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Joystiq hands-on: Away: Shuffle Dungeon
One part Soul Blazer, one part Phantom Hourglass – that's Mistwalker's Away: Shuffle Dungeon. The DS title is very much like Soul Blazer in the sense that its hero wanders through lairs in a quest to restore his town, piece by piece (and villager by villager). Meanwhile, shades of Phantom Hourglass trickle in via Away's cartoon visuals and arena-like boss battles. And despite these associations with games of the past, Away: Shuffle Dungeon does offer a unique, avant-garde feature not found elsewhere: shuffling dungeons. "Shuffling dungeons" entail dynamic changes to the layout of enemy-infested locales as players explore in real-time. A dungeon is displayed on both the top and touch screens; only one screen at a time will shuffle out an area and replace it with a new section. The objective is to arrive on the other screen before the timer runs out; if a player fails to make it in time, the penalty takes them back to the beginning of the floor they're on. The overall effect of this system makes the tedium of regular dungeon crawling go away. The time pressure and the puzzle-connected areas force gamers to think quickly, making things not only challenging, but quite exciting as well. %Gallery-34918%
Away: Shuffle Arsenal
Dave mentioned multiple weapon classes in his hands-on report of Away: Shuffle Dungeon, and now Famitsu offers new screens and descriptions of each of the four classes. They're all pretty standard accoutrements of the adventuring business, but we'll take any details we can get about Mistwalker's (otherwise) innovative dungeon RPG.The sword is (obviously) balanced in speed, attack power, and reach. Spears attack straight forward and can knock down enemies. Daggers have short reach and low strength, but allow Sword (the character, not the weapon) to attack quickly and use combos. The axe is the slowest, but most powerful class of weapons. It can hit multiple enemies simultaneously.Really, in a game about dungeons whose landscapes periodically shift like slot machine reels, it's probably okay for a few things to be conventional.
E308: DS Fanboy hands-on with Away: Shuffle Dungeon
When I arrived at Majesco's booth on the now very diminished E3 show floor, I saw their offerings and immediately leaped toward Away: Shuffle Dungeon. The demo build only had one dungeon available, as well as the world hub and a boss fight.%Gallery-20078%
Don't run away from these new Away screens
Game Watch has a plethora of new screens for Away: Shuffle Dungeon. They run the whole gamut from gameplay shots, down to concept art of a variety of the title's NPCs. There's also some nice information available, such as brief descriptions of all the NPCs and how they play into the game's story. With it finally getting a concrete release date in Japan, and with Majesco bringing it to North America (let's not forget Europe, as well), are you pumped for Mistwalker's title? Or, are you more excited for Blue Dragon Plus?
Majesco bringing Away toward North America in January
The latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly features a nice preview of Mistwalker's Away: Shuffle Dungeon, which also happens to contain a nice bit of news: the game is given a January 2009 release date for North America, with Majesco publishing. This is somewhat surprising since AQ Interactive, who is publishing in Japan, owns an American game publisher; in addition, dungeon crawling is pretty divergent from the kind of casual games Majesco generally publishes.Not that we're complaining, of course. Away looks awfully clever, and we're just happy we'll get to play it. One warning: given the history of this game, we wouldn't get our hopes up for it to make January.%Gallery-20078%
Delay: Shuffle Dungeon
Away: Shuffle Dungeon has already been announced as a PAL release (and sort of announced as a North American release), even though the Japanese version of the game isn't out yet. AQ Interactive, Virgin PLAY, and (probably) Xseed should be able to give us firmer Western release dates for the dungeon crawler now, because the delayed Japanese game finally has its own date. Of course, that date is even later than the vague "summer" named in the last delay statement.AQ Interactive announced the final (probably) release date for Japan yesterday: October 16, right in the middle of the "fall" release window Virgin PLAY planned for Europe. Unless AQ Interactive is planning a simultaneous worldwide release, we expect the late release will cause the European version to get bumped into next year. The U.S. version still has yet to be officially unveiled.
Away shuffling into Europe
Virgin PLAY sent out a press release today confirming that they will publish AQ Interactive/Mistwalker's Away: Shuffle Dungeon in Europe this fall. They say they're releasing it in "the PAL territories," so Australia is a possibility as well.The press release is unusually interesting, as it provides the first official English-language details of Away's storyline. Away: Shuffle Dungeon is the story of Webb Village, a small town whose residents disappear randomly, a phenomenon known as Blue Dragon Away. After a girl named Anella gets "awayed" in his place, a young man named Sword finds himself the only remaining resident of Webb. Sword must enter the "Shuffle Dungeon" to rescue the villagers. And then the dungeon shuffles. Obviously.
Blue Dragon, Away: Shuffle Dungeon confirmed for U.S.
As if our recent poll regarding Blue Dragon Plus and Away: Shuffle Dungeon hadn't already put you on the spot enough, now you'll have to choose one for really reals. AQ Interactive's latest financial report confirms that both will hit North America in this fiscal year, and also mentioned a localized version of the Korg DS-10 (which we already knew about).Incidentally, there's a further four third-party portable games being brought over by Xseed, and Siliconera reckons that those could include Flower, Sun and Rain, Lux Pain, and Dungeon Maker DS. As European versions of the first two have both been rumored, we'd tend to agree!
DS Daily: Looking forward to it
With all of the impending games to hit the DS, which excite you the most? We don't have to tell you how pumped we are for Super Dodgeball Brawlers and the games coming from Mistwalker, but what about you all? What titles on the radar have you all giddy and feeling funny in the pants? Space Invaders Extreme? Edgeworth's game?
DS Fanboy poll: Away vs. Blue Dragon Plus
A struggle has begun in the Nintendo Fanboy offices. We have divided the dungeon we reside in, one half of the staff staking claim to their side, while the remainder of us blog from within the sanctuary of our side. The argument that has split us so? What looks more interesting: Away: Shuffle Dungeon or Blue Dragon Plus?The conflict has grown so large that it has spilled out onto the site proper, where we hope you, fine reader, can help us resolve it. We've put up a poll (placed past the break to keep the front page tidy and so those who hate polls and having their voices heard won't be bothered with it), so cast your vote and be heard. Help us stop before we sacrifice Chris to our god, Sakaguchi-san.
Is Mistwalker's next DS game a random dungeon crawler?
Are the Blue Dragon developers working on a "roguelike" action RPG for the Nintendo DS? And more importantly, what the hell is a roguelike?Siliconera has deciphered the Japanese press release for Mistwalker's DS title Away, which has been renamed Away: Shuffle Dungeon. Using the Socratic method common sense, Siliconera has deduced that since the Blue Dragon random dungeon generator DLC for Xbox 360 has been titled "Shuffle Dungeon Maker," Away must be using the same term to describe its primary gameplay mechanic: randomly-generated dungeons that the player has to traverse.Roguelike is a special term reserved for dungeon-crawling action games that utilize randomly-generated level design. The term comes from the game Rogue, and the genre includes titles like Nethack and Tales of Middle Earth. Away could potentially be the first game in this genre to appear on the DS (although homebrew efforts have previously been made). Roguelike or not, Away: Shuffle Dungeon is is due out in Japan on February 28 (which just happens to be someone's birthday...).
