PlayReplay » Game announcements

THE BEAGLE HAS LANDED!

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:35:59 +0000

One small bounce for cute little animal, one giant leap for British games development. Space Ark is here! Our friends over at Strawdog studios are very happy to announce that their insanely bouncy, colouful and ridiculously addictive arcade title, Space Ark, is now out on Xbox Live Arcade for only 800 Microsoft Points.

To celebrate this we thought we’d bring you a little news from the Space Ark Universe:

FRUIT FRENZY

“SANA (Space Ark National Administration) scientists today discovered “DNA crystals” which can create fruit and fuel for terraforming remote, barren planets. They have so far been unable to confirm rumours that Melons are the very best fruit”

ARKONAUT DECORATED FOR HERIOSM

” In an amazing show of skill, Top Gun Space Ark Commander Turtle successfully negotiated the newly discovered jungle planet flawlessly without missing a single piece of fruit and levelled up an amazing 72 times! His mission score was the highest ever achieved – an amazing 106,0232,665 and a full perfect rating.”

“He has been awarded a fully decorated gold medal, and promoted to the ultimate rank of Space Arkonaut”

RABBIT QUESTIONED

“Recent technical problems in the Farm Regiment’s Space ark mission have been officially classified as sabotage. Officials have been interviewing Space Pilot Rabbit in connection with recent reports of fruit being systematically replaced by radishes and lettuce…”

Read a review from our good friends at Xbox Live Addicts here

Plain Sight is here

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:18:17 +0000

Ever fans of our homegrown UK development talent, we are pleased to see Beatnik Games fantastic Plain Sight now available on Steam and other digital download platforms.

A unique, addictive and utterly beautiful game, Plain Sight has been in the works for a while and we have been fanatically following the games development since the very first concept art saw the light of day.

What more could you want from a game? As a suicidal ninja robot, you fly through space across 14 multiplayer maps, battling up to 20 players as you look to destroy as many opponents as you possibly can with your trusty katana. With their deaths comes tasty, tasty energy. As you get more energy you change colour and get bigger, stronger and brighter. To convert your hard earned energy into game-winning points it is just a matter of blowing yourself up. Simple! The more opponents you take out in the explosion, the higher the multiplier, the higher the score! Upgrade your ninja robot, respawn and get stuck in again!

For more on Plain Sight please visit the official website at www.plainsightgame.com and the official Steam Store page at http://store.steampowered.com/app/49900/

PC download market and a shameless plug.

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:59:36 +0000

Firstly I should embarrassingly admit that this is the first PlayReplay blog entry of 2010 (what happened to January?). It does defeat the object of having a blog if you don’t regularly update it and this something we advise our clients whenever possible. However, our excuse is genuine – its our client’s projects that have taken up all our time!

More on that in a later entry when we make some exciting announcements about the new clients & games we have started working with in 2010. Watch this space.

Before we start the blog entry on PC game downloads, I want to squeeze in a shameless plug for www.OneBigGame.org who releases www.chimegame.com on XBLA this week for a jaw dropping 400 MS points. We hope you like the website, which is full of interesting content provided by the studio?

Check out the tutorial video here

The game has been created by www.ZoeMode.com and is the first music game on XBLA. It features music tracks from artists such as Moby, Phillip Glass, Paul Hartnoll from Orbital and others, but importantly, 60 percent of the purchase price of Chime will be donated to Save the Children and the Starlight Children’s Foundation, so go and BUY IT NOW!!

Anyway, normal service is now resumed….

The buzz word “download” of 2009, in the games industry at least, has only be been mirrored by words such as “Social Networking”, “Motion Control” and more recently “3D”. Do we stand at the edge of a revolutionary change in interactive entertainment and software development; well we seem to be poised for a dramatic change in the distribution models that have shaped the industry as a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment arena.

Even Sir Clive’s mail order home computers don’t seem that far away when looking at the relationship between customers, computers and gaming, although 30+ years of inevitable technological advancement has now began its new phase of innovation.

Although a grandchild of the Spectrum legacy, the PC is still one of the elders of gaming and has found extra gears with online connectivity, benefiting and growing handsomely alongside the internet’s popularity.

Now it seems that PC download is the hot topic of digital distribution and with a focus on discovering new opportunities via PC gaming business models, there are decent number of developers using the platform in hope of a commercial payoff as a part of their business objectives.

A number of PC digital distribution service providers are presented to any budding programmer or team of seasoned professionals. Here are few of the alternatives to Steam and Direct2Drive to get your teeth stuck into:

www.blitz1up.com/
www.greenmangaming.com
www.digitalriver.com
www.gamersgate.com
www.gamesload.co.uk
www.gamestreamer.com
www.impulsedriven.com
www.metaboli.co.uk
www.gog.com

No commentary on PC download can be without mention of Valve’s popular digital distribution network Steam. As reported by MCV recently:

“Steam now has over 25m members and Member numbers surged 25 per cent in 2009. The peak number of concurrent users hit 2.5m during December, taking Steam’s average monthly player minutes to over 13bn in the process.”

