Starting with 12 blockbuster titles worth over $260 – including inFAMOUS 2, LittleBigPlanet 2, Saints Row 2, Just Cause 2, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – PlayStation Plus members will now have a library of games to play in addition to exclusive features like online game saves, automatic updates, priority access to betas, and the best discounts on games, DLC, and other content on the PlayStation Store – all for less than $5 a month. New games will be introduced all the time, so you’ll never run out of awesome titles to play!

Purchase PlayStation Plus in the PlayStation Store on your PS3, or purchase online and get a redeemable voucher code instantly. Click HERE to join PlayStation Plus today!

Below is the full list of games that will be available free to all PlayStation Plus members beginning today. Let us know your thoughts on the PlayStation Plus powered instant game collection in the comments below as we’ll be continuing to listen to your thoughts on the best value in gaming! As always, it’s only going to get better.

Don’t have PlayStation Plus? Click here to purchase your membership today!

In Hollywood circles, there is a well-known tradition where Steven Spielberg and George Lucas will skip town and go somewhere remote right about when they have a big movie opening. They do this mostly for good luck, but also to avoid the press and ignore the grosses. Basically, they generally try to get their mind off of the project they’ve dedicated much of their recent lives to create.

I mention this because our adventure platformer Sideway: New York is all wrapped and done and will be available only on PSN as of today’s PlayStation Store update. I also mention this because at this moment, a few of us here at the studio are out in Zimbabwe embarking on a new work project. (Oooh, I can just see the screaming blog headlines now: “Game Developer compares his game to Star Wars”).

I mention this preamble principally because my beloved perfect record for responding to questions and comments on the PlayStation.Blog is (*sniff*) about to be sullied and I don’t want you to think I am ditching. Basically what I am saying is that “It’s not you, baby…it’s me.” I just don’t think there will exactly be rich wireless access where we’re gonna be, so keep that in mind when you’re asking anything in the comments, which is to say it’s best to stick to questions that can simmer a week and to avoid looking for advice on burns and cuts, what tie goes with that jacket or general crises of faith that are best suited for immediate and professional help.

Anyway, this PlayStation.Blog entry is more about reflecting on going “from A-Z” in a “working with our partners at Fuel Entertainment to create something from scratch that we’re really, really proud of” sense. If you have no idea what I am talking about, and even if you do, check out this action montage from the game below:

Sideway: New York is a nice mix of platforming, exploration and action to keep things fun and interesting throughout. The game is easy to pick up and play, but it gets more challenging as you progress. There are a ton of unlockable paint powers, speed runs, puzzles, hidden tags and areas to find, and the levels and enemies get more and more twisted as you make your way through a single day trapped on New York buildings all the way to Times Square for the big finale.

Yessir, you can have all of that awesome permanently burned into your mind today for $9.99 — $7.99 if you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber (this week only). In a lot of ways, Sideway was a way for us to bring some life back to the platformer genre, a genre that I think gets a bum rap as as being stagnant.

In any event, it’s been a positively rawkin’ experience getting the game ready for you guys, and we really hope you like it one-third as much as we loved making it. And hey, maybe one of you will be the first to find all of the score tags in the game…I’m not sure any our quality control guys or level designers have gotten all of them, yet.

Really, on behalf of all of us at Playbrains, Fuel Entertainment and Sony Online Entertainment, thanks for reading and following us throughout the game’s development, and I hope you get a chance to check it out on PSN today. And once you’re done playing the demo, you should definitely buy it, you cheap goober.

Hey, I’d buy your game!

We’re excited to announce a new program called “Only On PSN,” which features brand new games that are exclusively available on PlayStation Network throughout October. Every week starting tomorrow, October 4, you will find new titles, unique to PSN that are part of this program – games that you’ve likely read about here on the PlayStation Blog, or seen during our showing at E3 2011. You may recall our announcement a few months ago about our Pub Fund – a $20 million investment in exclusive PSN titles, and the Only On PlayStation Network program showcases two titles spawning from this investment: Eufloria and Okabu.

We can’t wait for you to get your hands on the Only On PSN games yourselves, so we’re giving you a few special offers throughout the course of the program. First, to sweeten the deal, we’ll be offering PlayStation Plus subscribers a 20% discount on each game during the first week of its availability.

Additionally, users who spend $60 or more out of their PlayStation Network/Sony Entertainment Network wallet through the month of October will get $10 back in November. This includes any of the Only On PSN games, purchases of games, add-ons, movies and TV shows in both the game and video sections of the PlayStation Store, your paid subscriptions for PlayStation Plus or Music Unlimited, movie rentals or purchases through Video Unlimited and any games or virtual items you buy in PlayStation Home.

