Kalypso

Here we are once again at the start of what’s sure to be another fantastic year of XBLA releases. Each day this week XBLAFans will be rolling out a list of eight of our most anticipated Xbox Live Arcade releases of 2013. While we can’t possibly cover every single XBLA game planned for this year, we’ll be giving you a varied list of 40 of the most promising titles we expect to release on XBLA in 2013. Once it’s all done, be sure to check back in next Monday when each staff member makes his/her picks for the game he/she is most looking forward to.

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The Cave

Developer: Double Fine

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An upcoming platform-adventure game, The Cave is the brainchild of Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert. Channeling Gilbert’s earlier work, The Cave employs classic adventure-style gameplay within an action-platform framework. While we expect The Cave to release this month, an official release date has not yet been announced.

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Alien Spidy is hard. I watched helplessly during PAX East as the game’s public relations representative repeatedly subjected himself to the rigors of a particularly nasty stretch of platforming in a cave level. He died. A lot. The level required the game’s space spider protagonist to fire off strands of webbing, which he can swing from to progress through the game world, at a series of stalactites with pinpoint accuracy. Missing the dripstones meant his webbing would uselessly hit a section of the cave ceiling that it wouldn’t stick to, sending the spider to his doom. Certainly this could be overcome by the simple act of slowing down and carefully lining up shots, no? No. The stalagmites begin to crumble and fall under the strain of Spidy’s weight.

It didn’t get any easier from there. Another portion of the same level required a deft hand to guide Spidy carefully through a narrow space flanked by rows of pink crystals that were as sharp as they were shiny. More dying ensued. There is no life bar in Alien Spidy; one careless brush with an environmental hazard or enemy results in death. The development team at Enigma Software have offset the high degree of difficulty by liberally sprinkling checkpoints throughout the game’s stages. As a result, death is less likely to inspire a controller throw than it is another go…and another one, and another one, and so on and so forth.

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Developer Kalypso Media announced today that Boulder Dash XL has just released on Xbox Live Arcade at 800 MSP, coming with refreshed 3D HD look, new game modes, leaderboards, and a set of newly produced caves. Furthremore, Kalypso revealed one of the game modes called “Retro” with several original features, in ode to all the classic gamers.

‘Retro’ mode features:

• 25 Caves, following the design guidelines of the original game
• Caves created solely using the game elements featured in the classic
• All the classic enemies are there, behaving exactly how they did in 1984
• Glorious 8bit-Soundtrack
• Original graphics and characters rendered in real-time 3D

You can check out all the new screenshots and the full press release after the break.
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Fans of the original PC hit Boulder Dash can celebrate because developer Kalypso is creating an all new entry of the series for XBLA and PC entitled Boulder Dash …
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