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PSA: Mark of the Ninja now on Steam
Klei Entertainment's Mark of the Ninja is now live on Steam, completely in the open and totally unguarded against online purchases of $14.99. As for the trailer, it certainly isn't helping the 2D stealth game stay undetected.Incidentally, Klei isn't resting its laurels after sending Mark of the Ninja on its way. The developer's next project is Don't Starve, described as "an uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic." So, a bit like Half-Life 2 then? Oh wait, we've just seen the video, never mind.
Mark of the Ninja creeps onto Steam October 16
Mark of the Ninja is coming to Steam next month, arriving on October 16 priced at $14.99. Klei Entertainment told Rock Paper Shotgun about the PC port's details, including that Games for Windows Live won't be a part of it.Klei's 2D stealth-a-lot came to Xbox Live Arcade earlier this month. Mark of the Ninja certainly made an impression on Ludwig of the Joystiq, with his review saying the game "shines a light on the stealth genre, revealing the qualities you knew were there but couldn't quite see."
Mark of the Ninja review: Kneel in the shadows
Stealth games are really about a guy trapped in a temporal loop, forced to repeat his actions until he can shake off the mysterious clumsiness that has overridden years of tip-toeing experience. "Why would I just roll into that spotlight like an idiot?" wonders the grizzled agent, now on his fifth run through a secret terrorist compound. "Crap, landing on that grate was much louder than I thought." Cue alarms and a return to the last save point.Mark of the Ninja makes it awfully hard to be an oaf dressed in black. No, it hasn't been streamlined to the point of auto-play, and the inherent challenge of avoiding detection hasn't been crushed into a pulp to please the plebes. Rather, developer Klei Entertainment has flattened the genre into a legible, two-dimensional blueprint. That's why things are more likely to go according to plan.%Gallery-157960%
Mark of the Ninja not-so-sneakily arrives on XBLM today
Mark of the Ninja sneaks onto Xbox Live Marketplace today for 1200 MSP. Not that it's any good at sneaking, as Klei Entertainment just broadcasted the side-scrolling stealth game's arrival with a new trailer.Joystiq's head ninja spoke with Klei's Nels Anderson this week, focusing on how the team wants strong, flexible play while avoiding the frustration stealth games can cultivate. "I thought the abundance of outlines threatened to make this an easy game, but my early takeaway is that your actions are easier to read, predict and eventually master. Understanding how the game and its systems work shouldn't remove the danger, just the "gotcha" of trial-and-error learning. 'Even though we try to make things very clear and very explicit,' Anderson says, 'we still want to facilitate people being able to be experimental and feel that they can safely take risks, without giant chunks of their progress being held hostage.'"
Klei Entertainment's next course: 'Don't Starve'
Klei Entertainment, developer of the Shank series and Mark of the Ninja, has another game up its sleeve, this one called Don't Starve.Don't Starve is "an uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic," done in a hauntingly charming art style, and it's available now for $6.99 as an early access beta. The beta is browser-based, through the Chrome Web Store, but the full game will be standalone.That price gets players two beta keys – one for a friend – and the full game on Steam once it launches. Check out the above trailer for Don't Starve and hop on the beta train at this stop.
Mark your calendars: Mark of the Ninja coming Sept. 7
Summer of Arcade ends with Dust: An Elysian Tail, but cool XBLA releases continue after the promotion. Klei Entertainment's Mark of the Ninja, a unique side-scrolling stealth-action game, will launch on September 7.Klei "really wants" to follow the XBLA release with a PC version, the developer tweeted. However, no definite announcements have been made toward that goal, so XBLA is currently the only place to hide in a vent, shoot out a spotlight with a shuriken, and then silently dispose of nearby guards. Legally, anyway.
Mark of the Ninja snuck some E3 assets into our galleries
Mark of the Ninja, the shadowy, stealthy ninja title from Klei Entertainment, is set to launch this summer on XBLA, and the above E3 trailer shows why you should be so excited for it. Well, not too excited – at least try to keep the noise down. There's no reason to make it easy for the ninjas to find you.%Gallery-157960%
EA Indie Bundle challenges your definitions, is live on Steam now
The EA Indie Bundle (yes, we assure you, it is barely-100-percent-mostly-ish possible for EA to have an indie bundle) is live on Steam, offering 70 percent off a package of six titles from four indie developers, or half off each individual game.Included in the sale is Warp, Shank, Shank 2, DeathSpank, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue and Gatling Gears. The DeathSpank titles are $7.50 individually and are available on PC and Mac through Steamplay, while the rest of EA's indies cost $5 and are PC only.Indie Game Magazine first spotted the bundle in the super-secret Steam registry files this morning. The sale is now officially on, set to disappear from Steam in one week on May 9.
Eets: Munchies is Klei's new title, man
Yesterday CEO of Klei Entertainment Jamie Cheng casually announced he was working on a new Eets title during the Q&A of the Failure Workshop panel at GDC, and today he told Joystiq that it is indeed a thing, and it has the munchies. Er, we mean, it's called Munchies. Cheng showed us a brief demo of Munchies on the iPad, and it looks appropriately adorable for the next Eets game, starring the classic bunny-like main character and clean cartoon graphics, in line with the screen from the first Eets shown above.Eets: Munchies is coming to the iPad for sure, but Cheng has yet to reveal other platforms. He said the title is far from being complete.
Klei Entertainment chowing down on new Eets title
Klei Entertainment, creator of the Shank series, is working on a second installment of its other original franchise, Eets, studio co-founder Jamie Cheng said at GDC today. Cheng presented at the Failure Workshop, showing off the many iterations and doomed decisions of Eets: Sugar Rush, a title Klei worked on for four years before it was canceled for good.Cheng said Klei was burnt out on Sugar Rush (later renamed Scrappers), so the new Eets title will probably have more to do with healthful eating habits and complete objects than anything else. We'll have more details on the failures of Klei, Supergiant Games, Enemy Airship and Northway Games in a separate story later today.
