arkedo-studio
Latest
Arkedo Studio disbands under 'good conditions'
The game industry is a bit less colorful today, with news that Arkedo Studio, maker of extraordinarily vibrant games like Hell Yeah! and Big Bang Mini, has effectively closed its doors. "Arkedo, the company, is still here," explains creative director Aurelien Regard. "But no one's employed anymore. No more games are produced either."Regard explains that the company self-funded two small games after Hell Yeah!, but had no other paid projects lined up. "So, it has been decided to disband the team when there still was enough money to get good conditions for everyone, rather than replace permanent positions with interns and a bad atmosphere," he said. In addition, everyone at Arkedo wanted to return to smaller projects than Hell Yeah!, and both Regard and co-founder Camille Guermonprez were working on their own side projects anyway.The last two Arkedo games will be released "soon," and then there will be no more Arkedo games. In an unusual twist, the studio is dissolving under seemingly amicable conditions. "What is for sure is that we still see one each other and will often do in the future," Regard said about himself and Guermonprez, "all with great pleasure and for a long time."
Hell Yeah! engulfs iOS in a Pocket Inferno
Arkedo Studio's hellacious downloadable game Hell Yeah! is spinning off, as rabbits in giant sawblade vehicles are wont to do. Hell Yeah! Pocket Inferno, developed by Polm Studio, lets you navigate through an automatically scrolling hellscape by tapping the left half of the screen to jump, and uses the right side to activate the machine gun you use to blow up enemies and environmental hazards.Collectible skulls and Jetpack Joyride-style goals drive replayability, with the twist that the game is broken up into specific levels, each with pre-designed challenges, rather than a random endless gauntlet.Is Pocket Inferno on the App Store now for 99 cents? Emphatically confirmed!
Arkedo Series convenes on PSN tomorrow
Before becoming famous for Hell Yeah!, Arkedo Studio made a few smaller games for XBLIG, called the Arkedo Series. The three games will be released on PS3 tomorrow in a single downloadable bundle, courtesy of publisher Sanuk Games.01 Jump!, 02 Swap! and 03 Pixel! all feature different art and gameplay styles, with Pixel's glowing, giant pixels being an obvious standout. You can try all three games on PS3 tomorrow for $5.99.
Hell Yeah! review: I concur
If you're a small developer used to making small games, there's a lot you can do when presented with a bigger budget and a major publisher. You can make a deeper, more involved story than usual; you can design bigger and more complex environments; you can hire Hollywood voice talent; you can motion-capture every motion that it's possible to capture.Arkedo Studio chose to apply its resources to filling the screen with as much hand-drawn 2D art as possible, all the time. It's a remarkable achievement. Hell Yeah! doesn't just have some of the best 2D art in recent memory, it has the most.%Gallery-157507%
Hell Yeah! Watch some monsters get smushed
We thought this trailer for Hell Yeah! would be about the unique monsters that you meet, destroy, and catalogue in Arkedo Studio's action game. Well, it kind of is. You can see them briefly before they're dispatched by a truck, or a "Happy Birthday" sign, or some other wacky device.You can also get a glimpse of the scandalous photos that cause all this revenge-killing. Do you dare watch? (It's probably okay to dare watching.)
How Arkedo learned to love downloadable games
Hell Yeah! is the first full-scale digital release by French studio Arkedo, after two boxed DS games and a few tentative (XBLIG) digital experiments. The transition to downloadable games was not an easy decision for a company that, according to founder Camille Guermonprez, loved packaged games. But it was a necessary one."I started Arkedo because I wanted to make a game with boxes," he told Joystiq at PAX East. "My first company was a digital game company, in 1999, for mobile games. That was a big company. I raised the money and it was lots of fun."Arkedo was a reaction to that previous work. "We wanted to be able to buy our game in a garage sale in 20 years, to be able to sell it for scrap, to give it as a gift," he explained. "You know, you can't give a gift with a digital title. Even if it's the same amount of money as a box, you look cheap. It's a shame."
Arkedo's next games are about pee and poo
Having completed development of Hell Yeah! for Sega, Arkedo Studio's first priority is to rest -- the studio is taking a month off after the production of what studio head Camille Guermonprez called Arkedo's biggest game ever.Following that, the company has its number one and number two next projects in the pipeline. "We're going to make two games, one game on 'pee' and one game on 'poo,'" Guermonprez told me at Sega's PAX East booth. "One game about pee and one game about poo," he clarified. "It's gonna be a Steam game, I think."You can fill in the joke yourselves.
