Do you know what today is? It’s Day of the Dragon, that’s what! HOARD, Big Sandwich Games’ award-winning arcade-strategy game, releases on PSP tonight! It’s available exclusively via PlayStation Network download, selling for $9.99. It features all the same exciting core gameplay as the PS3 version, perfectly mapped to your favorite handheld gaming device. Since all HOARD levels play in 10 minutes or less, it’s almost as if the game was made with your on-the-go gaming needs in mind! [cue evil mastermind music]

Check out a few PSP screenshots here:

To celebrate bringing HOARD to PSP, we’re also putting the PS3 version of HOARD on FIRE SALE (har har) for a limited-time price of $9.99. Ridiculous dragon madness! Who benefits from all this chaos? Why you, of course! (And your pocketbook.)

If you’ve been eyeing the PS3 version for a while, we hope this sale is all you need to pull the trigger. For that mere pittance, you’ll get four modes, over 35 levels, leaderboards, Trophies, co-op, and more! It’s a no brainer to pick up what IGN awarded “Best Quick Fix” and nominated for “Best Competitive Multiplayer” in their Best of 2010 roundup. That’s a long way of saying it’s a good game…so get it while it’s on sale!

Let’s make this the Year of the Dragon, shall we? Thanks for your support…see you in the skies!

It’s been just over two weeks since HOARD released, and thousands of gamers have been getting their flame on while toasting villages, incinerating knights, crisping thieves, and kidnapping the occasional princess!

Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, with many surprised at just how addictive and deep the dragon “stratecade” (strategy arcade) experience is. Ars Technica says HOARD “will keep you scorching villages for hours on end” while IGN boasts, “burninating the countryside is definitely a lot of fun.” Joystiq says it perhaps best of all: “There is a sparkling gem of gameplay here.”

However, the game was not entirely without its rough edges, and there are a few issues we’ve been monitoring which need a little tweaking. Your feedback at HOARDgame.com has been very important to us, and we’re happy to confirm that we’ll be addressing most of those issues in an upcoming patch!

The patch will include:

• Eye Strain Begone — We’ll be increasing tutorial and badge text size for less squintyness. 20/10 vision no longer required!
• Lasting Friendship — The multiplayer lobby will now be persistent. After finishing a game, you’ll return to the game setup lobby so you can easily play again with the same people. If you want to back out and de-friend them, that’s now on your conscience!
• Leaderboard Glitch No-More — Certain co-op games were not posting leaderboard scores correctly. This sometimes leads to improper scores being posted on the main HOARD Rank leaderboard. That will be fixed, and although the HOARD Rank leaderboard will be reset, you won’t lose any progress—the first time you play a new game of any type, your HOARD Rank will be reposted without delay!
• Anti-Royal Bias — This badge wasn’t reliably triggering. We fixed it. Yay!
• That One Exploit is Fixed — There was a certain little exploit involving a specific power-up that could be abused by some sneaky people, and it is now fixed! We’re not telling!
• Which Map? — During game setup, some people were getting confused about whether their map selection was confirmed or not. We modified to make it more obvious.
• A Little This, a Little That — Various tweaks and improvements throughout.

And because we love you, we’re throwing in a couple bonus goodies as well:

• Deathspin — A new HOARD map will be included, absolutely free. Try your hand at surviving in a terrible spiral of DOOOOOM! Check out Deathspiral in the video above.
• Purple Princesses — Princesses worth 3,000 gold or more will show up in a purple dress (instead of pink), so you can quickly assess which lady you’d like to pursue even in the heat of the battle.
• Friendly Competition — Sort leaderboards by your friends list, so you can always make sure you’re a step better than the rest of your social circle.

We’re finishing up the patch now and hope to see it go live within the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned, and thanks for HOARDing! Oh yeah—if you aren’t playing HOARD yet, what are you waiting for? In the words of Platform Nation, “Buy this game right now. Right. NOW.”

‘Nuff said!

