Hello! It brings me great pleasure to announce that the renaming competition for Stealth B**stard, our wonderfully nefarious stealth-puzzle-platformer, was a complete success! Rather than picking just one of our favorite entries, we’ve chosen two and fused them together to create one ultimate, unified gaming title:

Stealth Inc. – A Clone in the Dark!

It’s with this we’d like to congratulate Ash Baker for ‘Stealth Inc.’ (and for the other 250 entries submitted thereafter) and Ben Collins for ‘A Clone in the Dark’. You will both be awarded a PS Vita, a copy of Stealth Inc. – A Clone in the Dark when it’s released and you will both appear in the credits of the game! You are both stars and we are eternally grateful to you both for coming up with a clean name that our coarse minds were incapable of formulating!

If you yourself entered one of the above ideas for a game title but are not listed as a winner, this is because we had to accept winning entries on a first come, first serve basis… we simply do not have that many PS Vitas to give away! Take solace in the fact that your mind is powerful and the world is your oyster!

I’d like to express my gratitude to all 3,500+ of you that entered (yes, even those of you who submitted the perverted ‘Stealth Orgasm,’ the outlandish ‘Ze goggles! Zey do something!’, and the more classy ‘El Chappo Stealtho’). They were all worthy titles, but there could be only one… well, two!

I hope you are all as excited as we are for our new name and that you enjoy the new screenshots accompanying this blog post! Be sure to stay tuned for more updates as we head towards our summer release!

Hello! I am utterly overjoyed to bring you news that Stealth B**tard, our outrageously devious stealth-puzzle-platformer, will be sneaking its way on to PS3 and PS Vita this Summer!

If you’ve not yet heard of Stealth B**tard, it’s our deadly stealth platform game with a fast paced twist! Following your birth in a cloning lab, you find yourself trapped in a vast and overwhelming network of dastardly chambers, replete with vicious, yet hilarious, booby traps and deranged robots! Your task is simple; stay out of sight and get to the exit. Persevere to the bitter end and you might just discover the secrets of this vicious world!

We like to look at Stealth B**tard as stealth gaming without the waiting. Gone are the days of hanging around in a locker or a conveniently-placed human-sized crate! The mechanical foes of our stealth world are much less forgiving, instantly eviscerating you or your fellow captives on sight!

The game boasts brilliantly crisp visuals, an abundance of character, tight controls and a steady difficulty curve that gradually ramps up across 80 levels, spread over eight unique worlds. Additional features such as un-lockable gadgets, speedrun leaderboards and a level editor gives the game unlimited replay value!

With stages taking anywhere between 30 seconds and 10 minutes to complete, plus tons of secrets to discover, we think our game will really be coming home for PS3 and PS Vita!

This is all very exciting! But there’s more… we’d like to present our fans with an opportunity to be a part of Stealth B**tard’s journey to PlayStation. We want to rename Stealth B**tard to something less profane… it’s just too rude!

We therefore want you to have a go at naming the PlayStation versions – if you think you’ve got the perfect profanity-free solution to our naughty title, we want to hear from you!

If you’ve got a great idea for a new title, head on over to our site and submit it to us! If you suggest the winning name, we’ll give you a spot in the credits, a copy of the game when it’s finished, and we’ll throw in a PS Vita as well! Not bad, eh?!

The closing date is 14th April 2013, so drop on by to http://www.curve-studios.com/win-a-ps-vita without delay to submit your ideas!

So, what do you get for your low-low $9.99? An epic story spanning three diverse worlds jam-packed with funny one-liners, comic situations and deeply heartwrenching pathos (maybe). You get 12 massive, sprawling levels filled with secret areas, devilish puzzles and perilous traps. You get tons of unlockable abilities and permanent character upgrades, all crucial in evolving Explodemon into the ultimate badass exploder-dude. You get a finely nuanced control system designed to make speed-running a graceful and compulsive experience. AND – most of all – you get the undying love of an indie developer that believed in its vision too stubbornly to give up.

