Munch the Gabbit is now in HD! The team at Just Add Water, with help from the programming staff at Four Door Lemon, worked hard over the last 18 months to bring you an updated version of Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee on PS3.

Gamers met the crazy planet of Oddworld back on the original PlayStation, with Abe’s Oddysee and Abe’s Exoddus quickly becoming classics. If you played those games, you’ll remember the reluctant hero’s destiny to rescue his fellow Mudokons from corporate slavery at the hands of Glukkon Companies Rupture Farms and SoulStorm Brewery.

Munch first burst onto our screens in 2002 (on that other console that sounds like egg-fox), following in the footsteps of the now-classic Abe games. Another reluctant hero, the diminutive Munch, is the last of his kind. His mission: To escape from the evil Vykkers Labs, save all the lab animals and liberate a can of Gabbiar, using the eggs to get his species going again. All with the help of Abe, of course!

We have no doubt that one look at these screenshots will bring all those childhood memories rushing back. Just don’t cry on us, though, or we’ll get all emotional too.

So, what’s new in Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee? Enhanced assets featuring fully remodeled characters, for one, as well as high-resolution textures for crisper-looking environment detail. We’ve also included new audio fit for PS3, DualShock 3-centric controls, unlockable art, and 46 Trophies — including a Platinum!

Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee HD is now available on PS3 in North America, starting today. PS Vita owners won’t have long to wait, with a version due out early next year.

We hope it’s worth the wait! Let us know what you think in the comments.

If you haven’t played Stranger’s Wrath yet, the launch trailer does a good job showing off the game’s key features: 60 frames-per-second action in both first-person and third-person perspectives, all set within the unique universe of Oddworld. For those that don’t know what Stranger’s Wrath HD is all about, let me tell you a story…

Tall, dark, and passive-aggressive, a Stranger is lured out of routine bounty hunting by the prospect of a one time, bounty-to-end-all bounties moolah maker. He’s got a short but pricey personal shopping list and he’s finally found a way to check it off.

With moolah on his mind, our Stranger travels from town to town facing off with mentally challenged Outlaws, violently ignorant Clakkerz, and paranoid, relic-hiding native Grubbs.

Welcome to the Mongo River Valley, the iron mining capital of the continent. Upstream is Sekto Springs, the bottled water company suckling the life out of the valley. Mr Sekto has damned the river and the habitat it sustains. A collector of rare Steef heads, Sekto has put word out that he’s in the market for a Steef. These majestic beasts once roamed the Mongo River Valley in great herds, but now their scarcity makes each one an extravagant prize. High atop the springs at Sekto Springs Dam, the slimy prima donna waits impatiently for the Steef bounty to be delivered.

Armed with his trusty double-barrel crossbow and a pack full of Live Ammo, Stranger is ready to deliver said bounty when a humbling incident with the local outlaws serves as a severe reminder of what it means not only to hunt, but also to be hunted. The prospect of being filleted brings many changes to an inhabitant.

Changes that even modern Vykker science cannot duplicate! Not one to pose as garnish, he makes it up to Sekto Springs all right, but Sekto and his Wolvarks get their Steef served up with a frothy can of whoop ass, prepared by our beloved hombre-sin-nombre. Yes folks, Oddworld just got Stranger.

As we announced previously, we will be releasing an update to the game in February that will add stereoscopic 3D support and a bunch of other features. Additionally, we thought we’d take this chance to ask if there’s anything you’d like to see addressed in the update, or if you had any comments you wanted to share.

In the meantime, I hope you all have a great 2012! We hope to see you down the road.

As most of you may know we originally planned to release the game around Easter, to be able to do that we were to have started full development in September last year, but as it transpired, we didn’t actually start until April 2011, which gave us our hoped late Summer release; but we ended up spending another couple of months on it, so here we are DONE AND DUSTED for release.