HOARD drops tomorrow on PSN, so it’s time you start thinking about tuning up your treasure-hunting skills! Here are a few tips to help you get started on your path to becoming a great dragon and racking up some impressive scores:

• Preserve your score multiplier. You lose your score multiplier whenever you are wounded to zero health, and also whenever a thief finishes stealing from your hoard. If you want to earn Gold ratings on maps, you have to avoid losing your score multiplier too much. It’s better to fly home and heal before getting wounded all the way to zero. And always keep an eye out for those sneaky burglers.
• Armor up for safety! The denizens of the realm are not friendly. Knights and archers make for challenging foes when they come in groups. While upgrading Speed and Fire Breath are sexy, improving your Armor can be key to good scores. If you find yourself constantly getting injured and sent back to your hoard, you probably need tougher scales! Having a few extra hit points means you can make mistakes and not get punished for it.
• Tribute towns are safe points. When you terrorize a town enough without actually killing it, it will start to fear you and send you offering carts full of gold. But another great benefit is that the town’s archers will no longer attack you. If an opponent is chasing you down when you’re weak, go hide out near your tribute town and let the archers do the dirty work for you!
• Don’t kill everything. As the kingdom becomes more populated with farms and houses, there will be much more valuable merchant wagons rolling around. More commerce means more treasure for the taking. If you kill everything and keep the kingdom in ruins, you’ll starve your own hoard! Don’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
• There’s a counter-strategy for that. To win at multiplayer, you’ll need to craft a strategy that takes into account all the factors: your own play style, the particular map, and the choices of your opponent. If your opponent is less skilled at fighting, make a fast dragon with powerful breath, and mercilessly hunt him down. If you’re weaker at the twitch stuff, upgrade armor—you’ll be able to take a beating and still get back to your hoard without getting defeated and having to drop your treasure. Keep an eye on what your opponent is upgrading (you can tell by how his dragon appearance changes during the game) so you know what you’re dealing with.

Ok, I promised five tips but we’re on a roll here so how about a sixth for free:

• Gold bandwidth. Upgrading Carry increases how much gold you can pick up before having to return home to your hoard to unload. But another huge benefit is that it increases how quickly you drop off that gold into your hoard. The speeds can get pretty fast at higher Carry levels. Less time dropping gold means more time out pillaging the kingdom, which in turn means more gold for your hoard! And gold for your hoard is the whole point, innit?

And finally, as a super-special bonus, here’s the Trophy list:

HOARD Trophies

1. Legendary Wyrm (GOLD): Achieve HOARD Rank 15
2. Mythical Hoarder (GOLD): Earn 90% of Badges
3. Youngling (BRONZE): Achieve Hoard Rank 2
4. Basic Dragon (BRONZE): Achieve Hoard Rank 5
5. Advanced Dragon (BRONZE): Achieve Hoard Rank 7
6. Veteran Dragon (BRONZE): Achieve Hoard Rank 9
7. Wyrm (BRONZE): Achieve Hoard Rank 11
8. Great Wyrm (BRONZE): Achieve Hoard Rank 13
9. Eager Hoarder (BRONZE): Earn 25% of Badges
10. Hoarder (BRONZE): Earn 50% of Badges
11. Tireless Hoarder (BRONZE): Earn 75% of Badges

Happy HOARDing—hope to see you online on Tuesday!

Know why you should be excited for November 2nd? No, not because it’s the 63rd anniversary of the first (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose, and not even because it’s Stefanie Powers’ birthday.

November 2nd is the day that HOARD drops on PSN for PlayStation 3! And as big a deal as this is for you, imagine how important it is for dragon-kind! Their story is finally out!

For those of you living in a cave (on a pile of gold?) over the last few months, HOARD is Big Sandwich Games’ dual-stick action-strategy game about dragons gathering treasure. Players roam over a medieval kingdom, burning villages, kidnapping princesses, slaying knights, and otherwise causing mayhem…all in the quest for the shiny stuff.

HOARD will sell for $14.99, and include over 35 unique maps across 4 game modes (Treasure Hunt, Princess Rush, Survival, and Co-op). With the inclusion of leaderboards and a comprehensive rewards system featuring over 100 badges to earn (and full trophy support), there is easily over 20+ hours of gameplay waiting for you. That’s like 1 cent per minute! The phone companies could never give this much value to you!

Get involved in the HOARD community at www.hoardgame.com, and make us feel part of the Social Network by becoming a fan on Facebook!

We look forward to seeing you online on November 2nd, although let’s be honest—it will be sad to see our leaderboard positions drop!

