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Ska Studios shifts to Sony after 6 years on Xbox
Ska Studios has been around for seven years, and during six of those it's had a close relationship with Microsoft. All of its games, from The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai to Charlie Murder, have launched on Xbox 360 or Windows Phone only. Dead Samurai won the Dream Build Play competition in 2007, serving as a catalyst for Ska's tight partnership with Microsoft. "I've said it before: XBLA literally made all of my dreams come true," Ska founder James Silva said in 2012. And now for the twist: Ska's first next-gen game, Salt and Sanctuary, will launch exclusively on Sony's PS4 and Vita. James and Michelle Silva, Ska's artist and community manager, made the announcement today. "There were a bunch of factors that led to us deciding to publish Salt and Sanctuary with Sony, but it really came down to an overwhelming amount of enthusiasm from them," James told Joystiq in an email. "They loved Salt and Sanctuary, they loved our previous work, and maybe most importantly, they offered us Pub Fund support; after a bit of talking it became apparent that working together just made an insane amount of sense to us as both a business decision and a creative decision."
Ska Studios debuts on PS4, Vita with Salt and Sanctuary
Salt and Sanctuary has Ska Studios' signature hand-drawn, gothic metal vibe, with mechanics reminiscent of its previous games, Charlie Murder and The Dishwasher series. Salt and Sanctuary is a 2D, sidescrolling, action RPG with brutal bosses in a dark, purgatorial world. You're a sailor shipwrecked on this war-torn land, and you must fight harrowing enemies in between your time in the sanctuaries, pockets of protection where all of the island's travelers get rest and trade stories. For the first time in Ska Studios' history, this game is exclusive to PS4 and Vita. Ska Studios traditionally works with Microsoft, launching all of their previous games exclusively on Xbox 360 and Windows Phone.
Developets: A tribute to the four-legged friends of indie developers
Chris Chung with the family cat, Nippy At the start of the 2013 7DFPS Game Jam, Chris Chung was given the challenge of creating a unique first person shooter within seven days. No other rules, requirements, or qualifications; just complete creative control over a project and a week's worth of time in which to complete it. This task in mind, Chung began brainstorming ideas, trying to come up with something that could be both unique and feasibly accomplished. He remembers the idea forming in his mind during a long car ride on the first day of the jam. "I was thinking of what kind of interesting first-person game I could make that I hadn't seen before, and 'cats' was the first thing I thought of."
Time Viking is the follow-up to I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES, out now on Xbox 360
Ska Studios' well-known Xbox Live Indie Games success, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1, has a new baby brother. TIME VIKING!!!!!ANDSPACERAPTOR is the spiritual successor to Z0MB1ES, and it's just as insane. The game revolves around a time-traveling viking with incredible mind powers and ... well ... a space raptor. The trailer speaks volumes, but we'd advise just trying the game whenever you can. The trial is free on Xbox Live right now, and the full game is a dollar.
Charlie Murder soundtrack, vinyl spins out for a buyer-picked price
Charlie Murder's soundtrack is one of the best parts of the game, which admittedly has a lot of good parts overall. The soundtrack is a punk rock homage performed by Ska Studios' James Silva and Michelle Juett Silva (and friends), and it's available to download for "anything you want," from $0 to whatever your wallet can handle. There's also a classy, three-track vinyl edition available for $10 or more, featuring the songs "Mnemomic Atomic," "I Vote 4 Chaos" and a cover from Ska's previous game, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1, "For Yr Pain." Purchasing the vinyl automatically nets you a download of the full Charlie Murder album, so you may want to consider the two-for-one.
Charlie Murder review: Search and destroy
Damn it, Charlie Murder. You're a fiend. You're a hardcore, chaotic mess of heathenry and horror. You're worse than a pre-epiphany Grinch, bloodier than Bunker Hill, messier than an unsupervised 2-year-old eating spaghetti and chocolate ice cream, and more outrageous than Lady Gaga at a PETA banquet. And this is why I love you.%Gallery-191157%
Microsoft announces Summer of Arcade lineup, beginning August 7
Microsoft announced this year's Summer of Arcade lineup for the Xbox 360, set to launch in August. Featured Xbox Live Arcade games include Activision's brawler TMNT: Out of the Shadows, an Ubisoft-published remake of Delphine Software's side-scrolling thriller Flashback, 505 Games' character-driven adventure game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and Ska Studios' punk-themed multiplayer beat-'em-up Charlie Murder. Specific release dates have not been announced. The Summer of Arcade campaign will kick off on August 7.
