PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap: Free Update Gets Early Access Tomorrow

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So… better late than never right? Yes, finally PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap is coming to PSN and we’ve had a lot of fun fiddling with the original Racers to bring it up to date with the other titles in the PixelJunk series. Instead of going back and just adding trophies we decided to go through and give it a difficulty overhaul — making the game far easier than it used to be (we used to make these games pretty tough back in the day eh). It is still a pleasant challenge of course but not the insurmountable cliff face it used to be.

Let me be the first to say this, but PixelJunk Racers is *not* a racing game – it is more like a PixelJunk reaction-based party game based loosely on slot-car racing. There are all kinds of different rules to play with, for example in one rule all you do is hold the trigger down to “puff up” your car, release the trigger and your car flies along the track like a balloon, the goal is to get as far as you can without hitting anything. We support up to 7 controllers and it makes for a superb game to play with friends around. In another mode you can only keep your speed up by “eating” the other cars (by hitting them and destroying them). For anyone who enjoys fun rules with a bit of a driving motif, this should be right up your alley. It is one of our favourite games in the PixelJunk series — it’s a personal favourite of mine and the one that kickstarted it all off.

On top of this we added a new global scoreboard called Driver’s Points which add up as you play the online score attack modes. This should give everyone a nice long-lasting challenge, especially as to enhance this further we have added ghosts of the other players in the high score rankings that you can play against. You can only select ghosts from either your friends’ list or from the other players near you in the high score table so as you go up through the ranks you should be able to see some incredibly skilled play from some of the best players out there. It makes for a very addictive challenge.

PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap

Before I forget, 2nd Lap is totally FREE to existing owners of Racers, and you get to keep the original (difficult) Racers for posterity (it doesn’t overwrite it). PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to get this upgrade a whole two weeks before everyone else too, with also a 25% discount (those lucky folks!) Regular PSN users will soon catch up though, two weeks isn’t too long to wait I hope – it will be available on Aug 24th for just $6.99!

Whether you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber or not, if you’re an existing owner of Racers, be sure to get the FREE upgrade to 2nd Lap. All you have to do is click the FREE button on the 2nd lap product page, add to cart and install… that’s it! For those that are new to Racers, you will automatically be upgraded to 2nd lap at the time of purchase.

Anyway, it’s time for me to get back to work finishing up PixelJunk Shooter 2 (looking pretty cool btw!), I’ll be back in a little while to talk it up and perhaps even to discuss our latest collaboration with Baiyon of PixelJunk Eden fame, so see you soon!

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57 Comments

11 Author Replies

  • Very nice! And very cheap! I think everyone (including me) gave the 1st game a bad rap, mostly because we didn’t know what to expect! I may just have to get this!

    • some people seemed to give it a bad rap without even playing it :)
      It’s quirky, fast-paced and a lot of fun!

  • awesome !!

  • Free?! Yes!

  • is this for Europe aswell ?

  • Free? I like that. Either way I have been expecting this game. Finally! Hopefully the trophies are easy, if not I am going to delete this game quicker than… Well quick.

  • Looking forward to this one! Do you have an EU date yet Dylan, and is the same thing happening over here? :)

    • EU shouldn’t be too long – I’m not sure if there will be a PS+ promotion over there yet, that’s for Sony to say.

  • Definitely getting this when it hits on the 24th! Then my PixelJunk series will be complete!

  • The free upgrade is great news, me and the Mrs are STILL trying to beat the final tournament. Glad to know that we will have an easier version to demolish for some trophies, and get to retain our impossibly hard version.

  • Do you wish you gave Racers a different name so that people didn’t go into it expecting a racing game?

    I’m glad that you guys came back to Racers to rework the difficulty balancing and adding a bunch of new stuff to it. Unfortunately, I don’t have PS+, so I’ll have to wait for the public launch to see how it turned out myself.

  • Free update with trophies? This bodes well for Shatters incoming update :)

  • Hello Dylan. I have been waiting for this update since it was first announced. Finally trophies in PixelJunk Racers. I hope tomorrow’s Playstation store update arrives early.