Be sure to keep an eye on the PlayStation Twitter feed, as we’ll be giving away download codes for each game in the line-up every week. Don’t miss your chance to get this week’s Only On PSN games for free!

Now, let’s check out the games:

October 4:

• Eufloria – An addictive ambient game of space exploration and conquest, plant growth and bio-mechanical evolution. Explore a beautifully realized universe rendered in a style that is unique and compelling. Conquer asteroids in deep space and use their resources to literally grow and nurture semi-organic plants and creatures to do your bidding.
• Rochard – A fun and original space adventure game that features a resourceful hero, ominous villains, rugged machinery, big explosions, even bigger stunts and sharp one-liners. The game tests players’ coordination and wits as they use gravity to their advantage, changing it at will to solve environmental puzzles and advance through each level.

October 11:

• Sideway: New York – Help defeat Spray, a sinister tagger who wants to dominate both Sideway and the real world in this unique sidescroller that offers you the chance to leave your mark on the city.

October 13:

• Sodium Collection – A more than $35 value available for $9.99, this PlayStation Home value pack includes the SodiumOne Pilot’s Jacket, which unlocks the full 50-level tank combat Salt Shooter game, and weapon upgrades for your SodiumOne tank. Also included is a variety of upgrades for Sodium 2: Project Velocity, a high-speed, free-to-play, futuristic multiplayer racing game exclusive to PlayStation Home, and the wildly-popular Blaster’s Paradise personal space, which hosts a tabletop version of Salt Shooter. Buy from the PlayStation Store and play in PlayStation Home.

October 18:

• Okabu – An action-puzzler, where players will guide Kumulo, Nimbe and four cloud-flying heroes as they battle to save their people and their world from the industrialized threat of the Doza. Dive into a hyper-tactile toybox world filled with a huge number of puzzles, playthings, adorable creatures and devious machines spread across an epic co-op campaign.
• RocketBirds: Hardboiled Chicken – Annihilate an evil penguin regime in this cinematic platform adventure game offering full solo and co-op campaigns with stereoscopic 3D support. Destroy enemies with a slew of weapons and illuminate the secrets to his past while uncovering the real enemies of Albatropolis.

October 25:

• inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood – Vampires swarm New Marais, and revered superhero Cole MacGrath has been bitten. To save his soul and city, he has just one night to find and kill the head vampire. Featuring hours of new gameplay, themed environment settings and new characters/enemies, Festival of Blood explores the darker side of the inFAMOUS universe.
• PixelJunk Sidescroller – Q-Games goes old-school with a completely retro side-scrolling shooter that reinvents the genre from the ground up while maintaining that nostalgic feeling. Dodge flurries of alien bullets and strategically upgrade weapons while battling through sweeping stages full of hazardous fluid and endless shooting mayhem.

Also starting tomorrow as part of Only On PSN, we’ll also be offering a selection of rare classic games in the PlayStation Store: God Hand, GrimGrimoire, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, Odin Sphere and Ring of Red.

So head into the PlayStation Store tomorrow afternoon to check out Eufloria and Okabu, and don’t forget: If you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, be sure to take advantage of the 20% discounts for the new games each week before we move onto the next week of Only On PSN titles. We hope you enjoy the month of October gaming with these exclusive titles on PSN!

At last week’s Fantastic Fest in Austin, I caught up with Scott Simpson, director of Canadian developing studio Playbrains (and blog comment-reply record holder with a 100% reply rate!). While he’s answered most of the questions out there, Sideway still holds few more details yet to be revealed, including bite-sized, intra-level time trials to earn collectables and “birds that poop bombs.” I recorded our conversation as we played through some of the game’s early levels.

PlayStation Blog: Where did your character Nox come from?

Scott Simpson, Playbrains: You are Nox, a graffiti artist in New York, but you’ve painted over the wrong man’s tag. That man is the evil Spray, and he has sucked you into his world and you are now graffiti yourself, and you will always be on a surface – on a wall or a rooftop or something.

PSB: Was there an influence from other games where graffiti was a gameplay element, like, say, Jet Grind Radio?

Scott Simpson: Obviously it’s got a lot of Jet Set in it. The game was originally conceived by our partners at Fuel entertainment, their creative director Mike Burns was on a trip to NY one time and was just taken by all the graffiti and looking at it as art and not vandalism. The idea started in his head about living inside the graffiti world. So they’re creating a cartoon series about these characters that’s in development now. [The game] is the lead property in this IP. That where we, Playbrains come in. We just really wanted to make a kick-ass platforming game that we call an “adventure platformer,” meaning it’s got a lot of exploration, there is a some puzzle solving, some action, some melee combat, but at its core there’s a platformer, because we just really like platformers.

PSB: A lot of people were commenting on the use of color in Sideway. We don’t see a lot of pink, for instance. Talk about the artist style.

