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Occasionally, XBLA Fans likes to take a backseat and allow members of the development community to speak openly and directly to our readers. After all, you came here to read about games, and who better to talk about them than the professionals who create them? With that in mind, please enjoy the following article written by Enigma Software CEO Daniel Parente.

In our first Alien Spidy post, we showed how we took the initial concept for our protagonist, Spidy, and made him into the lovable character he is today –- despite being a spider!

In today’s post, we want to do something similar. We’re introducing the remaining cast of characters featured in the game and how we came up with consistent visuals to keep the art direction and, of course, Spidy himself in line with our vision.

Let’s start with the Ladybug, which has its own unique charm.

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The pesky mythological creatures filled the sky, regularly swooping down to wreak havoc on the undead rock band engaged in a fracas with other, less well-intentioned zombies below. Our group of zombie rockers had been punching, grabbing and throwing its way through the streets towards a cemetery for maybe 15 or 20 minutes at this point, with seemingly everyone but the screaming living trying their darnedest to send us back to hell for good. There was enough chaos being caused by the slow, lumbering zombie baddies and occasional “accidental” punching of each other that the airborne aggressors were being largely left to their own devices.

But there is only so much pushing that a bulky undead drummer is willing to take before he grabs an agitator by her throat and repeatedly smashes her face into the ground. It had fallen to me to make the skies a little friendlier, so that’s what exactly what I did at PAX Prime while playing Ska Studios’ Charlie Murder. Another scream escaped from her throat as she bit the dust, and that was that. However, the magical flying creature impeding our progress had friends. Well, two can play at that game. The other members of the group had continued on their merry little way pummeling the crap out of the enemy zombies, causing various pickups to drop, including guns.

A few pulls of the trigger later and the XBLA Fans crew had achieved complete air superiority. The screams of a unicorn ringing through the headset were music to my ears. On-screen, the tormentors actually took the form of witches on broomsticks, but they were voiced by the studio’s very own one-horn. Ska Studios Art Unicorn Michelle Juett-Silva smiled proudly when explaining that she and her husband, Lead Dishwasher James Silva, had performed nearly all of the voice-over work for their game.

Another stretch of the demo showed off the unicorn’s pipes even more. A quick cut-scene showed some NPCs attempting to escape from the zombies with their lives intact by navigating through the clearly haunted cemetery. They ran right smack into a ghostly little ghost that bore a striking resemblance to the girl from The Ring. (Silva would later admit that they are indeed his homage to Japanese horror films.) The girls can’t attack, but operate more as environmental hazards moving in fixed patterns. Coming into contact with them elicited one of Juett-Silva’s recorded screeches and meant death for the player.

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Undead Labs loves guns. You can tell from their recent blog post that released a list of every gun usable in their upcoming State of Decay. After all, this can’t be a genuine zombie apocalypse survival simulation if you can’t even pack your favorite heat! Counting up the list of the available rifles, assault rifles, pistols, SMGs and shotguns, their current list totals at 87 guns ready to go with the genuine promise of more to come. See a gun missing that you must have at the end of the world? You could try tweeting to @undeadlabs…

Still no word on a release date yet, but keep coming back to XBLA Fans for details on that front as they emerge! In the meantime, you should check out our massive preview if you haven’t already.

Check the full story for the complete list of guns.

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Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise was developed by Behaviour Interactive and published by 505 Games. It was released on October 10, 2012 for 1200 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Naughty Bear was originally released as a retail game back in 2010. The game was heavily criticized by most, so we were more than surprised to see a sequel in the works and a downloadable one to boot. However it would be unfair to judge Panic in Paradise based on it’s predecessor so let’s wipe the slate clean and start with an open mind.

The premise for Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise is that all the teddy bears went on a holiday to Paradise Island but didn’t invite Naughty Bear. Probably because he’s naughty and also a psychotic murderer. It seems like a reasonable decision to us but Naughty Bear is not a happy chappy. He decides to follow the party bus to the island anyway creating a hit-list of bears to punish along the way. Gameplay revolves around being tasked with the “punishment” of a particular bear and players can choose which bear to kill next from a menu screen, though some of the bears are not unlocked until you “defluff” a certain number of bears beforehand. The assassination then takes place in one of the various maps within the game and once you’re in you are free to play out the level as you please, leaving at any time to bank your score.

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The following article was written by Andreas Hackel, art director at Candygun.

Today we at Candygun Games would like to present the process of creating weapons in our upcoming game, Dollar Dash. We have been pouring in countless hours as we finish development, so it has been a thrilling experience tinkering with the in-game weapons to pave way for a competitive, yet entertaining for all ages, multiplayer game.

