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Majesco doubting 'ability to continue' following layoffs
Majesco has fallen on hard times, as the Cooking Mama publisher "implemented a reduction of our workforce to reduce our fixed costs," according to recent SEC filings. The company's layoffs came at the very end of October, just after its independent label Midnight City launched Costume Quest 2 on PS3 and PS4. The publisher reported a net loss of $2.7 million in September for the quarter ending July 31 as well as a net revenue of $2.9 million, a 27.2 percent drop year-over year. When pointing to the earnings report in a November 6 filing, Majesco said it "suffered losses that raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern." Likewise, Majesco is "currently not developing any significant new games for release in fiscal 2015," a period that ends on October 31, 2015. The three games slated to launch during that time are Hello Kitty and Sanrio Friends 3D Racing for 3DS, Gone Home's console port courtesy of Midnight City and Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms for PC, which is currently available in early access form on Steam. [Image: Majesco]
Costume Quest 2 dresses up on PS4, PS3 tonight
A follow-up to Double Fine's Halloween-themed adventure game Costume Quest makes its console debut tonight, publisher Midnight City announced. Costume Quest 2 once again finds twins Wren and Reynold dressing up in outlandish costumes as they take on enemies in turn-based combat. Our review praised Costume Quest 2's dialogue and humor while criticizing its "plodding, padded pacing," describing the overall experience as "often sweet, sometimes sour, and (for the most part) worth the occasional tummy ache." Costume Quest 2 will hit the PlayStation Network following tonight's PlayStation Store update, and will be priced at $14.99. [Image: Double Fine]
Costume Quest 2 drags Sackboy to PS4, PS3 next week
Double Fine's dress-up RPG Costume Quest 2 will launch on PS3 and PS4 next Tuesday, October 28, publisher Midnight City announced. The PlayStation versions of the game will also receive an exclusive Sackboy costume modeled after the hero of Media Molecule's popular platforming brand, LittleBigPlanet. The Sackboy costume will be available for free to PS4 and PS3 players as part of an update to the game. To unlock it, quest-goers must find four pieces of the costume tucked away in the game. While there's no set release date for the Sackboy update, it is expected to go live "in the coming weeks." Costume Quest 2 is already available to PC, Mac and Linux players via Steam for $14.99. No launch date has been announced for the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Wii U versions as of yet. [Image: Midnight City]
Slender: The Arrival shines a dull light on PS3, Xbox 360
Slender Man is here. He's creeping through your PS3 and Xbox 360, waiting for you to plop down $10 so he can appear on your TV screen, dressed to the nines but still without a face. Slender: The Arrival on consoles expands the original game with new story elements and extended levels, and those who already own the game on PC will get the new content free of charge. More information about that free PC DLC is due in a few weeks. Slender: The Arrival is the "official" Slender Man game, written by members of Marble Hornets, the creators of the original Slender Man YouTube videos, and developed by Blue Isle Studios. The game's scare factor comes mostly from sensory deprivation – players get a camcorder and a flashlight to investigate the dark woods and hallways in a small, haunted town. "The story centers on an unwitting participant in the Slender Man mythos who walks into a mystery that just keeps pulling her in deeper," publisher Midnight City writes. "Lauren, a realtor helping a friend sell her property, arrives at Kate's home just to find a cryptic note and an empty house. Powering up her camcorder, Lauren takes off in search of Kate, but unbeknownst to her something ancient, dark and other-worldly is stalking her every step of the way."
