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Xbox Wire recently posted an interview with Jason “6995” DeGroot, composer for Capybara Games’ highly anticipated downloadable title Super Time Force. DeGroot describes the soundtrack as based “around NES …
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Recently announced ID@Xbox brawler Wulverblade released its first trailer – a look at the premise behind the game’s story and some examples of the main character’s moves. The game …
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The crawlers keep crawling, and the drip keeps dripping in Defense Grid 2.

Hidden Path Entertainment’s sequel to its 2008 tower defense game features a new resource and score system known as “the drip,” and it works exactly as planned: it makes games winnable for greenhorns while keeping aces chasing after higher scores that are achieved by killing crawling aliens with all manner of haste.

Never having played Defense Grid: The Awakening, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect out of its follow-up when I picked up the controller at PAX East. From the outset, the player is confronted with a multitude of options for defending the base from unwanted pests and a cluster of information tracking your progress in this endeavor. The amount of data and options on the screen paired with the constant march of baddies out of their gate, towards my tower and back again with poached cores in tow could have been overwhelming. It could have been, but it wasn’t. Hidden Path Entertainment saw to that with its streamlined presentation of data, tower building options and drip-drop of resources. Everything was pleasantly intuitive and easily manageable.

Sometimes, divorce is the answer

Being intuitive for beginners while remaining fun and challenging for experts is exactly what Hidden Path was aiming for with its sequel. Though it’s impossible to report on the latter, I can tell you that the studio pulled off the former with aplomb. The drip, which Polygon first reported on here, allows for resources to constantly accumulate as a line graph tracks your score in the upper right corner of the screen. Regardless of what your score is, your resource distribution rate remains the same. The rate of the drip in the PAX build allowed me to erect large quantities of a mixture of the six tower types present (cannon, missile, laser, gun, inferno and tesla) and upgrade many of them to carry more firepower.

Executive Producer Jeff Pobst explains that his team separated score from resource distribution in Defense Grid 2 in order to avoid the “negative feedback loop” that many players got stuck in due to poor decision making in the first game. As Pobst describes it, novices would waste too many of their resources early on building the wrong types of towers or placing towers in poor positions. This would leave them unable to repel enemies and unable to gather enough resources to compensate for their mistakes. Meanwhile, top players would dominate early on and find themselves with an embarrassment of riches, making victory too easily achieved.

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Craving something sweet? Look no further than the new Minecraft texture pack! The Candy Texture Pack turns every block in the world into an edible treat. Forests are filled with ice cream trees, the ocean overflows with soda, and sheep grow thick coats of cotton candy. There’s just so much to see – check out all the delicious screenshots after the jump. You can pick up the texture pack here for $1, and as always you can check out the free trial before you buy.

Source: PlayXBLA

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Happy Wars developer Toylogic Inc. has announced that a Castle Crashers event is happening from now until April 23rd. Simply by playing the Bounty Hunters mode, you’ll be able …
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tinyBuild, the developer of No Time to Explain, announced that during PAX East a deal was made with Microsoft to bring a remake of the game to Xbox One. The …
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External storage for the Xbox One is still on its way, confirmed Xbox’s Director of Programming, Larry Hyrb, who is commonly known by his moniker, Major Nelson. This …
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At PAX East last weekend, Zoë Mode revealed the upcoming free DLC course for Powerstar Golf, Coyote Canyon. Pixxel of Ubisoft’s FragDolls hosts a video preview alongside Design Director Craig Leigh and Community Manager Rukari Austin courtesy of The Next Level.

Leigh reveals that the course is based off of a real-life national park that was converted to be a golf course. The rocky environment looks fantastic, and the green grass really pops against the earthy background. Free content-rich updates to games are always welcome — hopefully it plays as well as it looks. There’s no specific release date, but it is very likely that this will be released in the near future.

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While at PAX East last weekend XBLA Fans stopped by developer NinjaBee’s studio to take a look at Nutjitsu, which the studio told us entered Microsoft certification and should be releasing shortly. After our play session, the studio’s PR & Marketing Specialist Michael Purser had something else for us — a manila envelope full of photos he described as “recently declassified.”

Purser offered no further details in person and hasn’t responded to our email query asking what exactly we’re looking at in these photos. It’s likely that they are concept art from NinjaBee’s next game, especially considering that Nutjitsu for Xbox One is now content complete. The four photos, which you can view by clicking inside, contain imagery of what appear to be “top secret” plans for a mech; a scientist posing next to a giant fang in an airplane hangar; a Loch Ness Monster-type creature; and a World War II soldier aiming an artillery canon at a giant one-eyed beast.

We don’t know for certain what these Pacific Rim-esque pictures mean, but it’s possible NinjaBee is attempting to use the media to help it start a viral marketing campaign leading to the announcement of its next project.

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Eighteen-year-old Twitch user YamaYamaDingDong has become the new record-holder for Spelunky, beating the previous high score by $4,000 with an impressive $3,109,850.

The previous world record of $3,105,850 was held …
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