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PSA: The Behemoth's Battleblock Theater out now on XBLA
It's been a long time coming, but The Behemoth's Battleblock Theater is finally available on Xbox Live Arcade for 1200 Microsoft Points ($15) today.The Behemoth announced yesterday that owners of its previous games, Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid HD, will be able to play as protagonists from those titles through unlocks in Battleblock Theater.Battleblock Theater has been in development since... well, let's just be happy it's out now.
Play Battleblock Theater as a Castle Crashers knight, Alien Hominid guy
Battleblock Theater launches tomorrow on XBLA, but two previous games from The Behemoth have been taking up space (and topping the sales charts) for years, Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid HD. Finally, all the hours of enjoying these games pays off, in the form of special unlocks in Battleblock Theater. Owners of Castle Crashers can play as that game's knight in Battleblock Theater, and owners of Alien Hominid HD can get the alien for Battleblock Theater.Intrepid players are able to unlock the "Can't Stop Crying" pack in Castle Crashers on XBLA by earning at least one achievement in Battleblock Theater, as long as both games are up-to-date and installed on the same system. With the Can't Stop Crying pack, earning achievements in Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid HD unlocks special heads in Battleblock Theater, and earning achievements in Battleblock Theater unlocks Hatty Hattington, that game's protagonist, for Castle Crashers.Both Alien Hominid HD and Castle Crashers are on sale for 800 MS Points on XBLA, now through April 4.
Battleblock Theater pulls back the curtain April 3
The Behemoth is finally ready to release its next game, Battleblock Theater. Initially penned in for spring, The Behemoth has shined a launch spotlight on April 3, when Battleblock Theater will launch on Xbox Live Arcade for 1200 MS Points ($15).Battleblock Theater has been in development since 2009 and will ship with a built-in level editor. The Behemoth recently concluded a final beta for Battleblock Theater, which will initially launch as an Xbox Live Arcade exclusive, though The Behemoth hasn't ruled out the possibility of other platforms.
BattleBlock Theater to spotlight community-created levels
The Behemoth recently detailed its plans to feature community-created levels in its upcoming platformer, BattleBlock Theater. The game will include a "Furbottom's Features" section, which will spotlight hand-picked user-created levels in the solo, co-op and arena playlists. Players will have added incentive to play these levels, since strawberries in featured levels will be replaced with gems that can be spent in the BattleBlock Theater Gift Shop.We've embedded a trailer that shows off some of the levels created by BattleBlock Theater's beta testers above. These levels may not be included in the full game, which is set to launch this Spring.
Battleblock Theater's opening night is in spring 2013
We might have assumed this from the timing of the beta (starting this week), but Battleblock Theater has officially received a spring 2013 release window. The long, long wait for the game – we first heard about it as "Game 3" in 2009 – is almost over, probably. Depending on the beta, we suppose.The news comes on The Behemoth's blog in poem form, which ends, "Mayhaps someone will Spring my friends... Mayhaps they near Release!" We think we see some hidden messages to that effect elsewhere, as well.
BattleBlock Theater closed beta starts Feb. 28, still time to sign up
We've been following The Behemoth's followup to Castle Crashers, BattleBlock Theater, for years now – and it's almost, almost ready to play. The Behemoth has announced that the beta, which took signups back in January, will begin two weeks from now on February 28. Roughly ten thousand players will be allowed in, and The Behemoth says there's still time to become one of them. A new video of BattleBlock Theater, above, shows what the beta will look like. Count on there being laughter, merriment, and plenty of antlers.
Sign up now for BattleBlock Theater beta
Registration is open now for the BattleBlock Theater closed beta, scheduled to occur sometime between February and March of this year. There are 10,000 spots available for determined gladiators, but you must meet the prerequisites listed on The Behemoth's site.BattleBlock Theater is reportedly in the "home stretch," welcome words from the Castle Crashers developer who originally announced BattleBlock Theater back in early 2009.
Battleblock Theater development in 'home stretch'
First off: no, Battleblock Theater isn't coming out this year. However, there is some progress toward an eventual release of the XBLA platform/brawler, with developer The Behemoth announcing that "we are excited to be hitting the home stretch with development of this game."Though the developer warns of "many rounds" of testing, submissions, and other work between now and release, Battleblock is apparently complete enought to make it through ratings boards, which is also a good sign. The ESRB rated it "T," by the way, with content descriptors warning of "Blood and Violence" – one of which you can see in the image above.
