Just a quick blog update today to let everyone know the expansion pack for PixelJunk Eden hits PSN this Thursday, April 16! In three days you can download PixelJunk Eden Encore for only $5.99.

If you haven’t played the original, then now is the time to start doing so because the Encore expansion pack is something you’re not going to want to miss out on! We’ve put a lot of effort into making Encore have the best of everything from the original game, with great pacing, well-designed levels and heaps of new ideas… have a read of my earlier blog entry for more information about what we have added.

So now I wonder who will be first to discover the cool Easter Egg (appropriate time of year too!) at the end of the game…

In other news, PixelJunk Eden was nominated three times at the Independent Games Festival a couple of weeks back. Yes, even though Sony Computer Entertainment publishes PixelJunk titles in the West (well, who better to turn to in order to release a PSN game, right?), PixelJunk is completely independently funded and created by us here at Q-Games. Unfortunately we didn’t win an award but just the nominations made us happy enough as it was our first time at such an award show.

We’re busy working the fourth installment for PixelJunk and I’ll post more info about that in a little while. All I can say is that the game is really unique and a lot of fun – and very pretty to look at.

First things first, what have we added? Well, basically we have added five whole new stages, each one choc-a-bloc full of ideas and gimmicks. We also designed five brand new backgrounds for them (each background for a garden is programmed uniquely just for that garden’s style – just in case you hadn’t noticed that in the original), and Baiyon went away and created five brilliant new tracks of music to match it all up.

To make things a little easier we are going to retro-patch the original Eden to have a new feature we created for Encore. This is the three-seed smart-bomb power your Grimp now has. Simply put, if you jump into three full seeds in a row, all the “Prowlers” on the screen explode into a big cloud of pollen. Everyone who boots up their original Eden in a few weeks will be patched and get this feature, so look out for that!

Thinking up new stages for Eden was hard work. We put a lot of stuff into the original game, especially the gardens onwards from garden 04, and we racked our brains for new and interesting ideas to put into this expansion pack, and we think we found some pretty cool ones! One of the first stages has you in a Garden where all the plants are huge and thick, and at the same time there are loads of them, all intertwined. This is a type of stage we didn’t have in the original game – falling isn’t much of an issue in this garden because the vines are practically everywhere.

Also, in another garden we have implemented a zero-G item that once you collect, lets you float and control your Grimp with no fear of falling (well, until the effect wears off of course) which is crazily fun with three players! At the same time that garden is full of some pretty cool puzzles to solve, and we really go to town with the no gravity mechanism. In one of the final gardens we have implemented an entire “mirror” garden that you go in and out of freely via portals scattered throughout. It’s a lot of fun making your way back and forth between the two subtly different “mirror” gardens – what might be a cannon in one is a teleporter in the other; what is open space in one, might be closed off in the other. It’s a lot of fun solving the puzzles.

Right at the end of the game, if you collect all the 25 new Spectra we’ve added, we have put in a big present for our fans – one that will enable you to play the entire game again in a completely different way, so that’s really something for everyone to look forward to.

What else can I say really? This expansion pack isn’t just “some extra levels”; it is full of rich design and will give you weeks of fun, so it’s definitely worth $5.99!

A money shrine! I can’t believe we don’t have any of those here.

Sorry about the lack of information as of late, but busy doesn’t even begin to describe my work for the past few months…what with the exciting new project coming along (hint: yes, we’ve heard your requests!), and at the same time implementing some of our most crazy ideas for the new gardens in Eden Encore.

Eden Encore will be coming out very soon in April. Get ready for zero gravity, mirror worlds, all new music from Baiyon, and we’ve added something extra special at the end which is a Big Secret(tm) and is a present to all the fans. On top of all this, we’re flying along with the next new PixelJunk title (we’re calling it #4 for now) and even experimenting with future PixelJunk ideas too.

But things just keep getting more exciting because PixelJunk Eden has been nominated in not just one, but three (!!!) categories at the upcoming Independent Game Festival’s award show in San Francisco, CA. We are also nominated for the GDC Choice awards too, which are held during the same week. So GDC is going to be pretty crazy and even busier than normal, and I am looking forward to it a lot! Oh, and before I forget, on Friday, March 27 at GDC, Baiyon will be doing a talk about Eden and the use of CMYK in his graphic design work. I’ll be there in the audience listening in of course, so if you’re attending GDC, be sure to come check out this talk.

Anyway, back to work. I’ll pop back soon to detail more specifics about Eden Encore, so watch this space!

Two blog entries in almost as many weeks! Hopefully you aren’t too bored of me yet!

