beat-hazard
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Beat Hazard Ultra coming to PSN in September
Joystiq Indie Pitch game and current Steam/XBLA release Beat Hazard will appear in an upgraded form on PSN this September, as Beat Hazard Ultra. Cold Beam Games' Steve Hunt wrote the PSN release of the music-based shooter himself, which is crazy. The twin-stick shooter generates levels from either the included music or any music on your hard drive. The PSN update adds online play, in either competitive or cooperative modes, so you can subject a friend to a seventeen-minute "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" gauntlet. You can even turn the music-responsive visual effects up to 200% of normal, to really traumatize your co-op partner.
Game + Music Bundle offers three 'pay what you want' indie deals for charity
'Tis the season, as they say, for paying whatever you want to both support charities and get some great indie downloads. You've probably already seen the Humble Indie Bundle 2, and now a group named YAWMA is offering a deal on both indie games and music with the Giving Game + Music Bundle. Paying whatever you want will grant you access to seven days of various bundles, featuring one indie CD and one indie game at a time. Indie musicians like Girl Talk, Black Moth Super Rainbow and Twin Sister are teamed up with indie games like Beat Hazard, Multiwinia and Max and the Magic Marker for a pair of downloads each over the seven days, and there's one special secret bundle coming up on day 7. Yes, you need to buy each bundle separately, but it's pay what you want, and 25% of the profits for each day's sales will even go to charities like Child's Play and Save the Music. To take advantage of the deal, head on over and hit the "PWYW" button right now. Who knows, not only do you get some sweet tunes, but it might earn you some much-needed karma before Santa comes down the chimney. Check out a video after the break to learn more.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Beat Hazard
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 Steve Hunt, half of the team behind the music-fueled dual stick shooter action of Beat Hazard. How did you get started in game design? I first started making games when I was about 10 on an Atari 800. I remember I made a grave robbing game (unpublished!) where you had to break into a cemetery and drag out corpses without getting seen by the guards or caught by ghosts. I'm not sure if my parents though I was clever or messed up in the head. I've been doing game design pretty much ever since.