Learn more about Battleblock Theater's level editor
The Behemoth teased us with a PAX reveal of Battleblock Theater's level editor, and the Castle Crashers developer didn't disappoint. There's a full-featured level editor included with the game, and it's the same one the designers have been using to make their own levels, controller and all.Every type of block in the game is available to be placed by you within the editor, and you can color them however you like. Each level obviously needs an entrance and an exit, but what happens in between is up to you. You can choose any of the game's modes (and can even combine some of them), lay out resources to collect, and even build little Rube Goldberg devices with the various available components. One example shown to us used boulders and timed pneumatic devices pushing them onto switches, which created a sort of timed trap for characters to navigate. Extra creative users will come up with even more complex and varied setups, we suspect.Even if you're not looking to create levels, The Behemoth has you covered. To start with, users will be able to share and send levels to each other. There's a "Level Lobby" in the game's main menu, where you can download playlists of created levels, see feeds for highest played and Behemoth favorites, and play and rate all of the levels you can find. Levels do need to be downloaded locally to be played, but they're tiny, so bandwidth and storage shouldn't be a problem.We'll have to see how the level sharing system actually works post-launch to see how prominent it becomes (Castle Crashers, of course, suffered from connectivity problems during its release, which made playing multiplayer tougher than it should have been). But The Behemoth has created a powerful editor here, and it'll be fascinating, as with most user-generated content systems, to see what players can do with it.
Battleblock Theater level editor lets you set up the blocks for battle
It's PAX once again, so it's time for more news on Battleblock Theater, the Behemoth game that, for the time being, only exists at the expo. The latest on the party combat game is the level editor, which allows users to design, upload, and download new levels using the same "super easy" tools The Behemoth uses to make the story and arena levels.Battleblock is on display at the show, so we look forward to hearing about the one guy who holds up the line to finish his intricate dungeon design.
Battleblock Theater will have 200 playable characters, and at least one duck
Developer The Behemoth has been toiling away on its latest, Battleblock Theater, for a while now, and all we've learned about the game has come from a few scant glances at various industry events. But the game is finally code complete, so the developer is being a little more forthcoming with details.On the latest company blog, the team goes through the numbers on the new game: There will be over 200 characters to unlock (compared to Castle Crashers' 30), over 200 levels to play through, and over 10 "weapontools" to use. There will also be a full slate of online multiplayer modes, Achievements and avatar awards to earn, and a "soundtrack created by well-known artists and members of our community" (that community being Newgrounds, which was created by The Behemoth co-owner Tom Fulp).The dev has also shared a video (above) of artist Dan Paladin working on some of the creations in the game. The Behemoth promises more announcements later this year – here's hoping they'll finally be able to bring this long-awaited game to players soon.
In-fighting to win in Behemoth's Battleblock Theater
I really wish The Behemoth didn't always have such an awesome booth set-up.The giant, colorful arcade cabinets, adorable cartoon-emblazoned fight sticks and beautiful screens running Castle Crashers and Battleblock Theater are all an elaborate tease of things that only exist in the magical world of conventions. Every player's excited laughter turns into a cry of remorse as soon as he steps away from the booth and realizes this experience may never again be repeated, at least not in the comfort of his or her own home.Battleblock Theater is poised to follow in Castle Crashers' footsteps as an addictive, enthusiastically fun cooperative platformer with oodles of replay value and longevity when it eventually launches on the XBLA. I played through two levels on two separate cabinets, on two separate days with two different people, and had the same joyful experience with both. Battleblock Theater is a game to be enjoyed with friends, or with people who seem to have a good attitude about getting hit with friendly explosive Frisbees in the middle of complicated platforming maneuvers.
Battleblock Theater is 'code complete' [Update]
Battleblock Theater, the long, long-awaited title from Castle Crashers developer The Behemoth, passed its code complete milestone just before San Diego Comic-Con kicked off last week, project manager Emil Ayoubkhan told us. We played a few rounds of Battleblock Theater at another fantastic installment of the Behemoth booth at the con. Battleblock Theater still has no set release date, and has a few more stages to complete before The Behemoth gives it one. Right now the speed of development is "all on us," Ayoubkhan said, and every day is one step closer to a final version. Update: The original story read that Battleblock Theater had passed Microsoft certification, and that The Behemoth planned to release it before the end of the year. We have received confirmation that this is not the current schedule, no matter how excitable anyone may have been at Comic-Con.