As such I’m extremely pleased to announce that Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD will release on December 27th in North America for $14.99. And we will be releasing worldwide! (all stores, except for the Far East/Russia/Ukraine and Portugal at this time).

We had planned on shipping with support for stereoscopic 3D and PlayStation Move and a few other little things, due to time limits we are not able to bring those features in this initial version. However we WILL be bringing them in an update in a couple months’ time, along with some other little extras we’ve got planned.

One of things we’ve been asked a lot over the past few months is if Stranger’s Wrath HD has a Platinum trophy, of course it does. This is a big game and can easily take at least 12+hrs to complete.

So what’s been updated in the HD version …

Characters

• All 84 character models have been updated with increased polygon counts and higher resolution textures.
• Wolvark Sloghandlers now release Slogs instead of Slegs.
• Professor Dimble now has glasses and an academic tome.
• New female voices have been recorded for two characters.
• Made Blisterz Booty unkillable.

Original Version (top) HD Version (bottom)

Original Version (top) HD Version (bottom)

Environments

• All environments have been given higher resolution textures.
• Most vegetation has been updated with increased polygon counts and/or higher resolution textures.
• A lot of environment now reflects in water where it didn’t before.
• Many, many pipes and barrels were rounded.
• New Easter Eggs added to the game.
• Added Blisterz Booty’s broken crud gun to the floor by his bola’d body.
• Sekto’s Office has been changed to more closely resemble than seen in the FMV.

Original Version (top) HD Version (bottom)

Audio

• All game audio (voice, sound effects and music) have been upgraded to 16-bit 44KHz from 8-bit 11KHz or less!
• Support for 5.1, Dolby Digitial and DTS.

Display

• Everything now runs at 720p, 60 FPS, and in widescreen.
• All menus have been updated with a new design based on original unused concepts.
• New posters now occupy the inventory menu when no bounty is accepted.

Difficulty

• All armour upgrades now actually increase Stranger’s health.
• Added difficulty levels to the game: Easy, Medium and Hard.
• In Easy mode:
• Stranger has twice the health
• Enemies have half the health and stamina
• Enemies’ stamina recovers half as fast
• In Normal Mode:
• Stranger’s health and armour for later in the game have been re-balanced.
• In Hard mode:
• Stranger has a third less health.
• Enemies stamina recovers a third quicker.

Unlockables

• 37 Trophies: 23 bronze, 8 silver, 5 gold, 1 platinum
• 37 pieces of unlockable concept art
• Five unlockable movies

Once again, thanks for waiting as long as you have, we certainly hope you’ll enjoy the game, and if the review scores we’re starting to get in are anything to go by, you will!

Happy holidays everyone!

It’s been a long road for us, and we’ve made a whole truck full of updates. We’ve updated EVERY one of 83 characters in the game, the vast majority of the environmental textures, and a lot of the environment geometry. We’ve also completely updated the user interface, added some easter eggs into the game, and a whole raft of unlockable extras — some never seen before, and some rarely seen.

To celebrate being at the end of the development cycle for Stranger’s Wrath, we wanted to share this trailer with you. The trailer looks great but the game looks better: you just can’t capture 60 frames-per-second action in a web trailer!

We hope you enjoy the trailer and we’ll be back very soon to share full release details with you.

You may have heard of this game before – it was originally released in March 2005, but we’re doing an HD remake for PSN. Recently there have been a whole raft of HD remakes coming to the PS3, and to be able to work on this project and take the definition of “HD Remake” to the next level has been a dream come true.

Not only are we revamping various aspects of the game such as texture resolution, user interface and game audio, but we’re also overhauling the character models. You’ll no doubt have seen the visual update we’ve done to the main character, Stranger. We’re updating every character in the game in similar style, and today I’d like to introduce you to a couple more.

First up we have the Clakkerz, the general population from the towns at the start of the game all the way to New Yolk City. The guy pictured above is the Store Keeper, he runs the General Store where you get to buy ammo and upgrades, and is always wise cracking, ahem, with you. A lot of my passion for this game is the story and the script, there is so much humour in there that you can’t help but laugh out loud at times!