Slender: The Arrival creeps up on PS3 September 23 [Update: Xbox 360 the next day]
Your old pal Slender Man will make his console debut later this month with the launch of Slender: The Arrival for the PlayStation 3, developer Blue Isle Studios revealed today. Inspired by an Internet-born mythos, Slender: The Arrival is a first-person horror game in which players navigate sparsely-lit environments while they're stalked by the faceless (but sharply-dressed) Slender Man. The freeware game Slender: The Eight Pages kicked off explosive growth within the horror genre on PC platforms following its release in 2012, and the PS3 port of its sequel The Arrival marks the first Slender Man appearance on consoles. Developer Alex Tintor notes that Slender: The Arrival will feature new levels, new characters, and expanded storyline content when it hits the PlayStation 3 on September 23. Update: After his first day of terrorizing North American PlayStation fans, Slender Man will give European PS3 fans and global Xbox 360 users a scare on September 24. The PS3 version of The Arrival will be priced at $9.99. [Video: Midnight City]
Costume Quest 2 goes trick-or-treating with bigger worlds, goofier costumes
Double Fine's catalog is defined by eclectic variety, with its previous efforts ranging from alternate-history tower defense games to RTS-infused brawlers. To date, however, none of the studio's games has seen a sequel. What, then, made the Halloween-themed RPG Costume Quest a standout candidate for a follow-up?
Costume Quest 2 treats players to Oct. 7 launch on Steam
Costume Quest 2 launches on October 7 on Steam, with pre-orders live now and ripe for the picking – or tricking or treating. Pre-order the game across Mac, Linux and PC in two ways: Costume Quest 2 plus four classic costumes for $15, or pay $20 for the "Pre-Purchase Costume Quest 2 Bundle," which includes Costume Quest 2, Costume Quest, the Grubbins on Ice DLC and those four classic costumes. The four included costumes are the Robot, Unicorn, Eyeball and Pumpkin. Each costume comes with its signature ability, Double Fine says: "Mow through Kronys with the Robot's 'Missile Barage' or bring back KO'd friends with the Unicorn's 'My Pretty Panacea.' Pumpkin can devastate groups with an 'All Hallows Eve' wind attack, while the Eyeball unleashes tears of fury via the 'EYE-agra Falls' ability." This holiday season, Costume Quest 2 allows everyone to partake in the most sacred of all tasks: Saving Halloween. It's due out on PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Mac and Linux, published by Midnight City and developed by Double Fine.
Drink in Bloodrayne Betrayal on PC, out now on Steam
Et tu, Bloodrayne Betrayal? WayForward's campy revival is available now on Steam, any you can pick up the vampiric 2D hack-and-slash for $10 in North America, or £7/10 euros in lands closer to Transylvania. The PC port was handled by Abstraction Games, who you might recognize from the PC port of Double Dragon Neon and the PS3 and Vita ports of Hotline Miami. Our review rained praise on the PS3 and Xbox 360 release of Bloodrayne Betrayal, with Joystiq undead JC Fletcher giving the game four and a half stars, mostly because it's a rollicking good time: "You can kick a vampire into a toxic sludge jump onto his floating body, and then use a flamethrower-like weapon as a jet to propel yourself around. Fun. Occasionally (I'd say in exactly two places) the enjoyment is overwhelmed by difficulty, but those spots can't take away the goodwill I have for the game as a whole. And I begrudgingly respect the design of those spots, after having died around 50 times trying to get through them." [Image: Midnight City]
Gone Home headed to consoles this year from Majesco's indie label
Indie developer The Fullbright Company announced that its landmark first-person adventure game Gone Home is coming to consoles this year. Majesco will publish the console version of Gone Home via its recently-launched indie label Midnight City. Specific release platforms have not been announced, though writer and designer Steve Gaynor notes that further details will be revealed in the coming weeks. Gone Home placed at #6 in Joystiq's "Best of 2013" rankings, with our senior reporter Jess Conditt calling it "a deeply personal, moving story" and "a feat of subtlety and game storytelling." [Image: Majesco / The Fullbright Company]
Costume Quest 2 comes knockin' on Halloween
Costume Quest 2 is due out on October 31 for consoles and PC, courtesy of a partnership between developer Double Fine and indie publisher Midnight City. There's no word on which consoles Double Fine is targeting, specifically. Costume Quest 2 stars Wren and Reynold, heroes of the original Costume Quest, plus an improved battle system and new costumes. The game is in full development right now, and once the team decided to go for it, work "got up and running really fast," Double Fine co-founder Tim Schafer tells IGN. This is Double Fine's first sequel. Double Fine regained the rights to the Costume Quest IP in November, after losing them to Nordic Games when Costume Quest publisher THQ went under and held a bankruptcy auction in April. We reviewed Costume Quest when it launched in 2010, and found it to be charming and "kind of magical." [Image: Midnight City]
