Hi PixelJunkies! I’m Matt Morton, Associate Producer at SCEA Santa Monica Studio and I’ve had the great fortune of working on the PixelJunk series since the very first title, PixelJunk Racers. We’ve been working hard to keep spreading the PixelJunk Love (as Deb Mars calls it) and wanted to give you a heads up on the upcoming patch for PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Monsters: Encore.
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 …
Great update, can’t wait to play this.
Dylan, any news you can share with us on a possible Eden Encore? Eden is my GOTY 2008 and I’m jonesing for more.
Also when are you guys going to reveal 1-4? I was hoping we were going to see it during TGS. Six month dev time means a release in early 2009 yeah?
Dylan,
Please get your sister Elisha to post here more often ;)
Great. I can finally play the game in a few days (already bought, was waiting for the trophy patch). What about Eden? Is the patch coming any time soon?
Thank you so much! I’ve been waiting for this for soo long!
my g/f and I are going back to this game as soon as this patch drops! i just told her about it and she is psyched… wondering why its not today. she can wait. thank you so much for this guys!
on a side note, do i see a wii under your tv dylan??? i know you have it there just so you can compare how inferior it is to PS3. j/k its all good mate!
peace,
Lh
That\’s one of our game areas – next to the Wii is an old SNES too.