This is just a short one though, to inform you that at last the patch for PixelJunk Eden will be released on Thursday, January 15. For those of you from the EU, it will be out shortly thereafter, so stay tuned.

In this patch we’ve listened to your comments. We’ve gone ahead and fixed and added a few things to try and get as many people to play Eden as possible, as it really is a remarkable game…if I do say so myself. I simply want as many people as possible to experience it in full (if only we could release it for free and still make a living like some Star Trek-like future).

As you move through the gardens, you’ll encounter more and more interesting ideas and concepts. In order to help people having trouble right at the beginning, we’ve changed the large crystals so they replenish a whole half of your oscillator (time) meter. Even if you run out of time, we allow you to continue from the last Spectra you collected. To preserve the pride of those who gained trophies without continues though, the ‘garden complete’ trophy is only available if you don’t use the continue system. You don’t need trophies to move forward into the game and explore new gardens, so dive in and try out some of the crazy stuff we put in the game (such as the infamous Garden 7 with its rotating gravity).

Also, I’d like to use this blog entry to announce that we are preparing an “Encore” version of Eden. At some point over the next couple of months, I’ll come back and tell you more about what’s in that! In the meantime get in your practice with this new patch so you are ready for the crazy stuff we have prepared for you in the expansion.

Oh, and before I forget, we fixed the multiplayer camera! It is now as smooth as a baby’s bum – get some friends around and give it a whirl!

Enjoy!

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 …

We’ve received tons of great feedback about how much people really like the music. We love it, too. So, we’re happy to announce that the PixelJunk Eden Soundtrack will be available on the PS Store this Thursday, Oct. 2 for $2.99.

We thought you’d like to learn a little bit more about the artist/musician behind the game’s unique style. I will let the game’s director “Tomi” (Tominaga Shouichi) and Baiyon, the multimedia artist with whom we collaborated, answer some questions that were rustled up by Deborah Mars and Matt Morton at Sony’s Santa Monica Studio.

Yes, I have been lumbered with the translations! Ok, here we go:

Let’s just get this one out of the way, since we know everyone has been asking: What was the inspiration behind the art and music for PixelJunk Eden?

Tomi: Baiyon’s creations were the biggest inspirations. I wanted to bring across the “liveliness” of his live performances.

Baiyon: My main interests are multimedia, and everything I have been touched by in the medium until now is reflected in the work I did for Eden. Artworks, Music, Videogames that I have played, memories, experience and my past self, and also RGB and CMYK.

How old were you when you attended your first concert, and who played?

Tomi: It wasn’t a concert, but when I was about 18 I visited an audio-visual exhibit created by Brian Eno and it left a lasting impression on me.

If you could play Eden co-op with 2 other people, who would it be and why?

Tomi: I’d like to play Eden co-op with children and adults who normally don’t play videogames. I want to see how they would play the game.

Baiyon: I’d like to play Eden co-op with my past self.

If you could have any famous piece of art hanging in your home, what would it be and why?

Tomi: The smallest Paul Klee illustration I can find perhaps. But I try to keep my house as neutral as possible so rather than place famous pieces of art, I try to live modestly.

Baiyon: I have never really thought about it before because I have too much of my own art, music and works by friends of mine, and favorite records. If I was forced to choose though I would have Marcel Duchamp’s “The Large Glass” (joke).

What is your favorite garden in Eden and why?

Tomi: Garden 10. The imagery and music along with the overall atmosphere of that stage feels very impressive.

Baiyon: Garden 9. Because it has a deep feeling like a club dance floor. The background’s motion and colors, mixed with the sound is an especially feel-good combination.

Short answer: Top 5 songs in your playlist right now?

Tomi: My top 5 albums are:
• Bcd-2 / Basic Channel
• Unusual Signals / Quantec
• The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett / Harry Beckett
• Asa Breed / Matthew Dear
• GAME / Perfume (Japanese music)

Baiyon: I really like:

• Enfants (Chants) / Ricardo Villalobos / Sei Es Drum
• Riddim Mood / Johnny D / Oslo
• Diboneg / Fausto Messina / WIR
• Albertino / Guido Schneider, Andre Galluzzi / Cadenza
• the middle / Baiyion / D1 Recordings

…Also, if you want something good to listen to at home I recommend: Colleen, Francoise Hardy, Stephan Mathieu, Rhythm&Sound. If you want to know more about my playlist, check out my web page.

Who were your biggest influences in art and music?

