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Humble Weekly Sale gets rhythmic with Audiosurf, Bit.Trip Runner
Paging Dr. Beat: Humble Bundle's latest Humble Weekly Sale requires a solid sense of rhythm, offering a pay-what-you-want collection of games that test your ability to play along to a backing music track. The $1-minimum package includes Empty Clip Studios' rhythm-driven shoot-'em-up Symphony, Iridium Studios' music-themed RPG Sequence, and Gaijin Games' platformer Bit Trip Runner. Pay more than $6 for the compilation and you'll also get the custom track-driven puzzler Audiosurf, twin-stick arena shooter Beat Hazard Ultra, and reverse-shmup Retro/Grade. The "Rhythm Games" Humble Weekly Bundle will remain available through March 27. [Image: Cold Beam Games]
Steam weekly deals: Anna, Retro/Grade, The Journey Down
Valve has posted new weekly deals on Steam this week, and you can pick up some excellent indie titles for the low price of cheap. The atmospheric horror puzzler Anna is on sale for only $3.39, 2DEngine's Chains is only $1.24, reverse music shooter Retro/Grade will cost you $3.40, the sticky sweet Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory is $2.37, and indie point-and-click The Journey Down: Chapter One is $2.80. That's a whole lotta great indie gaming for not a lotta bucks. The whole deal's good until June 10, despite the official Valve post date being off by a week again. You're just messing with us now, right Valve?
Retro/Grade comes to Steam March 20, still cheap on PSN
First off, if you haven't got Retro/Grade yet and you have a PS3, go get it. Right now. It's on sale for $3.49 ($2.44 if you have Plus) until PSN updates. Seriously, go. That's sub-coffee cheap. Okay, for those of you who want to play 24 Caret's unique backwards-shmup music game on a different platform, the developer has announced plans to bring it to Steam for PC on March 20. This version is more versatile, supporting Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii guitar controllers!
The Sound Summer of PSN
You're reading Reaction Time, a weekly column that claims to examine recent events, games and trends in the industry, but is really just looking for an excuse to use the word "zeitgeist." It debuts on Fridays in Engadget's digital magazine, Distro. Remember when the summer lull signaled a blissful break from the year's onslaught of new games? July was the perfect pitstop, where you'd catch up on that bloated backlog and shake off that vague, gnawing stress that comes from wanting to play everything and knowing you never will. There used to be a gap, right over here.If things felt lethargic to you in August, you must not have been too keen on the downloadable games finding their way to the PlayStation Store – or the ones getting horribly lost and asking for directions to some nested nightmare in the current Xbox 360 dashboard.Sony's efforts this year have been especially strong, with several standout games forming a loose alliance around music. The PlayStation Network hosted the debut of Dyad, a tumultuous, trippy shooter that puts your brain in a slingshot and fires it straight down a LED-lined tunnel. It's a product of Toronto's indie game scene and designer Shawn McGrath, who says it was relatively easy to gain Sony's stamp of approval.
PSN Tuesday: Counter-Strike: GO, Metal Gear, Jojo, Way of the Samurai 4
Counter-Strike is updated for the modern era today on PSN. It's joined by Retro/Grade, NISA's Legasista, Way of the Samurai 4, whose trailer you absolutely must see, and a few somewhat less drastic remakes and updates than Counter-Strike: GO!Said refreshes include Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, separated out from the HD Collection and released digitally, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure HD, and Gungrave: Overdose, which isn't actually updated at all – it's a PS2 Classic. The ability to download it and play it on PS3 is new.
Retro/Grade review: Time machine music
Retro/Grade is a game about distraction. On a surface level, there's a complicated premise that has you playing a side-scrolling shmup in reverse, avoiding enemy bullets as they return to the back of your ship and rushing to catch the projectiles that your ship fired when time was moving forward. You know, because you don't want to damage the timeline by having a missile shoot out of nowhere.In practice, however, all that complication belies a very easy to understand rhythm game. Those missiles return to your ship to the rhythm of the song, and you move up and down the screen and catch them. It's kind of Rock Band turned sideways, right down to color coding on the markers.%Gallery-161259%
Retro/Grade flies backwards into PSN on Aug. 21
Retro/Grade, the, uh, backwards shoot-em-up that you control with a guitar, finally makes its way to PlayStation Network for PS3 on August 21. It'll be sold both by itself and as a bundle with its soundtrack. Developer 24 Caret Games posted the above new trailer to mark the occasion.We're happy to report that if you've recently purged your home of plastic guitars, you can use a regular controller as well – but that removes one of the many levels of incredible weirdness.%Gallery-161259%
Retro/Grade preview: A step forward, backward
Much like the classical pianist who has thoroughly mastered his craft and finds the act of reading sheet music to be perfectly droll, the multicolored gem charts of Guitar Heros and Rock Bands have become easy pleasy lemon squeezy. If you've been playing those games since the genre's inception, you can probably tap and strum through most songs on the hardest difficulty settings. It is unlikely, however, that you could do so backwards while dodging increasingly violent salvos of enemy lasers. 24 Caret Games' PSN-exclusive indie shoot-em-up Retro/Grade asks you to do just that, forcing you to use your brain (and your digits) in a manner which you're almost certainly unaccustomed to. In case you haven't been following it (you terrible dummy), here's the pitch: You're a pilot who's flying his spacecraft through a reversed flow of time, dodging enemy fire as it's sucked back into their ships, while re-collecting your own fired bursts by navigating to the appropriate track and strumming, in time, on a guitar peripheral. (Or a controller, if you're so inclined.)