Sega and Arkedo team up for 'Project Hell Yeah'
Hell yeah! Sega has teamed up with Arkedo (Nervous Brickdown, Big Bang Mini, the Arkedo Series) to make a game currently only known as "Project Hell Yeah!" Arkedo is now running a development blog for the mystery game, from which we've learned that it has "MEGATONS" of monsters in it, and that Arkedo's been working on it for nine months. Given the codename and the proliferation of monsters, we're going to venture a guess that this is set in a very cute version of Hell.Sega and Arkedo are still being coy about the details of the project -- including platforms (the fictional Dreamcast 2 is ruled out!) and release date.
iPhone's Pix'n Love Rush hurries to PlayStation Minis
The iOS twitch platformer Pix'n Love Rush is being ported to systems with actual buttons -- namely, the PSP and PS3, for which it's being released as a Mini. The stylish side-scroller, a collaboration between developer Pastagames and the French zine publisher Pix'n Love, combines bite-sized coin-collecting platformer challenges with a variety of eye-catching visual styles, including Virtual Boy and Game Boy color schemes. The game's look is based on the Xbox Live Indie Games release Pixel (the third game in the Arkedo Series), which was a joint effort by Arkedo Studios and Pastagames. Publisher Sanuk Games plans to release the Minis version "soon," though no specific date or price has been announced.
Arkedo's canceled Natal game: 2-Finger Heroes
Arkedo Studio, the French developer responsible for the DS's Big Bang Mini and Nervous Brickdown, as well as recent Xbox Live Indie Games like the stylish 03 Pixel, has been thinking about Project Natal. And sadly for us, it decided to think again before going through with its proposed game idea, 2-Finger Heroes. CEO Camille Guermonprez posted mocked-up screenshots and design plans for the game on NeoGAF, revealing a brawler controlled by players' fingers acting as the protagonists' legs. Occasionally, the game would switch over to segments controlled by hand motions or crossed arms, and award powerups for hand gestures at certain segments (with a penalty for flipping the screen off!) Why isn't Arkedo working on this game right now? Issues with recognition of minute finger movements -- and localization concerns. "Yup, what can be understood as the victory sign in France, could be a terrible insult in the UK, for instance," Guermonprez said. "And we are not even talking about Italian. Oh, the possibilities..."
New Arkedo Series game on XBLM: Pixel
If you spend much time checking out Indie Games on Xbox Live, there's a considerable chance you've stumbled upon the Arkedo Series of games. Fans will be happy to hear that Arkedo and Pastagames have released a third in the series. Entitled Pixel, the game features slick dot matrix graphics and simple platforming action. The game also has a nifty feature that allows players to zoom in on certain parts of the background and explore them at the pixel level. Check the game out in the video above and enjoy some screens in the gallery below. You can snag the trial version through the link below and, should you enjoy it, the full game is 240 ($3) or, as Arkedo puts it, "approximately the asking price for a nice latte." Shortcut: Add Arkedo Series - 03 Pixel to your 360 download queue [Via Xbox.com] %Gallery-81087%
Anxiety-filled Breakout videos
We've been on edge ever since Eidos announced its plans to publish Nervous Brickdown, Arkedo Studios' modernization of the Breakout genre. Much like how Tetris DS made block dropping seem fresh again, this high-strung title breathes new life into the break-a-brick formula with creative modes and a style overhaul.IGN has a hands-on preview and some new videos of Nervous Brickdown's gameplay variations, and they're totally stressing us out for reals. In one of the game's ten distinct modes, you guide a paddle and ball through scrolling shmup stages -- making it a paddle-em-up, maybe? Drifting ghosts haunt the stages, hindering your progress, so you'll have to blow into the DS' mic to push them away. Another theme challenges you to manage a platformer on one screen while simultaneously playing Breakout on the other. Just talking about it is enough to make our stomachs all queasy.
Nervous Brickdown brings sexy back to Breakout
Nervous Brickdown breathes new life into the Arkanoid-Breakout genre, updating its basic template with ten distinct gameplay modes. This might be Arkedo Studio's first game for any console, but the charming soundtrack and highly-stylized environments -- ranging from 70s mod to playful retro -- really give Nervous Brickdown a first-rate polish that other Breakout-clones usually lack. The break-a-brick game takes advantage of the Nintendo DS' hardware, making use of the system's touchscreen, microphone, and WiFi (multiplayer) features. Ecrans has a few videos showing how hectic the game can get as it forces you to dodge bullets, fight bosses, and catch items, all while keeping the ball in play. No release date has been announced yet, but we're happy to hear that Eidos has picked this title up for publishing. You will definitely be hearing more about Nervous Brickdown from us in the future. [Thanks, Sebastien!]