Hoard’s gameplay is simple on its surface, but strategic to its core. In classic dual-stick shooter style, the left analog stick maneuvers your dragon while the right stick activates your fire breath. The goal is to accumulate as much gold as your dragon can carry by burning structures and enemies, then returning to your treasure hoard to safely deposit your loot for big points (with multiplier bonuses if you’re on a spree). Collect enough gold and, in an RPG-style twist, you’ll be able to level up your dragon’s speed, gold carrying capacity, armor, or fire breath power via a quick tap of the D-pad. In a competitive match, choosing the right upgrade path is a key to besting your opponents. If an enemy dragon is using a Hoard Thief power-up to steal your gold, for instance, you can counter by pumping up your speed rating and chasing him down.

So far, so good. But playing Hoard reveals subtleties that are easy to miss at a glance. The surrounding kingdom for instance, is teeming with details: tiny wagons carrying grain from the mill to town, carriages shuttling princesses from building to building, and stealthy thieves scrambling around your treasure pile. What’s more, the surrounding kingdom continually evolves around you, with defensive structures such as Wizard Towers that erect in response to your destruction. In fact, it pays to allow the kingdom to grow and thrive before swooping in to collect your ill-gotten gains.

Hoard is packed with play modes, including Treasure (collect as much gold as possible in single-player or co-op), Princess Rush (a competitive mode where the only goal is to capture 15 princesses), and a classic survival mode where you try to outlast ever-increasing waves of enemies. Both couch and online co-op play are supported as well, in any combination of up to four players, with some competitive modes for good measure.

Hoard will land on the PS3 this fall, and a separate, handheld-optimized version will also appear on the PSP. What do you think of Big Sandwich Games’ debut PSN title? Leave your questions and comments below.

Hopefully that gives you an idea of what the game’s all about. Intense action, leaderboard score attack, crazy multiplayer duels, diabolical powerups, and over 100 badges to earn! Get ready for HOARD!

Stop by booth #3012 if you’ll be at PAX, and we’ll give ya a chocolate gold coin. If you won’t be there, don’t worry: the PlayStation.Blog will have a PAX report for you to feast upon.

For those of you that don’t know, Hoard is an arcade action title coming to PSN (both for PS3 and PSP). In this score-attack game, up to four players take the part of small dragons with very big ambitions, and try to amass a hoard of glittering treasure in over 30 different kingdoms.

How do you get treasure, you ask? By BURNING things, of course! And kidnapping princesses for ransom… At the Big Sandwich Games booth (#3012), we’ll have two screens of non-stop dragon combat action, swag, and prizes for a daily high-score competition. Oh, and we’ll also have a real, honest-to-goodness princess*. So come get your firebreathing on!

Since our last post, we can confirm four-player co-op play has been added to the game — thanks for all the comments! That rounds our feature set out with Treasure, Princess Rush, Hoard (Survival), and Co-op modes. We support up to four dragons in any combination of couch and online players.

A few of latest screenshots are above to tide you over until the trailer hits right before PAX. And remember, kids: the only good knight is a roasted knight!

*Not entirely guaranteed to be of certified royal lineage.

Developed by Big Sandwich Games, HOARD is an arcade-action game where the dragon is the hero. Your goal: collect as much treasure as possible from a living kingdom that grows around you. Burn down crops, strafe merchant wagons, and — best of all — kidnap fair maidens and force the kingdom to ransom them back for piles of gold! But watch out for vile knights and merciless wizards, who want nothing more than to gain fame by slaying a dragon.

Collecting gold at your hoard will level you up and give you upgrade points. These are used to increase your dragon’s speed, breath, armor, and health. Your strategy in choosing upgrades is crucial to scoring the most points possible on each map and rising to the top of the leaderboards. You can also complete challenges to earn Hoard Rankings and eventually become a Legendary Wyrm!

Cooperative play is supported for PS3 (both couch and online co-op), so you can get your fire on with your friends. Three different game modes and dozens of different kingdoms combine with a deep reward system and leaderboards to ensure you’ll get your treasure’s worth on this one.

Visit hoardgame.com for a developer blog, screenshots, concept art, and more.

Also, stay tuned for more info on HOARD at E3 Expo next week in LA, where the game will be available for a hands-on play!