Everyone here at Curve is “double rainbow” -levels of excitedness about the fact that you’ll soon be getting your mitts on our labour of love, so make sure you let us know what you think!

If you haven’t yet read about the long development history of Explodemon, check out our previous post here, and there’s lots more information about the game and an early trailer in our very first post here – see if you can spot how much has changed between then and now!

Oh, and if you’re a little light on money this month, fear not: we’re giving away THREE copies of Explodemon RIGHT NOW! If you want to know more, make sure you follow @curvestudios on Twitter!

I’ll be hanging around in the comments section if you’ve got any questions (related to the game, of course – still having nightmares after last time). Otherwise, I’ll see you on the leaderboards, chump!

Hello again! Explodemon is out in just a few weeks’ time – February 8th, save the date! – so we thought it would be nice to take a look at the long, long history of Explodemon and the realities of life as an independent developer (and now publisher!)

Our wonderful design director and (non-biological) father of Explodemon, Jonathan Biddle – known almost exclusively as Bidds – has documented the whole five year saga. It’s a long tale, so I’ve formulated a super-condensed version here – but if you want the full, unedited saga, point your Internet Machine over here.

To set the scene: Curve was founded in 2005, a pretty dire time for game developers in the UK. The fledgling company got some work making ‘joystick games’ which, while it could be considered a comedown having previously worked on triple-A products, turned out to be a great chance to get back to gaming’s roots:

After finishing a long, complex, demoralising project, working on getting five 2D games out of the door within three months was refreshing and liberating. The constraints of the system, combined with my love of classic arcade, SNES and GBA games made for an interesting period.

One of the joystick games we were working on at the time was a Spider-Man platform game, and I’d had to spend a good deal of time explaining to the game’s coder the basics of platform game control. The more I thought about it, the more my neurons flickered with my multiple past replays of Yoshi’s Island and Treasure’s Astro Boy and Gunstar Heroes. These kinds of games possess a certain quality to them; something about the pixel art, the depth of gameplay deriving from simple rules, the accessibility, the collecting, the level designs, the perfect controls. I felt a burning desire to create my own game that explored these mechanics.

Explodemon prototype (above); Explodemon final version (below)

Over the next few months, the game began to take shape. Those interested in exactly how the mechanics in Explodemon! came about should check out the unabridged Part 2 and Part 3, but for this whistle-stop tour we’ll scoot forward into March 2006, when the prototype was considered complete enough to show colleagues. A spontaneous showing to a visiting publisher brought favourable reactions, so we decided to cast it further afield.

Publishers initially showed interest in it, but would always find reasons to not get involved – concerns about an exploding character in the post-9/11 climate, or that it was “too Japanese.” Nevertheless, our art team plowed ahead and made a concept video of how we imagined the finished product to look like, which we used to get more interest from a publisher and to secure a PSN slot for the game. But when that publisher pulled out in early May 2008 we found ourselves once again back at square one.

One platform holder decided that we hadn’t progressed enough to keep our slot, but luckily Sony believed in us and let us soldier on. We started our first coders working on the engine in November 2008 and Explodemon’s lead artist joined in January 2009.

Then, on one unsuspecting March day, we were sprucing up the website when we decided to put the concept trailer up on it, as it was mostly only publishers that looked at it. Simultaneously, we switched to a new piece of software and the manufacturer asked if they could put out a little press release about us.

Perhaps we were naive to think that the two wouldn’t be connected, but the next day – April 1st – the Internet was ablaze with stories about Explodemon. While it was great for the team to see such excitement about a game that had been knocked back so much by publishers, the high was to be short-lived.

“It was also on April 1st that the most insane thing happened. Something that I still can’t really believe to this day, something that shows that truth really is stranger than fiction. A few hours after our video was revealed, a totally different developer on the other side of the world independently announced a 2.5D platform game with an exploding lead character. We literally couldn’t believe it.”