Next we have the Grubb Natives. These guys are afraid of their own shadows and mistrust anyone, especially a tall Stranger that comes into their settlement, but is there a reason for that? Their story unfolds farther in the game.

In Stranger’s Wrath you play a bounty hunter, tracking down various villains and capturing them. To do this, you don’t use a gun but LIVE ammunition. And by “live” we really mean that – your ammo are little critters with special abilities, and at times the damned things even back chat you. So the critters sit on your crossbow and talk to you, then when the time’s right, you press the trigger and send them on their way.

This little guy is my favourite, the Chippunk, cause he’s a wise-cracking chipmunk-like guy!

Over the coming weeks and months, we will be back to talk to you more about the PS3 version of Stranger’s Wrath, including other updates and additions to the game we are making.

Thanks, and we hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

During the development of the PSP version, we made some changes based on feedback to the PS3 version. Things that you guys asked for, and things that we felt needed to be looked at. To tantalise you in anticipation here’s a list of some of what has changed …

• We’ve added a third ship. An anti-gravity ship. When playing, if you let go of the analog stick you will no longer plunge to your death.
• We’ve increased the number of special weapon slots from 3 to 5.
• We’ve added a lot more weapon pickups throughout the levels.
• We’ve made the Primary Objectives more recognizable on the radar (via BIG FLASHING DOTS).
• We originally used the old-school concept of three lives, then Game Over. We have now removed that; if you get Game Over, you can start from where you left off.
• We completely re-wrote the “paint” aspect of the editor, to make it faster and cleverer in relation to holes.
• We’ve added a new game mode, Survivor mode, where you have an ever-decreasing time limit, but an ever increasing difficulty level, in which to collect 10 gems.
• We’ve also unlocked the hidden game Gold Grabber, which was only unlocked by completing the game on the PS3 version.

Despite the changes, the game retains the same frenetic gameplay as the PS3 version, perhaps more so due to the smaller screen size. What started off as a making a PSP version has turned into much more.

Of course sharing levels is still possible and it’s pretty simple actually, each custom level you create and save is given a unique folder name within the “\PSP\SAVEDATA\” folder of your memory stick, or PSPgo internal storage, like this “NPEG00020DATAxx” (xx is a number), simply copy that entire folder to your friend’s PSP and they’ll be able to play your level via the “Play User Levels” option.

I think I’m done! We’re incredibly proud of the PSP version and we really do hope you like it. If you have any questions then leave a comment below and I will do my best to reply as quickly as possible.

Hope you all had a great holiday season? At JAW we had a fantastic holiday, and we owe it all to you guys for showing your support for Gravity Crash; your appreciation and feedback has reminded us all why we’ve been working so hard over the past 18 months, and it’s nice to see that so many of you guys think like we do – there truly is something special about retro inspired arcade blasting! And hopefully we’ll see a bunch of new creations soon, because Gravity Crash is currently on sale for half-off, only $4.99. You have to hurry, though, since the sale ends tomorrow.

Something I specifically wanted to thank you for is the levels you guys have been making. So far we’ve seen over 1,400 levels and there are some real gems out there! Shining brighter than most I’ve seen are the levels by “E-T-E-C” and “RubiconAlpha”. Their levels are exceptional and I would highly recommend you check them out. They are clever, challenging and enjoyable in equal measure, and perhaps they’ll spark your imagination and inspire you to create a new level yourself – who knows, it could even lead to your efforts earning a mention in my next post!

I’d also like to thank you all for the feedback you’ve given about the game so far, and give you a heads up on a patch we’ve been working on to improve the game based on your comments and suggestions. One thing that came up regularly was that it wasn’t entirely obvious that you can rate another players level (which is a shame considering how good a lot of them are), so we’ve made a change to this and added the “Vote for Creator” option to the post mission screen. Now, when you finish playing the level, you can cast your vote right there, and hopefully more of those amazing levels you dedicate a lot of time to will get the recognition and the credit that they deserve.