Klei Entertainment teases XBLA 'Mark of the Ninja' with text adventure
If you can make the right choices in this interactive text adventure, you too can see a teaser video for Klei Entertainment's upcoming Xbox game Mark of the Ninja.Due this summer, Mark of the Ninja is a side-scrolling "stealth ninja game" with heavily stylized graphics, that involves reticle-targeted ninja devices like a grappling hook, caltrops, and throwing knives. Judging by the clip (and the preceding text game), the goal is to set up traps for unsuspecting enemies, and kill them undetected.The video suggests that Mark of the Ninja is a Microsoft Studios-published game, which, combined with the release window, makes it a very likely candidate for a Summer of Arcade promotion.
Shank 2 review: Refined brutality
Evidence would suggest that the developers at Klei got together in a board room and said, "Shank was really good. We should do another game exactly like it, only a little bit better." And wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what they did. Shank 2 could be mistaken for its predecessor at first glance, with similar 2D visuals and fast-paced violence. But look a little deeper and you'll find a little more meat, a little more nuance and, somehow, even more brutality. %Gallery-146793%
Shank 2 video schools us all on survival
In Shank 2's Survival mode, you may think staying alive is simply slicing and/or shooting dudes before they slice and/or shoot you. Turns out, it's not that simple.
Building a better game in Shank 2
For insight on how to develop a successful game, you need only look to Klei Entertainment CEO Jamie Cheng's approach to Shank 2. Aware that the main knock against the first game was its repetition, Cheng and the rest of the development team decided to rethink their approach to the design."When we started work on Shank, we had never built a brawler or fighting game before," Cheng told me. "We tried to provide the best scenario possible, but when we looked at the game as a whole, we realized that a lot of the scenarios tended to repeat themselves."As a result, Cheng said, the team decided to take a more holistic approach to the design of Shank 2. Enemies have been designed in such a way that they can't be defeated using the same tactics, and the mechanics have been tweaked. Blocking, meanwhile, has been removed entirely, which makes the combat flow even better and helps emphasize dodge rolls and the new counters.
Shank 2 cuts in on February 7 in North America, February 8 in Europe
Shank 2 will leap onto, shoot, stab, stab, shoot, slice, throw a grenade at, and shoot digital platforms starting February 7, when it arrives on PSN and PC in North America. The worldwide XBLA release, along with the European PSN version, will follow on February 8. The price is set for $10, € 9.99, or 800 Microsoft Points, depending on your choice of platform and continent. Shank 2's marquee feature is a new co-op survival mode that pits two players against a never-ending supply of enemies, so start looking for a friend with the same violent predilections you have. ... Actually, when we put it that way, that sounds like a bad idea.
Shank 2 gameplay clip is fun for the whole bloody family
We really should pay Shank back that $30 we owe him before he comes knocking on our door.
Co-op carnage abounds in new Shank 2 screens
Sure, it feels good to murder hundreds and hundreds of non-descript video game henchman, but you know what's even better? Doing it with a friend, of course!
Shank 2 announced during EA Vegas press conference, coming 'early 2012'
Electronic Arts is hosting a gaming press event in Las Vegas this week, and was promising the reveal of "at least one completely new title" and it looks like that title is ... Shank 2? In EA's liveblog, when asked "Is this the 'new ip' ?," EA's Andy Katkin replied, "You got it Mike." We're as confused as you are, but this other comment by Katkin may provide some insight. "Shank 2 isn't just a reboot of Shank," Katkin wrote, "it's an entirely new game." Klei Entertainment's Jamie Cheng said, "What we did was rip the game apart and reconstruct it to allow us to have more responsive controls and better graphics. We tore our combat system apart ... and created new controls to be able to use the enemies' weapons against themselves." Klei also added an online co-op mode, a feature largely tacked onto the original, by way of a "prequel" level. "Instead of just giving another co-op campaign that you play once and never play again," Cheng explained, "we took the mechanics and created a new way of playing: multiplayer co-op survival mode." We don't know what that string of buzzwords means either, but we suspect we'll find out soon enough (horde mode, right?). Shank 2 will be "available in early 2012," on the same digital distribution services as the original, including XBLA, PSN, and PC.%Gallery-135014%
Klei Entertainment on 'The Journey to Creating Shank'
Klei Entertainment was pushed to the verge of bankruptcy during the development of its ultra-violent, Desperado-inspired action game, Shank. Studio founder Jamie Cheng described some of the more tumultuous periods in the game's development at a GDC panel on Tuesday morning, admitting that stress even managed to crack his normally calm demeanor. In order to remain afloat and complete Shank, Klei introduced temporary (and optional) employee wage reductions with interest, and Cheng himself took out a bank loan against his house in January 2010. The studio was offered a lifeline from an unnamed publisher, but it declined the offer and opted for a fairer, less constrictive deal with EA Partners. "We kept the IP, we kept the creative freedom; it was the good stuff," Cheng said.
Pre-order PC Bulletstorm from EA Store, get Shank for free
Every, um, cloud in a Bulletstorm has a silver lining, because it's full of steel Shanks. Okay, that belabored metaphor is supposed to refer to the fact that if you pre-order the PC download version of Bulletstorm from EA's store, you'll get a free download of Klei Entertainment's side-scrolling action game Shank. We just wanted to say it in a more poetic way than "buy this one game about committing thousands of bloody murders, and get another game about bloody murders for free," okay? The deal is good only with purchases of the $60 Bulletstorm Limited Edition, through Feb. 21.