Vampire Smile coming to PC officially from Microsoft and Ska Studios
Ska Studios' XBLA bloodbath The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is coming to PC with help from Microsoft, creator James Silva announced on his dev (and cat) blog. Vampire Smile is currently on PC – but it's via an unofficial crack that made headlines this morning, partially because the hacker labeled his version a "restoration of justice." Silva says he and the other half of Ska Studios, Michelle Juett Silva, approached Microsoft last week about developing an extended, PC version of Vampire Smile, far before the unofficial version was an issue. "Porting Vampire Smile to PC as an enhanced Director's Cut has been something I've been wanting to do since launch (I was calling it Georgelucasing until Michelle made me stop)," James writes. "Nothing's set in stone, but we got the go ahead to make a pre-announcement: We'll be working with Microsoft to bring our stuff to PC." Ska Studios can't officially condone the cracked PC version of Vampire Smile, but James doesn't hold the creator in complete disregard: "I really am honestly flattered that he took the time and effort to reverse engineer Vampire Smile for PC. I heart your enthusiasm, Barabus! (Just stop calling it justice, please!)" And since Ska can't stop making news today, it went all out: Charlie Murder, its next brawler coming to XBLA, is slated for a launch this summer. We think it's a ton of chaotic fun – check out the launch trailer below.
Fan launches unofficial PC port of Vampire Smile, says it's not piracy
Russian developer Barabus really wanted to see Ska Studios' Xbox 360-exclusive game, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, on PC – so Barabus created a cracked version and uploaded it to the web. Barabus didn't contact Ska Studios and didn't think creator James Silva would lose any money from the unofficial PC port. On a game development forum, Barabus cited the following reasons the port was ethical (in English from Google Translate): "The view was expressed that, with respect to the authors is not very nice to publish the game on the PC. I have to argue that the part of the authors are not very nice to publish the game exclusively for the Xbox 360, making it impossible for PC gamers to play in such a great game," Barabus writes. "Piracy – yes, that is bad. On the other hand, we do not steal the game for the Xbox 360, we release it for the PC port. Given that developers ignore the PC platform, about any loss of profit for them is not out of the question. After all, if they wanted to earn money, then the game would be issued on all available platforms. If the game came out on PC officially, then this thread would not exist." Of course many players own both PCs and Xbox 360s, and an unofficial PC port could potentially lure away paying console customers and impact Ska Studios' profits. And Silva expressed interest in creating a PC version of Vampire Smile after finishing his next game, Charlie Murder. Silva responded to Barabus' port to Indie Statik. "I guess you could say my reaction is mixed," Silva said. "I'm flattered that there's this much interest in Vampire Smile on PC. I'm not mad about the crack itself; in fact, I'm actually pretty impressed. But I'm bewildered by the cracker's attempt to justify the morality of it. He assumes a lot about why Vampire Smile's not on PC yet, and he could have cleared up a lot of those assumptions by just emailing me. I get that piracy is a service problem, but that's a consequence, not a justification." Barabus added the following justification in the comments of that post: "The PC version has a lot of limitations. Cooperative gameplay is unavailable, network gameplay is unavailable, achievments is unavailable ... "Original Xbox 360 version for pirates is more attractive. I gave only the opportunity to play for those people who have no Xbox 360. This is not piracy. This is restoration of justice."
Microsoft's message to indies with Xbox One: 'It was sort of weird'
Microsoft's reveal of its next-gen console, the Xbox One, was high on broad entertainment apps such as Skype, interactive programming, media management and Kinect-powered features. Games saw a smaller showing, with two new announcements and a trailer for Call of Duty: Ghosts. Indie games got an even smaller nod – that is, none at all. E3 is right around the corner, with the Microsoft conference on June 10. Maybe that's where all of the Xbox One games are hiding, along with the console's indie plan. We asked a handful of indie developers what Microsoft's presentation today said to them specifically, and what they want to see at E3. Below we have responses from Rami Ismail of Ridiculous Fishing fame, Octodad's Philip Tibitoski, DLC Quest's Ben Kane, Charlie Murder's James Silva, Retro City Rampage's Brian Provinciano and Fez's Phil Fish.