Double Dragon Neon cowabungas onto Steam today with online co-op
Tubular news, dudes and dudettes: Double Dragon Neon is out later today on Steam for Windows PCs, and it's got a righteous new addition: online co-op. It comes courtesy of the bodacious bods at Abstraction Games, while the original flashback beat-em-up was developed by Ducktales Remastered studio WayForward. When it swaggered onto XBLA and PSN in 2012, Dave 'To The Max' Hinkle gave Double Dragon Neon a radical four-and-a-half-stars, calling it, "yet another jewel in WayForward's crown, unmistakably a Double Dragon game but with just the right amount of new flavor to make it something distinct, all wrapped in a brilliant '80s motif." If that all sounds most outstanding to you, it's $10/£7/9 euros to join the partay. [Image: WayForward/Abstraction Games]
Blood of the Werewolf eyes Q2 console launch window
Midnight City, Majesco's indie publishing label, has announced launch timetables for two of its upcoming games. Blood of the Werewolf, which launched on Steam last year, will stalk Xbox 360 and PS3 sometime between April and the end of June, while Avalanche 2: Super Avalanche will hit Steam this spring. Blood of the Werewolf, a 2D platforming game about a mother (and werewolf) seeking revenge for her slain husband and abducted child, comes to consoles with some additional content. Endless Challenge mode provides a non-stop parade of procedurally generated rooms to overcome. PC owners can look forward to this content in a free update after the console versions launch. Avalanche 2: Super Avalanche is the sequel to Chris Peterson's original free-to-play Flash game, Avalanche, which has been played more than 60 million times. Avalanche 2 will continue the platform-climbing tradition of its predecessor on Steam, challenging players to see how high their marshmallow avatar can climb. A pool of deadly liquid is ever-encroaching from the bottom of the screen, while the game dumps blocks and other stepping stones. Blood of the Werewolf is currently available for $10 on PC through Steam. It was given the Steam Greenlight in October of last year and launched just before Halloween. Avalanche 2: Super Avalanche is currently in beta testing, which you can buy into now for $5.
Slender: The Arrival gets spooky on Steam October 28
Survival horror game Slender: The Arrival will launch October 28 on Steam. The spooky adventure will set players back $9.99, and will launch on consoles in 2014. Slender: The Arrival is a re-imagining of Parsec Productions' free indie game Slender: The Eight Pages. The game is written by the Marble Hornets team, a documentary-style webseries centered around the popular Slenderman mythos. Slender: The Arrival places players in the role of Laura, a realtor that is assisting her friend Kate in selling her house. Kate goes missing, leaving Laura to search for her with a camcorder in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
Slender: The Arrival stalks Steam this month
Blue Isle Studios' spooky tall-guy simulator Slender: The Arrival will turn up on Steam by the end of the month, according to a newsletter floating around the developer's official forums and Facebook page. The newsletter states that the game will drop by "this Halloween," and that the Steam version will include "new content," though no further specifics were given. More information is expected later this week, so sayeth a developer post on the forums. Slender: The Arrival originally launched for Mac and PC back in March of this year, and is currently available in non-Steam flavors starting at $10.
Majesco creates Midnight City label to handle indie games
Majesco Entertainment (Cooking Mama, Zumba) has created an indie publishing label called Midnight City. The division is headed by former IGN Editor-in-Chief Casey Lynch and Doug Kennedy, former president and CEO of public relations firm Reverb Communications. The pair had previously worked together (before Lynch took the IGN gig) at Reverb Publishing, a division of the PR firm that helped streamline and support the publishing process for indies on various digital distribution platforms. "Over the years we have seen tons of really great games coming from smaller independent studios and our vision at Midnight City is to offer these games and development teams a wide range of services and support," said Lynch. "We're here to help with everything from first-party relations, QA, promotion and community building and to put a spotlight on the titles while freeing the development teams to focus 100 percent of their energy on building the best games possible." Midnight City has announced an initial lineup of ten games, which the company will show off at this weekend's PAX Prime in Seattle.