Check out Castle Crashers on Gamecube while you wait for Battleblock Theater
All right, so Battleblock Theater doesn't have a release date yet. But The Behemoth offered a superb visual justification for why it takes as long as it does with each game: footage of an early version of Castle Crashers, back when it was a GameCube game and purely a side-scroller. "We decided it was cool but NOT COOL ENOUGH," Project Manager Emil Ayoubkhan said on the development blog."So anyway, this is why we took it back to the drawing board. We needed to tweak stuff and add awesomeness on top of it. This is essentially what's happening with BBT right now," Ayoubkhan explained. "Some of the largest steps forward have occured recently and we're so glad we didn't just settle on something that wasn't quite ready yet (and at the same time ready to explode from the excitement of handing it over)."This example suggests that Battleblock Theater could go through some dramatic changes before we finally get to play it. It also suggests that, if development progresses like Castle Crashers did, we'll get to play it.
BattleBlock Theater's prisoners step into the spotlight
We imagine incarcerated people the world over aren't very fond of spotlights -- at least during escape attempts -- but perhaps the opposite can be said for the inmates of BattleBlock Theater. The Behemoth has unleashed videos focusing on ten different playable characters in the game and they don't seem concerned with the extra attention. Some inmates are decidedly less blocky than others, but each is a unique individual that, at least to us, doesn't look like much of a criminal -- unless being too cute is a crime.
Alien Hominid: PDA Games holds iOS devices at laser-point
The Behemoth has brought the Alien Hominid PDA games to iOS devices with a pile of updates and shiny new things, including fresh art, 23 new achievements, 60 FPS, high-definition graphics and a pause feature that shows a run-through of your past 20 levels. The Alien Hominid: PDA Games app is available now in the App Store, with 15 trial levels for free, and all 500 levels for $0.99. The Behemoth is steadily working on BattleBlock Theater, and Alien Hominid is a great way to ease the waiting period and get a glimpse of the gameplay that inspired the cat-crushing prison drama that is BattleBlock Theater.
Battleblock Theater player-to-player trading system channels Buffalo Bill
The Behemoth has let the cat out of the musty prison cell with details about Battleblock Theater's's trading system, which was inspired by the hacking of weapon drops in Castle Crashers. Battleblock Theater players will be able to collect the faces of other prisoners by freeing them with green gems found in co-op levels, and weapons by distracting their feline foes with balls of yarn. All weapons and strangers' faces for you to wear as your own will be randomized, and there are no duplicates of any one item, meaning trading will play an important role in collecting the pieces you want. If you see an item -- let's say, a face -- on another player online, rip off your face and throw it at him, and if he returns the gesture, you've traded. Sounds painful simple enough. There are over 100 unlockable weapons and faces in Battleblock Theater, with more in the works before launch, which is scheduled for later this year. We recommend stocking up on lotion (or hoses) now.
The Behemoth had the best gaming booth at Comic-Con
If you were impressed by the arcade machine Sony brought to Comic-Con for Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One, you ain't see nothing yet. Indie developer The Behemoth went all out: They had a booth full of custom-made and designed arcade machines, playing both Castle Crashers and the upcoming Battleblock Theater, complete with all of the requisite joysticks and buttons for four or two players. The Behemoth (and Newgrounds) co-founder Dan Paladin told me in between signings that the machines were hand-crafted by the company, in a project overseen by The Behemoth's John Baez. And they're even cooler than they appear -- Paladin said that the big screens up on top of the machines were controlled remotely, and could move in and out of the units mechanically for transportation. If you missed these at Comic-Con, Paladin also said that they'll be on the road with the company, both at PAX Prime and the Tokyo Game Show later this year. The whole enterprise was very impressive; it's no wonder the booth was full all week long.%Gallery-129046%
Battleblock Theater prologue is very chatty, Hatty
Remember the delightful puppet theater magic captured by the Battleblock Theater introduction? You'll be happy to know it carries right over into the game's prologue, throwing in some wonderful hats and terrible cats in the process. We suggest you brighten your day by watching it right now.
New BattleBlock Theater video throws a little surprise party
It's been a while since we last saw The Behemoth's Battleblock Theater in action, so if you're forgetting all of the pertinent deets, let us remind you: The game, by the creators of XBLA superhit Castle Crashers, throws a few players with strangely-shaped heads into a theater run by cats and tasks them with navigating a maze of traps and troubles for the cats' presumed entertainment. You can see some of that entertainment in this brand-new video, which features Prisoner 10321 and the game's co-op "throwing" mechanic, which allows players to launch their frienemies across gaps, into portal-like devices ... or into spikes and pits, if they happen to not be so fond of them at a given moment. The official Behemoth blog says there's complexity here, too: you'll go farther when both characters are facing the same way, or not as far if they're facing apart. And while players can slide tackle each other while fighting, the throw move can cancel that out, blocking the slide and instead sending the slider into danger. We tell you that now so that when it happens in the game, you're not actually thrown for the proverbial loop.