Creating fun weapons

 

Weapon system in Dollar Dash

Dollar Dash offers a wide range of fun weapons to slow down opponents and steal their money. There are three different categories of weapons and there is a slot for one each per category. Permitting only one action weapon per category has players weighing their options on what is most useful in each scenario – should they use the long-range snowball in effort to free up a slot for the medium range boxing glove, or should they hold onto the snowball to attack from afar? Choices are tough, but the competitive factor always looms. This may be a bit different to what many are used to from other games, but we found out that this system is the most fun for a fast-paced arcade game.

The three different categories have their advantages in combat and defense:

Offensive weapons can be fired or thrown at an opponent in front of the player. Some of them are short-ranged while others encompass the entire level. Most offensive weapons have multiple charges, so testing the effects of each is essential to for the best strategy.

Defensive Weapons can be dropped to the floor to attack opponents in pursuit. Most of them are traps that trigger when someone runs across them. Defensive weapons are superb when playing Save the Safe mode – players can be on the run from the opposition and lie down oil slicks to have players slide off the level or a portable to have opponents falling to their doom.

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All things considered, Mark of the Ninja was a pretty great stealth action game. It was chock-full of inventive, fun (if occasionally repetitive) …
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TopWare Interactive and developer Chasing Carrots have announced a new top-down racing game, Pressure. In the same vein as Micro Machines, TNT Racers, and many others, Pressure seeks to create a unique identity by setting the racing in a steampunk world. An evil guy has taken all the water and so you get in your go-kart and . . . you know what? Let’s just post the official synopsis.

The hero awakes to find the usually cool waters lake where he takes his morning bath completely dry and filled with cruel machines. The sinister Earl has drained the lake to be the site of his new Wellness Spa Temple. Thwarting his sinister plans and returning the valuable water to the citizens of the world is the main objective of the game… as well as destroying his countless, caltrop-laying minions.

No release date or pricing information was released, but we’re guessing it will set gamers back around 800 MSP given the game’s current competition. Short videos showcasing a few of the game’s action sequences, characters and vehicles can be found after the break.

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Cherry Pop Games’ Pool Nation was supposed to hit digital shelves last Wednesday, but due to unknown reasons it missed the initial release window. But the developer recently confirmed via Twitter that players can chalk up for their first shot on October 31, just two weeks from today. It will release for 800 MSP and features two player on-and-offline gameplay. Xbox.com hints that it may have downloadable content as well, but we haven’t heard anything of that sort. The listing also boasts that the game features “photo-realistic graphics” and “real-world physics.” We can’t speak for the physics, but we’re sold on the visuals. Hit the jump for more screenshots.

Source: @CherryPopGames via Joystiq

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This week sees two XBLA releases. Firstly Zombie Driver HD is released for 800 MSP, a game which sees players driving over hordes of zombies in a top-down world. …
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Microsoft has started gradually deploying its fall 2012 Xbox 360 dashboard update, according to Major Nelson. In order to “ensure a stable release,” the update will be doled out in waves, with 3 million Xbox 360 owners getting in on the first wave of updates. “Additional users” will receive the update at some point during the next couple of weeks. It isn’t completely clear at this point whether or not the interesting choice of words by the Xbox Live director of programming means all users will get the update within two weeks. He did, however, request that those who don’t get in on the update right away remain calm and “just keep checking back in.”

In any case, 360 owners can expect a multitude of new features and some tweaks to existing dashboard elements. Following is the full list of changes straight from Major Nelson’s blog:

• Refreshed Xbox 360 Dashboard. We’ve updated the UI with a few things, including an updated layout with more tiles, a combined TV & Movies channel and, in the US, a Sports destination.
• Internet Explorer for Xbox. With Internet Explorer on Xbox, you can easily find and view internet content on the biggest screen in the house, including HTML5 videos.
• Recommendations and Ratings. Recommendations will allow you to discover new favorites, generated based on a number of variables including the content you previously viewed, what your friends are consuming and what is most relevant and popular with our Xbox community. You can now rate content yourself and also see Rotten Tomatoes ratings.
• Pinning. Pinning lets you personalize the dashboard by saving your favorite movies, TV shows, games, music, videos and websites right to the home screen. It’s as easy as opening an app or a favorite movie and clicking “pin.”
• Xbox Video. Formerly called Zune Video Marketplace, Xbox Video offers hundreds of thousands of TV shows and movies for buying or renting in instant HD streaming.
  Recent. Previously called Quick Play, the Recent view gives you a list of movies, games, apps or other types of content that you most recently accessed on the console.
• Enhanced Search. The last Xbox LIVE update brought Bing voice search to Xbox so you could use voice to search for movies, TV shows, actors, directors and artists. This year we added genre search to the list, so now you can search for action, comedy, romance, drama or sci-fi. Bing voice search now includes results for video across the Web, including YouTube.
• International Expansion of Voice Search. We’ve expanded our Kinect voice search capabilities to 9 new countries – Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Ireland.

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