Scott Simpson: The cartoon series is being done in conjunction with Wild Brain, the people behind Kid Robot, Yo Gabba Gabba, the Ricky Gervais Show animations. So the animations come through there and are being done by those guys. It’s funny, when we originally pitched Sony it had a much more realistic look. Nox looked similar, but the backgrounds were all very real-world looking, so it was very striking. But we just thought for the game we liked the more Team Fortress 2-like look for the buildings; not always right angles, they’ve still got that cartoony look to them. I think if that harms us in any way it might make people thing this is a kids game – it’s certainly not. You’re going to be needing a lot of dexterity to finish the game.

PSB: Let’s talk about the controls. I played Sideway at Gamescom, and it felt like Nox has quite a lot of moves in his arsenal, especially for a platformer.

Scott Simpson: There are actually 16 unlockable moves in the game as you progress. We’re huge fans of exploration and finding secret ways and hidden pieces inside of a level, so the game is set up so that even in the first few levels, it’s impossible to pick up all the [collectable] tags. You just don’t have all the abilities; you don’t have a double jump to start with, and you need a double jump to get to a certain place. We tried to put in as much replayability into the game as we could by making it so you can go back to those secret areas later in the game now that you have a new slide ability or whatever.

PSB: Can you tell me about some of these moves?

Scott Simpson: We’ve got one called Airtime – it’s the one ‘cheat’ mechanic we do have where you can become paint spray and leave the wall. You can only leave the wall for a little bit at a time and only in certain areas or else you drift into the wind.

The glide allows you to spray some paint onto the wall behind you to sort of slow your descent. The paint shield will allow you repel ranged attacks back at your attacker.

As much as we wanted to be in a place where you could make your own graffiti on the wall, it’s very difficult to do with a standard controller. So the paint shelf is a way to quickly spray in an area where you can fill in some paint and create steps in an area.

A lot of these aren’t even necessary to finish the game. You’ll never be at a place where you’ll need an ability and have not had the chance to pick it up yet.

PSB: Tell me a bit about this drop in-drop out couch co-op.

Scott Simpson: It is fun to play with a friend. You’ll be on the same screen at the same time. It gives you a different way to solve puzzles. It’s not intended to be a “girlfriend mode” where you’re just tagging along (see what I did there?), but you’re actually both advancing the story equally. If you play as the second player you’ll play “Fume”, your Yoda-like sidekick who’s actually guiding you through the world here.

Sideway: New York is just around the corner, if you will. A PSN exclusive, you can pick it up on October 11 for $9.99.

Recently, Dylan Jobe detailed LightBox Interactive’s plans for Fantastic Fest 2011, Austin’s independent sci-fi/horror/fantasy film and gaming festival. He also showed off some badass new Starhawk space footage. You should watch it.

Today, we can reveal the full truth: PlayStation will serve as Fantastic Fest’s exclusive videogame company, and we’ll be holding court at The HighBall Club and Lounge. You’re invited! RSVP here. As Dylan mentioned, the LightBox team will be holding Starhawk tournaments on Thursday, September 22nd starting at 5:00pm. Additionally, you’ll be able to go hands-on with some of our hot upcoming PSN indie games like Journey, Okabu, Closure, and Retro/Grade, PlayStation Move titles like Deadmund’s Quest and Everybody Dance and SOE’s Sideway, Rochard, and Payday: The Heist.

Even better, you’ll have the chance to meet the devs, many of whom you’ve seen here on the Blog. Even Q-Games’ resident artist/DJ Baiyon is making the trip from Kyoto to spin PixelJunk 4am for you. There’ll be prizes and tasty beverages, all for the low, low price of FREE.

You in?

The Details

Date: Thursday, September 22nd (RSVP here!)
Time: 5-8pm (capacity is limited, so please arrive a bit early)
Location: The Highball Club and Lounge, 1142 S. Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX (map)

Playable games:

• Journey
• PixelJunk SideScroller
• PixelJunk 4am (formerly PixelJunk Lifelike)
• Okabu
• Eufloria
• Papo & Yo
• Closure
• Retro/Grade
• Sideway: New York
• Payday: The Heist
• Rochard
• Starhawk
• Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest
• EyePet & Friends
• Carnival Island
• LittleBigPlanet 2 PlayStation Move Pack
• Everybody Dance

You must be 18 or older to attend – please bring your ID! If you’re in the Austin area – I’m talking to you, Dallas/Houston/San Antonio gamers! – please join us. We’d be happy to meet you. Now RSVP here!

UPDATE: We’re also holding two free panels for Fantastic Fest:

PlayStation Network Developer Panel: Game creators speak about working in and out of the gaming industry. Panelists include Queasy Games (Sound Shapes), thatgamecompany (Journey, Flower, Flow), and Q-Games (PixelJunk) to name a few. Click here for more details.