    I got all of the trophies in Shooter and Monsters, but some of the Eden trophies elude me. So excited for Shooter 2. I’m so surprised my Shooter global rank has held up as well as it has so far. Still, I need to try for even better scores.

  • This is really cool of you guys! If you made Monsters and Eden easier, even if I have to pay for it, I’d be really happy. They’re all good games, but most of them are to hard to beat. The level of difficulty for shooter was right on, meaning that I ended up beating it;)

  • AWE-SOME.

    I really don’t regret buying all of your games !

  • I hope this and Shooter 2 aren’t *too* easy. I felt like Eden was decently tuned when it was first released, but then was made a little too easy.

    Does 2nd Lap make any improvements in the audio department? I’m still waiting for PixelJunk to take advantage of the PS3’s HD audio capabilities in the same way you have so awesomely taken advantage of the graphics and computing capabilities!

    When will we hear more about Dungeons? I would absolutely love to see a rogue-like on PS3 with local co-op, especially if it had the great art and music touch of PixelJunk.

    Keep up the good work!

    • That’s a problem with the small package size – unfortunately high quality audio takes up a lot of data. :(
      Most of the data you download for our games is music!

  • can someone clarify this for me. is 2nd lap a different game or just an update? it sounds like an update to the original.

    if so, if i buy the original now do i get both the difficult and easier version because of the free update?

    what if i just buy 2nd lap? or am i just completely confused?

    • The original has been revamped and renamed as 2nd Lap. If you didn’t buy the original tough-as-nails Racers it is no longer available and only 2nd Lap is available for purchase now. If you have the original Racers you get a automatic free “eligibility” to download 2nd Lap.

  • @12 They added an easier difficulty to Monsters a while ago for free.

  • Thank you very much!
    i bought all pixel junk this April fool,
    now Racers 2 for free.
    Very Nice!

  • I’ve been wanting to get Racers for a while now. I enjoyed the demo, but never got around to purchasing the full game. With the 2nd Lap update and my Plus subscription, there’s no way I’m going to pass it up now!

  • Nice work Dylan, looks great! I still have my fingers crossed hoping for PixelJunk Dungeons though :(

  • This is awesome!!! I have been waiting for this ever since trophies were announced. I love Pixel Junk Racers, by far my favorite one of the series!!! Thanks for the free update!!! Now, just to wait the 2 weeks for the update since I am not a PSN subscriber.

    (Note this is my second account and everything I have played and bought is under a different account.)

  • Wait, so Playstation Plus is getting this earlier than regular PSN members correct?

  • Great to hear it’s free for existing owners such as myself. Thanks!!

  • Wait wait wait…this is going to be FREE since I already have Racers??? WOW, was not expecting that. I was expecting (and willing) to pay $4.99 – $9.99 for this, but that is great news! I guess it may not have sold all that well the first time around, so hopefully this will spur new sales for you guys! Thanks a million!

  • YESSS!!!!
    My prayers have been answered! I looooove baiyon’s music, it was (largely) what made Eden one of my Favorite Games of this generation (the gameplay and art helped a bit too ;) ).

    Cannot wait to get my FREE PixelJunk racers 2nd Lap, and can’t wait to see more on EVERYTHING PixelJunk.
    Thanks for the continued PSB updates & Thanks for the awesome Games Dylan & the Team!

  • Nice to see you aren’t screwing those that already bought the game. I bought it at launch and about halfway through got too frustrated with it and never went back to it. Looks like I gotta wait two weeks before I can play it though. Nuts.

  • The difficulty of your games is what made them great. I’m pretty dissapointed with Shooter just because of that. So please, make them as challenging as Eden or rainbowing all Monsters.

  • @Stinkinmushroom
    yeah, i liked the challenge of their games as well. maybe for future games they should add a difficulty option like with monsters. casual, normal (which allows you to get the trophies), and hard. i think that is the perfect way to handle it.

  • @19 Isn’t PixelJunk Dungeons now known as PixelJunk Shooter? Unless I’m somehow wrong…

  • @26 PixelJunk: Dungeons was originally a gauntlet-style, top-down dungeon crawler that was in development, but then they apparently scrapped the idea and went with Shooter instead.