Retro/Grade headed to PAX Prime with fancy ID cards
Retro/Grade developers 24 Caret Games will print customized ID cards for PAX Prime attendees this August, giving some peace of mind to those dreading sudden separation from their like-minded groups in Penny Arcade's increasingly packed event. The crew from 24 Caret will be at this year's Seattle-based soiree, showing off its game and holding a promotional contest -- and that's where the ID cards really come in. Entry in the high score contest is tied to pre-registering for a card (which you can do right here) for free -- if you're not into that kinda thing, generic Rick Rocket cards will be available otherwise at the show. That said, if you pre-register, it'll also net you a totally swanky identification for the duration of PAX, undoubtedly helpful in your repeated self-introductions as "The guy who plans to conquer your Retro/Grade high score."
Retro/Grade devs document a thrilling 48 hours in indie development
Whoever said indie development was all chiptune dance parties and NOS-sponsored galas clearly never worked with the dudes at Retro/Grade dev 24 Caret Games. The studio condensed 48 hours of development time on its latest game into a terrifying one-minute clip, as seen below the break.
Retro/Grade preview: Rock your brain off
I set down the guitar controller and start walking back through the layers. I'm sitting at the PAX booth of 24 Caret Games, taking my first spin behind the frets of Retro/Grade, which has one of those great premises that only a video game could really do justice to. As ace spaceship pilot Rick Rocket, I've done it again: I've saved the galaxy by defeating the horrific final boss. The credits begin to roll and it's only then that I realize that, somehow, as a byproduct of this victory, all of space and time has come to an end. I do the only thing I know how to do, I reverse the flow of time, intercepting the shots I once fired and sucking them back up into my ship. This is where I, the player, take over. Unfortunately, as the level unprogresses, I miss unfiring too many of my shots and get hit by too many enemy bullets I dodged the first time. I get a game over screen, but I don't see the end credits I saw at the beginning/end, but rather the real "Game Over." Only, it's not literally Game Over, since my ship is equipped with a Retro/Rocket that lets me unreverse the flow of time and unmiss the shots I originally made so I can unmake them correctly. I notice my right temple has begun to throb.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Retro/Grade
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Matt Gilgenbach, co-founder of 24 Caret Games, the developer behind upcoming PSN release Retro/Grade. How did your company get started? We always dreamt of having our own game studio. In the summer of 2008, the game business was booming, the sun was shining, and birds were chirping, so the time seemed right to venture out on our own. Unfortunately, soon after we started, we were caught by surprise by the great recession of aught-eight. Perhaps it wasn't the best time to start after all! Despite that setback, we decided to follow our dream against innumerable odds. We are hoping to option the true story of 24 Caret Games to Hollywood for one of those feel good triumph of the human spirit movies. I was thinking Rpattz could play me. He had the appropriate game developer complexion in Twilight. So far, no studio has gotten back to me about it ...
Retro/Grade scores a new trailer just in time for PAX
Guitar controller-compatible time-reversing rhythm shmup ... thing Retro/Grade may not be arriving on PSN until next year, but PAX attendees will be granted an early look at it during the convention this year. But what if you can't make it to Seattle? You'll have to settle for this new trailer, which highlights the game's rather unusual premise. Still don't get it? The final game promises a tutorial mode "to help people wrap their minds around our time bending concepts." Honestly, it seems like we'll need it.
PSN's Retro/Grade is progressing, but not coming in 2010
In an interview with PSNStores, 24 Caret Games' Matt Gilgenbach offered an update on the development of the time-reversing rhythm shmup ... thing, Retro/Grade. Most obviously, the PSN release is getting a nice visual boost over what has been shown: "We've redone pretty much all the graphics to make the game look really snazzy on your HDTVs," Gilgenbach said, "especially because Retro/Grade runs at Full HD (1080p) at 60 fps with anti-aliasing." Power-ups (and power-downs) have also been added, as have "some epic reverse boss fights" that the team isn't talking about yet. If you want to try out the odd guitar-controlled PSN game (and there will be a demo!) you'll have to jump forward in time to next year: "I am confident we will release it sometime in 2011," Gilgenbach said, "but I can't really narrow it down too much further."
Retro/Grade reverses time and shmup expectations on PSN
Retro/Grade, an Independent Games Festival nominee for best game design, is making its way off of PSN ... we mean, onto PSN. See, the thing that makes this shmup different is that all the action happens backwards -- like a classic space shooter meets Memento. Comparison can also be made between this game and WiiWare's Bit.Trip.There's a long writeup of the game over at the PlayStation Blog. One of the cooler things implemented in the title is the use of a guitar controller to control the ship. The fret buttons will allow the player to move, while the strum bar is used as the "shoot" button. You can get an idea of what it'll look like in the video after the break.