With all the media interest, though, guess who came knocking back on our doors again: yep, the many legions of publishers. Once again we went back into their green-light process. By this time, we had not made huge progress with our limited resources, whereas the other guys were gearing up for release. Once again: all rejections, this time because of our new competition, which was (deservedly) going down a storm.

“That game launched at the end of July, to great acclaim and sales. While we were happy for the developers – they’re good people, and it’s always good to see indies prosper – they were dark days for me. With our tiny team, and massive collection of publisher refusals – about 20 companies – we’d been unable to make an impact on production. We were at a crossroads. There was no getting away from it this time: there would be no funding from any external sources, we would have to make this game ourselves or just give it up forever. What was it going to be?”

Well, given that you’re here now, reading this, you can pretty much figure out what happened: we put our money where our mouth was, hired a full team and, in late 2009, the project entered full development, with a full team of artists, programmers and designers all beavering away at producing an overwhelmingly awesome experience.

“We were still unsure of how it was going to turn out back then, and we weren’t always convinced that it was going to get finished. And because running an independent games developer is very hard and very stressful, it’s true that things haven’t always gone smoothly. One thing’s for certain, though: when Explodemon is finally released, I’m just as convinced now as I was then that our belief in the game will ultimately enrich the lives of everyone in the world and bring peace and harmony to all. Or it’ll just be a great video game, whichever is more important.”

Let’s start with the latter.

(Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @curvestudios for all the latest information and chances to win copies of the game!)

Hello there, wonderful PlayStation.Blog fans!

My name is Ed Fear and I’m the PR & Community Manager at Curve Studios, an independent developer based in London, England. I’d like to take a moment of your time to introduce you to Explodemon, an awesome action-platformer coming to the PlayStation Network this Winter 2010.

I think the best way of telling you about Explodemon is with a suitably bombastic trailer, so take a look at this:

If that’s piqued your interest, hooray! If it didn’t pique your interest then, well, shame on you. Watch it again until it does.

Ready to continue? Okay, then let me set the scene: the nefarious Vortex have mounted a surprise invasion on the planet Nibia, destroying its entire Guardian defence force in the process. Only one hope remains: the malfunctioning prototype Guardian Explodemon, locked in stasis after a, shall we say, ‘devastating’ activation experiment.

As his name suggests, Explodemon’s problem is that he’s ‘prone’ to exploding. It turns out that, surprisingly, Explodemon’s explosivity (so totally a word) will come in useful for fighting back the Vortex onslaught, navigating around the environment, and solving tricky physics-based puzzles.

Featuring 12 huge levels of pulse-pounding platforming, a deep control system, devastatingly up-close-and-personal combat, upgradable special abilities, comic-book style cutscenes and a story that’ll make you giggle, cry, or simply sigh with indifference, Explodemon isn’t your average game. No way. It’s above average, at least. No, wait – so way above average that it’s pure awesome. That’s more like it.

We’ve been working on Explodemon for almost five years now, in some capacity or another, so we’re immeasurably excited to actually get it out to people before the end of the year.

If you’re thinking ‘Five years?’ then, well, that’s understandable. It’s a very long and dramatic story, featuring MYSTERIOUS BENEFACTORS! LAST-MINUTE DEAL BREAKDOWNS! HIDDEN USURPERS! and BOUNCY CASTLES! – well, okay, not the last one (I can dream). But it ultimately culminates in us deciding to follow our instincts and venture into the brave new world of self-publishing. But you look a little fidgety, and I don’t want to go on too much, so let’s save that for another blog post. Or possible movie rights.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little introduction to Explodemon, and that you’re suitably excited for what I can personally guarantee is the most EXPLOSIVE game to launch on PSN this Winter. If you’ve got any questions or comments, post them below – I’ll be skulking below in the comments section like a lonely man at a house party, gripping his drink and staring intently at his shoes, desperate for a snippet of conversation to latch on to.

P.S. Oh! I almost forgot! Make sure you follow us on Twitter @curvestudios to keep up-to-date on all the latest information and get exclusive screenshots not seen anywhere else. There are free copies of the game up for grabs too!