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

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

Everyone here at Q-Games loves real-time strategy games, from Warcraft through to Command & Conquer and Company Of Heroes, etc., but the Japanese public simply don’t buy that genre yet. So one thing I really wanted to do with Monsters is take the simple RTS concept of building and researching and having base defenses (a concept that has been used in Warcraft tower-defense mods and more recently in its Flash incarnations) and wrap it all in a completely different style and mode of gameplay that the Japanese public (and hopefully the West too, of course!) would really get into.

RTS’s are historically controlled by a roving cursor (either a mouse, or an analogue controller) and right from the start I decided to take that away and replace it with a cute character you control. You run around as this little defender-of-the-forests type chap, collecting money and building defensive towers along the paths to your base. You can only build towers where we have placed trees in the stages, which gave us enormous control over the design and balancing of each map. As a result we have over 20 very different stages, all of which are unique and addictive to play.

Another major help in the design was the addition of gems that the monsters sometimes drop; using these gems you can research more advanced towers, or upgrade existing ones. If you like though, you can upgrade existing towers by doing a little rain-dance-type performance in front of them too. The longer you dance, the more powerful the towers become!

Out of all the games I have made over the years, PixelJunk Monsters was probably the hardest to balance and tune! In the end, it took a whole team of planners (Japanese for game designer) to play the game non-stop for a month and record their data into a database from which we adjusted money/gems/toughness of enemies etc., accordingly. They were all thoroughly addicted by the end of this process and even after completing the game in its entirety numerous times they still boot it up for “one more go.” The online rankings are going to be pretty competitive for this title and there are separate tables for cooperative and single play. The cooperative mode actually gets people to talk to each other as they play, and seeing as girls love this game (no, honestly, they do!), Monsters could become an important tool in every lad’s arsenal!

On a completely different (but important) note, some people might be looking for flashy graphics with thousands of polygons and in-your-face transparency/effects everywhere but if every game is like that things begin to look the same; so for this title we have purposefully gone for a style that hearkens back to the pre-PlayStation era. By using a ton of meticulously hand-drawn 2D art instead of 3D modeled graphics, we have tried to re-create the feel of some of those older classics (we still go overboard on shader effects though, as they are so much fun to program!).

Our next title will be yet another completely different style (as was PixelJunk Racers). In fact, this freedom of style and expression we are discovering is one of the great things about developing indie games. With your continuing support (i.e. please keep buying our games, they only cost approximately 1.5 beers!) we’ll continue fiddling and experimenting with new concepts and styles for as long as we can come up with the ideas and cash to support them!

PixelJunk Monsters will be available on PlayStation Network globally in January.