Hi everyone, how you guys doing?

What started for us as an idea almost 3 years ago is now about to invade your lives. On Tuesday, 24 November Gravity Crash for PlayStation3 will launch on not only the North American PlayStation Store but also on the European PlayStation Store, two days ahead of the normal store update on Thursday.

When we started working with Sony on this project towards the end of last year we knew little of how encompassing or indeed how much we’d achieve, and I have to say we are incredibly proud of what we’ve created these past 12 months.

The game is being launched as Trial & Key type. When you download the Trial edition you will get access to 4 of the levels of the full games 35 single player planets and 12 multiplayer maps. You will also get full access to the editor, where you will be able to create your own levels straight away, however only when you buy the game will you be able to Publish them to the PlayStation Network for anyone and everyone to enjoy.

Actually, I’d like to geek out for a moment. All of us at Just Add Water are complete geeks, so one of the little things we included in the Trial edition, which as far as we are aware no one else has done before: on our Sell screen (All demos/trials have these) we have a dynamic “Published Levels” line that tells you how many custom made levels have been published to the PlayStation Network. Personally I can’t wait to watch that number getting bigger and bigger over the coming months!

Which brings me to the subject of price …

£6.29 / €7.99 / $9.99 US of your earth money, will buy you …

• 35 Single player levels, including hidden and boss levels.
• 12 Multiplayer levels.
• 3 Multiplayer modes.
• Different player ships.
• Special weapons.
• Weapon power-ups.
• 20 devious Trophies.
• Leaderboards.
• Over 200 editor items.

Talking of the editor, just to reiterate what I said in the previous blog update, EVERY level in the game has been built with the editor you get in the game. To give an example of the editor here’s a little development diary from us along with a bit of editor action!

And finally, during December we will be releasing a few extras via the PlayStation Store, like wallpapers and themes. So all I’ve got left to say is thanks for your support since the game was announced, and we hope you enjoy it when it’s released on Tuesday, and we can’t wait to see what you guys can create with the Editor!

Slainte

Rate: (Average: 4.78 out of 5)

42 Comments

Hi everyone! Guerrilla art director Jan-Bart van Beek here, with an interesting bit of news for the hardcore Killzone fans among you.

I was recently asked to contribute to a new volume in Ballistic Publishing’s line of digital artist master class books, titled d’artiste: Character Modeling 3. The request surprised me a little at first, because I’m not a character artist myself; I’m a director of character artists. As my job title implies, I direct other artists in the creation of assets for the Killzone franchise, making sure their output is consistent with the gritty, ‘hard sci-fi’ look for which our games are known.

However, I soon realized this would be a good opportunity to share my unique vantage point overlooking the entire character creation pipeline at Guerrilla. The resulting chapter has become a rather comprehensive overview of the character creation process used for Killzone 2. Taking Rico Velasquez and the Helghast Sniper as examples, the book walks the reader through every step of their development – starting with the rough initial ideas, and ending with their finalized in-game models. Along the way, various tools and techniques used at Guerrilla are explained in detail.

In addition to the chapter on Killzone 2, d’artiste: Character Modeling 3 also covers the works of Giovanni Nakpil and Cesar Dacol Jr., both renowned character modelers for major Hollywood productions such as Pirates of the Caribbean and 300. Their contributions to the book are nothing short of breathtaking, and I was extremely honored to see my name featured on the cover alongside theirs.

In short, if you’re a budding character artist or just a hardcore Killzone fan who’d like to know how characters are created at Guerrilla, d’artiste: Character Modeling 3 is a book worth tracking down. It’s the sort of resource I wish I’d had when I just started my career in the games industry. You can preview the entire book on the Ballistic Publishing website, or purchase it from their store in both limited and slipcased editions.

Publishing Information
ISBN #: Limited Edition: 978-1-921002-66-3 / Slip cased: 978-1-921002-67-0
Pages: 208 pages (Slipcased) / 208 pages (Limited Edition)
Authors: Cesar Dacol Jr, Jan-Bart van Beek, Giovanni Nakpil
Publishers: Daniel Wade, Mark Snoswell

Rate: (Average: 4.43 out of 5)

25 Comments 5 Replies

Hello All of Europe, Australia and More!