Tomi: The media artist Katsuhiro Yamaguchi who was also one of my professors at University. He taught me that “Art is constantly new.” In other words, art can get old. If you want to create art you always have to search for something new.

Baiyon: I have been influenced by too many people in both art and music to answer this properly. However, Shigesato Itoi taught me how to communicate via creating and selling my work, and also the beauty of drawing further even after you have finished the journey.

Will there be Eden merchandise available for sale and where can we get it?

Tomi: The PixelJunk Eden Soundtrack will be on sale October 2 on the PSN Store, and we also recently released the soundtrack on CD in Japan. We are also planning to make Eden t-Shirts but there is no plan to sell them just yet. Perhaps we’ll give some away in a future Blog entry!

Who at Q-Games most closely resembles a little Grimp?

Tomi: 1P “Phona” is a crazy adventurer, 2P “Pana” is a vigorous girl, and 3P “Okali” is a studious type. So perhaps Phona resembles Baiyon a little? (joke!)

How did this collaboration between Q-Games and Baiyon start?

Tomi: I first met Baiyon at a party held by a common acquaintance [Dylan: friends at a local company called Eniac that made the Starfox Command homepage for Japan]. I found Baiyon to be a very interesting person and we started talking about how it might be interesting for him to take part in the PixelJunk series we were just beginning to think about back then. Eden was different than other games in the series because it didn’t start out with a solid idea for the actual gameplay.

I’d like to thank Tomi and Baiyon for taking the time out to answer these questions from Deb and Matt. If you want to find out more about Baiyon, visit http://wetside.jp (media design) and http://baiyon.com (music).

Enjoy Eden and the soundtrack!

Deborah Mars here again. We’re so excited to be releasing PixelJunk Eden tomorrow (Thursday, July 31) on the PlayStation Network. Dylan Cuthbert and his team at Q-Games in collaboration with Baiyon, a Kyoto-based multimedia artist and DJ, have really outdone themselves here.

Now I know I’m biased with all my PixelJunk love, but seriously…this is one outstanding, addictive, gorgeous, amazing game. So I just wanted to take a moment here and mention some of the really cool “firsts” that the team has achieved with this title, and highlight some of the things that we really love about it.

1. Trophies

This is the very first game to launch with trophies. And just so you know what to be gunning for when you play, here is a complete list:

BRONZE

• All Seeds 01 – Open all seeds in garden 01
• All Seeds 02 – Open all seeds in garden 02
• All Seeds 03 – Open all seeds in garden 03
• All Seeds 04 – Open all seeds in garden 04
• All Seeds 05 – Open all seeds in garden 05
• All Seeds 06 – Open all seeds in garden 06
• All Seeds 07 – Open all seeds in garden 07
• All Seeds 08 – Open all seeds in garden 08
• All Seeds 09 – Open all seeds in garden 09
• All Seeds 10 – Open all seeds in garden 10
• All Gardens Clear – Get a Spectra in each garden
• Combo Ten – Pollen Prowler combo x 10
• Combo Fifteen – Pollen Prowler combo x 15
• The Hundred Thousander – Get 100,000 pollen in one garden
• 500 Dead Pollen Prowlers – 500 Pollen Prowlers killed
• Ten Minute Grimp – Get all 5 Spectra from a garden within 10 minutes
• Fifteen Crystals – Get fifteen crystals in a single jump
• Zero Wasted Pollen – Open all seeds in a garden without missing any pollen
• Three Play Ping Pong – In 3p mode, trapeze jump between two swinging Grimps

SILVER

• All Spectra Found – Get all the Spectra in all gardens

2. YouTube video upload support

How cool is this? It’s a great feature that allows you to capture up to 10 minutes of video footage of your Eden gameplay and then either save it to your XMB or upload to YouTube and share with your friends and the world. So hey, pulled a sweet co-op combo with your friends that you want to show off? Having trouble finding that last Spectra in garden 8? Now you’ve got the proof to back up your bragging rights…or at least accept the fact that you might need just a little bit of – ahem – help. :)

3. PSP Remote Play

OK so this isn’t a first. But it’s worth pointing out anyway so you can take PixelJunk Eden with you wherever you & your PSP go.

4. Accolades

Great news: We’ve just learned that PJ Eden won a Cheat Code Central award for “Best Puzzle / Arcade Game of E3 2008.” We’re really pleased with all positive response on the title, and thank you all for your support. If you haven’t played some of the other titles in the PixelJunk series, be sure to check out Q-Games’ other titles, PixelJunk Racers and PixelJunk Monsters + Encore.

