if the bodyguard, Brno, was such a bad-ass that he wasn’t afraid to slap his own boss (Putzki) around a bit. Putzki too, with his posters naming him, “Our Fearless Leader” had to be a first-class yellow-bellied twit, having a Paxton-freak-out moment, obviously borrowed from “Aliens,” in this scene.

We’re very proud of this title! Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken will be coming exclusively to PSN October 18, 2011.

In July I had the pleasure of announcing that our game, Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken, was coming exclusively to PSN. We’ve gone and polished the heck out of it and will be shipping these fine feathered friends to you soon!

The game was in production for the PS3 for just over a year, but the Rocketbirds have been with me much longer. It started in the 80s with those anthropomorphic animal comics, such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Using only birds gave the stories a satirical edge I could play with.

It wasn’t until 2000, when I’d co-founded Ratloop Inc., and had decided to go back to complete my studies that I started to use the birds as a way to vent my creative energy.

I spent a week putting together a clip called “Pilot.” It had sneaky penguins infiltrating a chicken base on what looked like the North Pole. It got good attention at the time, so the simple formula stuck with me.

Eventually I spent a week at an art event called Trustus. Artists had seen and liked “Pilot,” that year a bunch of us created a movie (with Penguins and Chickens) during the week- it played non-stop, projected as background visuals to music the DJs were playing. Music plays an important part in Rocketbirds – I’d also met Herwig Maurer of New World Revolution that week, and he remembered the birds and let us use his awesome music for Rocketbirds!

The more mainstream my life became, the more these birds started pecking at my psyche. I had to make another game. In October 2009, we released “Rocketbirds: Revolution,” which was nominated for three awards at the 2010 Independent Games Festival: Excellence in Audio, Excellence in Visual Art and the Seumas McNally grand prize.

The protagonist, Hardboiled Chicken, is a mild-mannered, stone-cold Penguin killer. He’d always been a light grey colour, like a hard-boiled egg. He started out (D1) looking like the prototype Hardboiled Chicken (C1) with no real neck, stocky body and a single wattle. I tried going Earthworm Jim-like (D2), but I thought a chicken soldier needed a bandana to cover his comb. I also gave him two wattles and sideburns, and removed the bottom beak to simplify his talking animation. I saw Behind Enemy Lines, so hooked him up in a track suit – then a biker suit (D3). Something still wasn’t right. An executioner look (D4) did the trick for Hardboiled Chicken (D5).

I could never get the Penguins (E1 – E4) right until we were well into production of Rocketbirds: Revolution! These were soldiers of the evil Penguin empire, but when designing them (E5), they were more like soldiers in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wanted the Penguin’s black and white pattern to be black over the eyes, appearing bandit-like and disobedient.

For the game’s two-player couch co-op mode, we needed six more Budgie designs to form the “Dirty Half-Dozen.” I’d given this task to one of the level artists, Xinru, to create designs based on the original budgie protestor template. The design I liked (F3) prompted me to theme the others based on Vietnam War movies and TV shows (F4). Ang, our other level artist, painted the Dirty Half-Dozen (F5 / F6). One of the Budgies had a last-minute sex change and became Hilga.

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken will be coming to exclusively to PSN this October and we couldn’t be more excited!

After its triple nomination at the 2010 Independent Games Festival, the Rocketbirds universe is finally coming to PS3. The totalitarian Penguin regime has oppressed Albatropolis for too long, but who can bring it down? Maybe Hardboiled Chicken? Oh Please… Of course, Hardboiled Chicken!

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken takes you on a cinematic platform adventure through Albatropolis as you hunt down the Penguin’s corrupt leader, Putzki. Along the way, you’ll have to kill many penguins, solve puzzles, incite revolution, and maybe possibly pilot a few jetpacks.

We’ve had a lot of fun putting Rocketbirds on the PS3. The available power has allowed us to vastly improve on the controls, visuals, and gameplay over the first game. For the visuals, you can look forward to expressive characters and rich, detailed environments. All running at 60fps and 720p.

There’s even an optional stereoscopic 3D mode that also runs at the full 60fps, 720p. This may sound pretty pointless for a non-scrolling platformer, but it looks great. Each screen is modeled in full 3D, and we’ve got just enough scroll, depth, and parallax going on to impress without making you dizzy.

And, in an announcement that has us really excited, we’ll also have a preview demo of “Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken” at the San Diego Comic-Con starting July 21st. For anyone curious about the game, please stop by the PlayStation booth and have a go. If you do play it, let us know what you think at support@rocketbirds.com.

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is scheduled for release on PSN late 2011/early 2012.