Kris from Capy here once again with a quick announcement: Critter Crunch is set to appear on your PlayStation Store today! (Please) GO GET IT!!!!

And you’ll be happy to know that the demo is out at the same time! The demo features a sampling of single player levels, as well as online versus multiplayer for you to enjoy.

The full game features a whole bucket-full of single player modes, like adventure, puzzle and survival, as well as online and local multiplayer in versus & co-op flavors. Of course, Critter Crunch also features a ton of great trophies to collect, competitive leaderboards for every game mode and 1080p art that will fill your brain with magic.

Critter Crunch has been universally praised by critics and players alike since its release in North America and we’re extremely excited to finally bring our HD puzzle opus to a whole new audience!

We hope you give it a whirl. If you have any questions, ask away in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer!

-Kris

PS: Check out the official site for more info on the game, like pretty screenshots, videos and Bigg’s-shaped barfing pumpkins

Rate: (Average: 4.71 out of 5)

42 Comments 6 Replies

First I want to start this article thanking SCEE and Jem for letting us participate in this blog.

So last week, I mentioned on Twitter that we were having a fan day in Montreal and I got tons of private messages about it!

So now is the time to unveil all the details about that event. Basically, we decided a while ago to welcome a few fans into our studio, a couple of weeks before the launch of the game, and give them the opportunity to see where we are creating Assassin’s Creed 2, but also introduce them to the people behind the game!

I had to say that our team was excited to meet fans, and we had a few surprises waiting for them. You are probably wondering who these fans are, and I have to say that it’s quite a mix of nationalities and profiles. We had the chance to gather people from UK, France, Italy, Canada and even Austria, to name a few. Among them were gamers, active forums members, blog writers, editors and lucky sweepstakes winners.

The first time we met was the day before the event, where we all went to a restaurant together. The evening was really cool with tons of questions and discussion about the game, our schedule, but also gaming in general. However, their main request was “who is the mysterious key speaker we’ll meet during the event?” Well even though they tried hard to corrupt me, I remained silent!

On Friday morning, I walked to the hotel to meet our fans and video staff. Yes, we had cameras during the event, and I mean lots of them! You’ll see why later on.

So, we met in the Hotel lobby and then we took taxis to go to the Ubisoft Montreal studio. We started the day with a studio tour, which is always exciting for everyone. They loved our video studio, especially the audio recording department, where they got to play with swords! Then we showed them how we create all the cool assets and videos you guys see on Internet. We also had a surprise for them, our Dev Diary #6 was just finished the day before and they were treated to a world premiere in our studio! But that was only the beginning…

We then went down to the Assassin’s Creed 2 floor, where we had prepared a huge room full of HDTVs and Playstation 3. After watching a couple of videos and trailers, we welcomed our main guest: Sébastien Puel, Producer for AC2!

He was kind enough to spend more than an hour answering a staggering number of questions (and that’s exactly where the cameras became important, you should be able to see a video done with SONY on this blog and on the PSN). And then Sébastien took a couple of hours to do some one-on-one interviews with all the fans, with the help of Benoit Lambert, our Game Director, and Francois Roughol, one of our main Game Designers.

After this really interesting round of Q&A, we let our fans play the game for 3-5 hours and about one hour on Assassin’s Creed PSP depending on their schedules, and if you want to know what other gamers thinks of the game just click on the following links!

• www.incgamers.com
• www.consolemonster.com

Once again, I want to thank SONY and our fans for attending, it was a blast and we enjoyed welcoming you in Montreal!

Atmon

Rate: (Average: 4.35 out of 5)

18 Comments

The time has come, folks! The countdown’s over – we wait no more!

As promised, the FINAL FANTASY XIII developer team put together a special message to celebrate with you the history of the series and reveal new details of its latest – and long awaited – chapter.

But I won’t say more and leave the stage to the game Producer himself, who wanted to write a few lines for the occasion, exclusively for the PlayStation blog.

Enjoy – and let us know what you think about it!
(more…)

Rate: (Average: 4.36 out of 5)

193 Comments 6 Replies