The v1.02 update, which will be released soon, also features the following changes and improvements:

• More intuitive voting for user created levels
• Improved menu navigation
• Fixes to sound fx playback
• Hi-scores can no longer be posted from the Trial version
• The hidden level “Umbria” is now correctly unlocked in the Campaign
• Polish language now available

Another thing we’ve heard a lot of you asking for over the past few weeks is information on the upcoming Gravity Crash for the PSP, so here you go…

• Same exciting retro gameplay as the PS3 version
• 35 challenging levels in campaign mode, each with unique objectives
• All new Survivor mode exclusive for PSP, offering even more gameplay
• Create and share your own levels with others

As well as all of the above, we are still working hard away on some things which we’ll reveal more on a little closer to the time, so keep an eye open for more blog updates from us in the near future!

Thanks again for your ongoing support; we hope you will continue to enjoy Gravity Crash and we are looking forward to seeing even more high-quality levels from you in-game. Please continue to share your feedback, thoughts and suggestions about the game with us, and feel free to give your favorite creators the recognition they deserve in the comments and on the forum, too – we’d love to give some of them a shout out next time! And if you haven’t picked the game up yet, now’s your chance to get in on the action because it’s half-off for one more day!

Just to give you a little background info, Gravity Crash combines vintage arcade shooter gameplay with striking HD vector graphics running in 1080p at 60 frames per second. Piloting a small craft armed with an arsenal of main and special weapons, a rechargeable shield and a carefully watched fuel gauge, players battle gravity and inertia through 35 levels that each feature environmental dangers, enemies and other obstacles. Along the way, players will encounter volcanic eruptions, winding caverns and bodies of water in their pursuit to complete their mission.

But wait, there’s more. You can create your own levels and share them with friends! Here to talk to you more about it is my colleague, Stewart Gilray, CEO of the development studio, Just Add Water, to give you the low-down.

Hi everyone, how are you guys doing?

What started for us as an idea almost three years ago is now about to invade your lives. Gravity Crash for PlayStation 3 will launch on the PlayStation Store today!

When we started working with Sony on this project we were certain we had a great idea for a game, and I have to say we are incredibly proud of what we’ve created and we can’t wait to see what you guys think when you get hold of it.

When you download the Trial edition of Gravity Crash you will get access to 4 levels from the 35 single-player and 12 multiplayer planets. You will also get full access to the game editor, where you will be able to design and create your own levels straight away, however only when you buy the game will you be able to challenge the world by publishing your creations on PlayStation Network.

Actually, I’d like to geek out for a moment and tell you about one of the little things we included in the Trial edition which, as far as we are aware, no one else has done before: at the end of the demo we have a dynamic “Published Levels” counter that tells you how many custom-made levels have been published to PSN. Personally I can’t wait to watch that number get bigger and bigger over the coming months!

I suppose that you’d also like to know how much all of this will cost.

$9.99 of your Earth money, will buy you:

• 35 Single-player levels, including hidden and boss levels
• 12 Multiplayer levels
• 3 Multiplayer modes
• Different player ships
• Special weapons
• Weapon power-ups
• 20 devious Trophies
• Leaderboards
• Over 200 editor items

Speaking of the editor, just to reiterate what I said in my previous update, EVERY level in the game has been built with the same game editor, and you will have full access to it in the game. Here’s a little development diary from us at Just Add Water showing a bit of the editor in action!

And finally, during December we will be releasing a few extras to the PlayStation Store, so keep a look out for Gravity Crash wallpapers and themes. So all I’ve got left to say is thanks to everyone for your support since the game was announced. We hope you enjoy it and we can’t wait to see what you guys can create with the Editor!