Charlie Murder preview: Anarchy in the XBLA
For the second year in a row, I spent far too much time playing Charlie Murder at PAX East. As part of the Indie Megabooth, Ska Studios' exhibit belonged to a larger group, one of dozens of in-development, independent games, and this year it was directly across from Supergiant's high-profile premiere, Transistor. Still, Charlie Murder stood out. Its gritty punk rock style caught my eye – again – and the co-op, beat-em-up gameplay was so gripping that it almost made me late for a following appointment.Charlie Murder is a punk game from conception to execution, with a soundtrack composed and performed by James and Michelle Silva, the duo of Ska Studios. No, it's not a ska soundtrack.Charlie Murder is a side-scrolling beat-em-up with heavy RPG elements, including character customization, loot and unique ability upgrades. It stars five playable characters, each with disparate strengths and powers, and all of them making up the in-game band Charlie Murder.%Gallery-183786%
Charlie Murder wants you to give punk a chance, download a song
Charlie Murder is gearing up to trash XBLA sometime in the future, and Ska Studios is hard at work beating out all of the bugs in that version. James Silva and Michelle Juett Silva, the Ska Studios dream dishwashing team, are the voices, art, design, programming and music behind Charlie Murder – get a glimpse of their renaissance ways in the above video.Charlie Murder is a four-player, punk-themed, RPG brawler featuring tattoos, magic, dual-nail-gun-wielding, battles of the bands, clothes shopping, friendship and other things you never knew you wanted within one game.To tide us over until Charlie Murder launches, Ska offers us a song from the game's soundtrack, available for download right here. Fictionally, the band is Charlie Murder, but in reality it's the soothing sounds of James and Michelle themselves.
Indie Megabooth devs let anyone ask them anything
At PAX East this weekend, 16 popular indie developers (plus one "bonus" developer) will congregate into a super-giant indie creature in the first-ever Indie Megabooth. Developers include Ska Studios, Strange Loop Games, Retro Affect, Dejobaan Games, Fire Hose Games, DrinkBox Studios, Pocketwatch Games, Carbon Games and the rest -- to get the indie love flowing, the previously mentioned developers are running an "Ask Me Anything" thread on Reddit, right now. So far, we've learned that each developer gets 99 bitches a day and that most of them cried while playing Journey. Andy Schatz of Pocketwatch Games, Eitan Glinert of Fire Hose and Retro Affect's David Carrigg have also offered differing perspectives on the possibility of indie development for the Wii U, or any Nintendo system in general. Said Glinert: "We're not. I don't know any small third party companies that make any serious money there. Nintendo sadly isn't serious about supporting non-Nintendo companies, and so it's not worthwhile for us to spend the time and effort bringing our games to their platform. Sad face." Schatz disagreed with the doomsday sentiment: "Speak for yourself Eitan! I haven't announced platforms for Monaco yet, but WiiU is still a possibility! Nintendo is slow to change (which is weird given the crazy innovation on their software side), but the boulder is finally starting to move wrt their digital sales storefront."Carrigg said Nintendo's eShop is "far behind" the XBLA and PSN competition, but Retro Affect has been talking to Nintendo and would "really like to work with them. I would not be surprised to see a Retro Affect game on a Nintendo platform sometime in the future."James Silva of Ska Studios addressed the lack of deadly dishwasher games on PC, saying he wants to make PC titles, but for now that would be a problematic process. The AMA is ongoing (as of this posting) so head on over and uncover some you-specific bits of information from this mega-group of indies.
Ska Studios' Charlie Murder media blitz, Twisted Pixel buy-out prank
Ska Studios' next title is a gory RPG-dungeon-crawler punk-fest called Charlie Murder, and we have the first trailer available for the pleasure of your eyeballs and earballs above. Charlie Murder has a brand new website that developer Ska Studio promises to update with bios, wallpapers and music in the near future; for now it features a hefty batch of shiny screens.In related Ska news, the studio's April Fools' joke materialized in a post about it being bought out by Twisted Pixel for a jet ski, in order to offset the number of fancy dinners Twisted Pixel ends up buying Ska at PAX.In related related ska news, this.
James Silva ready to make a third Dishwasher game for Microsoft
The Dishwasher creator and Ska Studios head James Silva spoke at GDC last week, and concluded his talk with the slide seen above. Fans want a third Dishwasher game, Microsoft wouldn't mind publishing one, and he wants to do one, said Silva, so why shouldn't there be a trilogy of Dishwasher titles out there? Don't look at us, bud -- you're the game designer. Silva is, of course, currently working on the side-scrolling, punk-flavored beat-em-up Charlie Murder for Xbox Live Indie Games Arcade. After that adventure is all wrapped up, it may be time to wash those dishes yet again.