    But… that’s all rumored. I just want Q-Games to make a game like that

  • More developers need to be this awesome! Free update to an overall improved and extras-added product for owners of the previous game? Pure class. This makes me proud to have bought everything you’ve released so far.

  • Great price, im sold

  • Meh. The only PixelJunk game I didn’t care for. Oh well.

  • Excellence. It’s gonna be nice to not have that Plus symbol as the only evidence of my membership. I don’t think I even got halfway through the original, which also means I didn’t get to play half of the games that were available. I look forward to messing around with ’em.

    Thank you, Dylan & Q-Games.

  • i dont want to sound like a cheap prick but how about a price cut on pixeljunk eden encore :)

  • Aug 24th is it.. I can wait.

  • cool, i get it for free! also i just got shooter because it was on sale, that game is awesome. Im stuck on the last boss though, hes kinda tough.

  • Alright, I’m going to come out and say it. Mr. Cuthbert, I love what you and the team at Q-Games, Ltd., do with the PlayStation Network service. You stand amongst an elite group of developers that really make the content shine.

    I suppose every platform has its strengths and some might even argue a certain other platform holds a higher regard for online support. Well, apparently they don’t know the beauty and standard that is set forth in exclusive products that SCE always seems to secure.

    I will blindly buy every Q-Games product, however, it’s a good thing I don’t do so without the knowledge of what I’m getting myself into. Every Q release I buy brings my wife and I hours of enjoyment that we can always return to months down the road feeling as fresh as the day it was released.

    Keep’em coming Dylan. We love you guys and your product!

  • so now instead of getting patches and demos for free, we now have to pay money to get them on time. that is messed up.

    im thinking of selling my ps3 because of this crap. and i most certainly will never get Plus if it continues to take away from services that nonpaying users have access to.

  • Ladies and Gentlemen,

    Dylan Cuthbert is the f****ing man.

    That is all.

  • Instabuy! I love you, PixelJunk! I might finally have enough reason to get Plus.

  • Is there a problem with offering a difficulty setting for those just coming in?

    Otherwise, looks good. I already have Eden and Monsters which are quite addicting. Looking to add some more goodness.

  • Cool , I am going to bay Racers

  • So Dylan, what ever happened with the rumored Pixeljunk Dungeons? I love everything you guys put together and was totally psyched for your version of my favorite genre!

  • Glad I decided to get this awhile ago. Couldn’t get passed very many challenges though. xP

  • I had downloaded the demo a long time ago for Racers and didn’t think much of it. But my love for Monsters, Eden, and Shooter are so insanely high that I went ahead and just purchased Racers, because I know Dylan that 2nd Lap won’t disappoint. And this way I was able to get that higher difficulty before it disappears forever!

  • I have a question, for those of us who bought the game long, long ago, do we get the update today, even if we aren’t Plus members? Because, if you are showing preferential treatment to a Plus member, who hasn’t even supported your games before now, that would be strange. I have owned this game, as well as the rest of the Pixel series for a while now, and would be disappointed to find out that I had to wait, when I have been supporting Santa Monica games for much longer than Plus has been around.

  • Great job making this promotion free for early supporters, but also helping to make yourselves some spending money in the process!

    This will surely give a really fun game the second wind it deserves.

  • Why are people excited about this? It’s obvious they’re slowly trying to make everyone pay for what should be fair access to psn games and add-ons.I’ve spent hundreds, if not a thousand dollars on various things in the psn store, and now I have to wait on new releases because I’m not giving more money for the subscription, on top of what I already spend? Thanks guys. Saw this coming with the subscription service. Not another penny from me.

    • PlayStation+ seems like it is going to be a fairly rich experience with lots of special offers as well as advance offers like this. I’m not sure how often they’ll do this kind of “advance” for + users, but that’s up to Sony not us. We just make the games; so sorry for the two week delay and please try out 2nd Lap on the 24th ;-)

  • I agree with above comment # 49.. Why are you sheeple excited about this? I have two ps3 consoles. Thousands, and I do mean thousands of dollars in software or dlc and because I don’t have plus I must wait till Aug 24th to get Racers… Unacceptable.. Keep it!!!

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