5. Music & Art

We’re really loving the music and visuals that Baiyon created for PixelJunk Eden. You know the music is good when you can listen to it over and over and over again and it is still kicking. There’s more than 100 minutes of music in the game total, and be sure to stay tuned for an upcoming interview right here on this blog with Baiyon and PJE’s game director “Tomi” (Tominaga Shouichi).

6. Druck der Farben

Hands down, my favorite garden.

7. Cannons, teleports, gravity changing, oh my.

Enough said.

8. Top 5 Things Said While Playing Eden

Dylan Cuthbert sent us a link yesterday to a story on TripleTags.com about the top 5 things said while playing Eden. Matt Morton, Associate Producer on Eden, and I have our own here while playing co-op, so we’ll leave you with this list as parting thoughts

- “Seeding!” [And yes, I know I’ve been ridiculed for this one.]

- “Get off me!”

- “Where did you go?”

- “Combo. Combo! Combo!!”

- “Get on the plant. Get on the plant!”

Always spreading the PixelJunk love,
Deb

It took a little while longer than anticipated, but we wanted to revisit those who answered our call for your PixelJunk Monsters + Encore co-op stories.

With PixelJunk Eden hitting the PSN this week, we know the PixelJunk love will be spreading in a whole new way, and that even more co-op tales are in the offing.

So thank you for your continued support, and we’ll see you back around here really soon!

When my boyfriend and I first started going out we used to play video games together a lot. Actually, we used to do everything together a lot but especially gaming.

Suddenly we were college graduates who had been going out for almost three years and were jobless, clueless and living in different states on permanent basis. You might be able to guess what happened next. We broke up. Eventually, we got back together but warily, and hoped we be able to find some time to reconnect.

One day we’re sitting in his room and he suddenly turned on Pixel Junk Monsters. He says he thinks it something we can do together. Five minutes in and I’m hooked because not only is it something we can do together but I’m just as good at it as him! Now we turn it on every time I visit. It’s our special thing. Oh yeah, and dancing to level up towers? Totally the perfect time to make out.

- Jasmine, NY

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For the past two years, I have been a dedicated gamer wife. Before I met my husband, Isaac, I had little to no knowledge of any games since I’d never played before. Because of him, I’ve become acquainted with many different worlds. But none so endearing as the world of Pixel Junk Monsters, or what I have affectionately nicknamed the “Tiki Babies game.”

The first time my husband asked me to play this game, I was reluctant to join him. This was mainly because I am terrible at strategy and I can’t do more than two things at once, a problem which leads to repetitive and hilarious videogame deaths.

But I was so taken with the cuteness of the game and the creatures that have to be guarded by cleverly placing and using weapons against the assorted monsters that I couldn’t resist. It took a lot of fumbling, but we made it though a few levels.

This has become one of our favorite games to play together. Sometimes we even dance the upgrade dance! It’s a great way to start our days together; it’s both loving and silly and we get a kick out of it.
Thank you for creating a game that both my husband and I can enjoy!

- Beatriz, IL

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On television shows, they do all sorts of crazy things to test a couple’s relationship… getting them lost and having them navigate with a map, etc. The real test should be playing PixelJunk Monsters co-op together.

Let me start out by saying that my girlfriend hates video games. She thinks they are a complete waste of time… until Monsters. The adorableness eventually got to her and she gave it a try, and before long we were up until 4 am trying to get a rainbow on “Double Team”.

We’ve often debated why we both love this game so much. She believes the game brings out her maternal instincts (“Don’t kill the babies!!!” she often yells at me). I think I love it so much just to see the joy in her eyes as an arrow narrowly kills the last spider right before it is about to get a villager. Whatever Monsters is, it’s magic.

Thanks for creating such a fantastic game that has both brought us closer together as a couple and helped solidify our relationship by showing us how much fun we can have when working together.

- Jefferson, CA

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Early this year, I purchased a PS3 under the pretense of playing games of all sorts with my girlfriend. In my search to find something we could play together that was easily accessible, I stumbled across PixelJunk Monsters and purchased it from the PlayStation Store one lazy afternoon, not realizing the addictiveness or the enjoyment in store for us.

The quest has been fraught with casualties and arguments, including the countless times when I’ve yelled “Build on THIS tree, not THAT tree!” while gesturing emphatically with the controller. Each time, my girlfriend responds “WHAT tree, there’s nothing BUT trees in the FOREST!” Our playthroughs have not always resulted in heated discussions; the first time we figured out we could combine our dance powers to level up a tower faster, we broke out dancing ourselves in sync with our characters on the screen, hoping to hurry the process even more.