Storytelling and Development in Videogames and Film: Feature film writers and writers of the game Starhawk will discuss storytelling and development in videogames and crossing over with film. Click here for more details.

Rochard puts you in the shoes of astro-miner John Rochard as he uses his wits and everyday mining tools to fend off space pirates. You must save his team of missing miners and solve the mystery behind the discovery of an ancient alien artifact. The tools and crazy space gravity make for awesome puzzles, but it’s Rochard’s snarky sense of humor that really drew us to this game. Rochard will be available September 27th for download on PSN for $9.99.

PAYDAY: The Heist throws you straight into the action with high-stake heists, including bank robberies, prisoner extractions and armored car hijackings, you are forced to work as a team to control incredibly intense situations. This is a great game to play with a band of friends in search of the ultimate score. PAYDAY: The Heist will be available October 4th for download on PSN for $19.99.

The game can also be pre-ordered from September 20th until September 28th on the PlayStation Network and is included in the PSN PLAY program, which showcases the season’s hottest titles. PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive an automatic 20% off every PLAY program purchase. Additionally, DLC expansions will be released later this year.

Sideway: New York puts players in the role of Nox, a graffiti artist sucked into a twisted graffiti world, where you to explore the backstreets of New York City and navigate through a 2D adventure platformer set in a 3D world. While the task at hand is to defeat Nox’s nemesis Spray, it’s a blast using window ledges, drainpipes or graffiti tags to navigate around corners and onto rooftops of the city. Sideway: New York’s soundtrack brings an underground hip-hop vibe, which perfectly matches the theme of the game. Sideway: New York will be available October 11th for download on PSN for $9.99.

We’re really proud of all the effort and hard work that went into developing each of these games. Each game offers something unique and innovative for players and we know you’ll enjoy them as much as we have. So, if you’re lucky to be in Germany and at gamescom, please stop by and say hi to us in Hall 7, Booth 1. If not, check out these cool new videos and screen shots!

But no. No, all you wanted to talk about was the game.

And what a game it has turned out to be! If you don’t believe me, CRAM THESE INTO YOUR EYEBALLS and I dare you to tell me I am wrong!

Oh, did the screenshots convey that we have hours of mindbending levels full of danger and challenge that will make the paint run from your veins? Or that we support drop-in, drop-out couch co-op so you can play with your friends or that the bosses in the game are unlike any you’ve come across in your gaming life before?

Did the shots at least convey the basic conceit of the game: that you painted over the wrong dude’s tag, and that you, in fact, are now a moving 2D painting in a 3D world?

Regardless, if you’re interested in seeing what all of the above is really like, we’re juuuust putting the finishing touches on a demo for Comic-Con this week in San Diego. Oh yes, my friends, that’s right—when you come by Sony Online Entertainment at the Con (Booth #4436), not only can you check out the awesomeness that is Sideway, but you can also win some cool Skullcandy headphones and earbuds when you come by and play the game. Perhaps most importantly, as a bonus, you’ll get to hear me kvetch about the heat and how much more crowded and sweaty Comic-Con gets every year and that Patton Oswalt really should be the next Robin.

“But whoa there, champ…What about me? I’m not going to be in San Diego this week. How do *I* get to experience this magic of which you speak?”

I am glad you asked, friend. Because if you read the headline at the very top of this blog post, you will learn that immediately following it is the Earth’s very first look at the teaser trailer for “Sideway”. See? Reading can be fundamental *and* rewarding.

Hope that wets yer whistles, folks! You can come by and play it with us this week at the Con!

As always, you can always follow us at Twitter.com/Playbrains to get development updates and upcoming giveaways as we get ever-so-closer to the release of the greatest action platformer…of all time…

To that point, we are inviting folks to come to New York Comic Con on October 8th (at 2:15 in Room 1A21) where we will officially announce the title as a Sony Online Entertainment exclusive to the PlayStation Network. Yes, that means that I am announcing the announcement here, which I guess makes this a “pre-announcement” to you PlayStation.Blog readers!

We are in sooper-deep development at the moment (please send pizza and beer), which means that the belts are coming off and we’re settling into our coding chairs for winter in order to get things all sparkly for a 2011 launch. We’re not ready to spill the beans on some of the really cool features and unique gameplay elements in the game just yet, so until then, take a gander at some early concept pieces and composites from the game that should give you an idea of the world you will be tooling around in as an underground street artist in NYC. It will be an awesome game and we’re excited to be making it.

Come on over and follow us at Twitter.com/Playbrains if you want up-to-the minute news on concept art, development updates, and to learn what Canadian celebrities we are standing behind in grocery store lines.