Zombies, vikings, murder: Ska Studios on WP7 and the future of XBLIG gore
In 2007, James Silva had just graduated college and settled into a 9-5 job. He was resigned to spend the rest of his existence in cubicle complacency, letting his lifelong goal to develop games as a career fade regretfully away. Then his indie title, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, won $10,000 in Microsoft's Dream Build Play competition, and everything changed. He quit his job, lived the life of a starving artist and perfected Dead Samurai until it passed certification from Microsoft. "The work was exhilarating," Silva said in an interview with Joystiq. "I remember that when I got the email saying I'd passed cert, I ran around the apartment screaming." The game sold "well enough," but more importantly, it led him to meet Michelle, his fiancée, who was a tester for Dead Samurai at PAX in 2009. "I've said it before: XBLA literally made all of my dreams come true, right down to meeting the woman of my dreams," Silva said. Since Dead Samurai, Silva has launched six games on XBLA and XBLIG through Ska Studios, including The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1, with one more coming in 2012. His latest endeavor in the fantasy he calls a career is developing titles for Windows Phone -- on Jan. 4 Silva launched Z0MB1ES!!1 (on teh ph0ne) for WP7, a trio of games that includes I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1, a new game mode called Endless Zombies and a shiny new title, Time Viking.
Windows Phone leaks new games, sounds like a personal problem
The Windows Phone is carrying on quietly with its existence, launching update 7.5 and recently letting slip a list of games coming to Xbox Live on Windows Phone, including Age of Zombies, Bullet Asylum, geoDefense Swarm and Tamagotchi. These titles are already available on Android and iOS devices, except for Bullet Asylum, which was announced for Windows Phone, Xbox 360 and PC last last year, and whose trailer you can watch above. In related Windows Phone news, Ska Studios' Z0MB1ES (on teh ph0ne) dropped for version 7.5 yesterday. For $2.99 it includes I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1, the ENDL3SS Z0MB1ES mode and a new title from Ska, Time Viking. Looks like it's time to change your "number of reasons to buy Windows Phone" to three.
'Z0MB1ES!!1 (on teh ph0ne)' for WP7 on January 4
Ska Studios' I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1 has been a dominant force in the dark, lonely lands of the Xbox 360's indie games section. Now its Windows Phone 7 counterpart, Z0MB1ES!!1 (on teh ph0ne), is ready to attack on January 4. The $2.99 Z0MB1ES!!1 (on teh ph0ne) app is a "suite" of twin-stick shooters, which includes I MAED A GAEM W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!1, "spiritual sequel" Time Viking, infinite arcade labyrinth mod Endless Zombies and the ability to put faces from your photo library into the game. Getting the Z0MB1ES!!1 theme song stuck in your head comes at no extra cost.
Come hang out with Joystiq (and play a bunch of great games!) at our E3 2011 reader meetup
We love you, Los Angeles, you know that. Sure, it's been awhile since we last hung out, but we wanna make that up to you. And not just any boring old dinner-and-a-movie kinda thing either, a full blown party! Next Friday, June 10, Joystiq will take over the La Cita bar in downtown LA between 5:30 and 9:00PM PST for a game-filled, giveaway-packed reader meetup. As our staff will be all up in your city for the duration of next week, we took the liberty of renting out a bar for a few hours so you -- our best friends -- could hang out, talk about the week's big news, play a bunch of great games, and take all the game swag that's been piling up in our domiciles. Chris Hecker will be swinging through with SpyParty, as will Andy Schatz with Monaco, to name just a few of the games/game devs at the event. And how about a chance to play Harmonix' next project before anyone else? 'Cause that'll totally be there too. Unfortunately, for our friends under 21, the event space is restricted to those of us with legal access to alcohol. We're really sorry and we still love you! It was, as they say, out of our hands. An extra big thank you to all of our participants! SpyParty, Chris Hecker (@SpyParty) Nidhogg, Mark Essen (@Messhof) Unannounced Project, Ska Studios (@SkaStudios) Monaco, Pocketwatch Games (@MonacoIsMine) Retro City Rampage, Brian Provinciano (@RetroCR) Q.U.B.E., Toxic Games (@qubegame) Unannounced Project, Harmonix (@Harmonix) Still with us? Head past the break for details, and make sure to RSVP on our Facebook event page so we know how many of you to expect!
The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile review: Fangs a lot
It's a bloodbath, all right. The young girl swings and stabs, ripping her blade through flesh, metal and bone, eviscerating foe after foe until the room is covered in a thick, rich coat of red. Your eye can barely track her movements as she flits from corner to corner, vanishing in a puff of crimson smoke only to reappear, strike, and then vanish again. Her enemies give fruitless pursuit, haplessly swinging and shooting, their blades and bullets finding only air. Soldiers, cyborgs, nefarious government agents, zombie marines; she liquifies them all. A last, lonely ninja hobbles towards her, his katana waving impotently. She lets out a roar and leaps on him, rending his flesh with her bare hands. She collapses, bathed in their blood, and the nightmares wash over her again. %Gallery-117545%