It’s been said that the couple that games together, stays together, and thanks to the endless entertainment given by PixelJunk Monsters, we’ll (hopefully!) be together a long time.”

- David, TX

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Okay, I’m not going to make any excuses for Sarah and me. Since showing her PixelJunk Monsters, it has occupied all of our time when we’re together, she adores it. We open a bottle of wine and settle into the couch for a few hours of rainbows and towers.
As a couple, especially a couple that plays games, we just have times where we want to do something silly for the sake of “just because.”

My award winning letter contains some Romeo-approved language like, “No golem as tall as a mountain, or army of overweight bumble-bees could prevent me from adoring you with the most precious gems. 5 gems for a kiss…” I even drew some characters on there, relying on my middle-school art skills. I gave the blue dancer some feminine touches like lips and a pony-tail.

She loved it. We laughed out loud. No excuses.

- Michael, TX

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Related Post:
- PixelJunk in the Trunk: Contest Winners (Part 1)

UPDATE: Hey, folks. Thanks for all the comments. It’s always great to get feedback straight from the fans. I just wanted to give you a short update on Eden.

First of all, be sure to check out the demo when it hits the PLAYSTATION Store tomorrow. Just a hint – if you explore the “main menu” you’ll find access to more than one demo stage. Also, to give you an idea of how cool the YouTube recording function works, here are a couple of videos taken by someone at Sony today.

This first one shows single player on an early stage.

This second one shows some 2-player action on a later stage, although the
demo and the full game feature multiplayer for up to 3 people.

Don’t forget to download the demo tomorrow!

Hello, this is Dylan from Q-Games (the Cuthbert one, not the Warhawk Jobe one – when did all these Dylans suddenly start turning up eh?).

We’ve just wrapped up PixelJunk Eden, and it has been an incredibly interesting project from start to finish. We started off by getting an intern programmer from France to try and implement Baiyon’s out-of-this-world foliage designs, and he did a good job with the help of one of our tech guys, and managed to replicate the look. So after he went back to France, we assigned a proper team and went gung-ho into development. That was around December last year. Back then all it had were plants. There was no player character or any real idea for what the game would become, but over the new year I had some sparks of inspiration and that’s when things really started getting moving, leading to the demo video we played at GDC ‘08.

Anyway, this all leads into trophies somehow. Ah yes, because our development cycle is so short, we find ourselves being able to implement all the latest OS-supported features before anyone else can. For PixelJunk Monsters it was Dual-Shock 3 support, but this time there have been a couple of really cool new features and we have put both in. These are the Trophy support and the YouTube video upload support. Both of which are really cool.

Initially we implemented all our own trophy screens etc., but then Sony Computer Entertainment built it all into the OS, which really helped us out. The trophy comparing and your “gamer card” screen really up the ante for those hard core gamers out there. In fact, it might make some of the non-gamer types even turn hard-core as chasing trophies can be rather addicting.

PixelJunk Eden is a short-form PSN title so there are fewer trophies when compared to, say, a Blu-ray title (which can have the esteemed platinum trophy), but we still managed to pack in quite a few. To begin with, you can get a bronze trophy for opening every “seed” in a stage. This is quite a challenge on some of the stages as the gardens are large and expansive. Then there are trophies for a load of other things, such as destroying 500 of the “prowlers,” or collecting 15 “crystals” in one jump. My personal favorite is a trophy that you can only achieve in 3P mode, where you have to “volley” a player between you back and forth five times without him/her landing on a plant, a bit like tennis.

The YouTube upload feature is going to revolutionize how people share tips. Up until now it has been limited to people with video capture equipment, but from now on, anyone can record their game and upload it directly to YouTube from within the game! It is as simple as pushing one button to start and one button to stop and upload, and there is no affect on the gameplay thanks to the power of the PS3 and its abundance of SPU processors.

For more info on the YouTube API and PixelJunk Eden and to see it in action, take a look at the YouTube API Blog.

Oh, and we have been totally inundated with requests for trophies in PixelJunk Monsters via some kind of patch. As this goes to press, I can say we are definitely looking into it – you just need to badger Deborah Mars and her team in Santa Monica to get some dates set. If we release a patch, we will not only implement this but we will also implement XMB music and a couple of other things.

One final note about Eden, I really can’t emphasize enough how much pure fun this game is, and I’m saying this as a gamer, not as the developer of the game! My mail box has been overflowing with direct mails full of the same kind of comments from online review sites who have preview copies and I have never had that before, so we must be onto something (fingers crossed)!