Although still known as a colossus in the market, Steam is not yet the Apple of PC downloads. From a marketing perspective it is challenging to achieve a sustained visible presence on Steam, as the marketplace inevitably becomes more crowded. Other PC download services can provide a gaming company with alternative, unique and niche offering that can penetrate wider and possibly deeper into online gaming communities.

This year, 2010, and all that it promises in a rich vision of the information world, is set to be most exciting in the land of PC gaming, and we welcome that. We believe the inclusion of digital sales to GfK ChartTrack PC games sales reports in the UK will reveal a slowdown in the PC gaming market more recent demise. This transparency can only be a good thing for games producers and the PC gaming market as a whole. Mice at the ready…

OneBigGame launches game industry charity initiative.

admin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:18:24 +0000

The games industry takes its fair share of criticism, especially when compared to other entertainment media. The likes of sensationalist newspapers or floundering politicians will attack the games we love in return for improved ratings or circulation figures.

As an industry we are sometimes untied and dragged out on a piece of old rope and presented as a scapegoat for all manner of reasons – this is something we have to accept.

Today is not that day. OneBigGame shows the world why we, as an industry, have feelings too.

OneBigGame is a games industry charity initiative supporting Save The children and The Starlight Children Foundation by the release and sales of some rather compelling games.

The first game in the series is “Chime“, soon to be available on Xbox LIVE Arcade and created by Zoe Mode. PlayReplay is proud to have been involved, alongside a number of other contributing companies.

I have added the announcement press release below, detailing Chime the game and OneBigGame’s involvment. For more information visit www.chimegame.com or www.OneBigGame.org Play, so others can.

ONEBIGGAME LAUNCHES FIRST NOT-FOR-PROFIT GAME CHIME,
A BEAUTIFUL PUZZLE MUSIC GAME, CREATED BY ZOË MODE

OneBigGame’s First Title Will be Available This Winter on XBOX LIVE ARCADE FOR XBOX 360

SAN FRANCISCO – November 2nd 2009 – OneBigGame, the non-profit publisher of videogames formed in 2007, is proud to introduce the first game to be published under its label.

Chime, created pro bono by music game specialists Zoë Mode, is a unique block puzzle game fused with music creation elements and contributions from a number of famous musicians. Chime will be released this winter on Xbox LIVE® Arcade.

Chime introduces a creative twist on both music and block puzzle games. The game will task players with covering a number of different grids with irregular shapes, each connected to a sound effect from the different music tracks, to form rectangular blocks, called quads. As gamers slowly cover the grid, they will be building up the song playing in the background in a unique way. Working their way to 100 percent coverage, players will unlock the song in full. Easy to get into but hard to master, Chime will hook fans with its addictive game mechanics and cool music tracks by Moby and Paul Hartnoll (Orbital), among other yet unannounced artists.

Zoë Mode is the first in a series of developers and designers who have been working on games for the charity publisher. OneBigGame has more than 15 games currently in development from various established developers to raise funds for its children’s charities.

Notable other developers include Shiny founder David Perry who will remake one of his favorite ZX Spectrum games, adventure games guru Charles Cecil who is creating an adventure version of one of the most played casual games in the world and the father of music rhythm action games Masaya Matsuura, working on a reinvention of the genre for the iPhone, WINtA. All these games will be released in the course of 2010, following the launch of Chime this winter.

All participating non-profit games will be published and distributed by OneBigGame both through its own dedicated games portal and a number of digital download platforms on both console and PC. Games will be available for a limited exclusivity period, ranging from 4-12 months, during which all net proceeds will be going to charity.

About OneBigGame

OneBigGame aims to raise funds to help solve problems afflicting children around the world. The nature of these problems can be diverse, but the kind of projects OBG supports will always revolve around a structural improvement in children’s lives, expanding their opportunities in life.

OneBigGame raises funds by publishing games kindly donated pro bono by established names in game development in conjunction with support from the development community as a whole. The games will be published amongst others on its dedicated games portal onebiggame.org (to go live later this year) as well as through a variety of pc and console download channels.

OneBigGame always aims to donate a minimum of 80% of all donations to its charity partners Save the Children and Starlight Children’s foundation.

About Zoë Mode

Zoë Mode makes games that are accessible; simple, social, games that are effortlessly fun but don’t take themselves too seriously. Based in Brighton, London and San Francisco, its diverse work force is unified by its attitude to gaming. Zoë Mode believes that games are powerful ways of bringing people together and having fun and that there’s more to life than gaming, but that gaming can make life better; and strongly believes that there is a game for everyone. Zoë Mode is part of Kuju Entertainment Limited.

All of Zoë Mode’s services are provided at no cost to OneBigGame and all Zoë Mode’s royalties (in the case of the Xbox Live Arcade version a minimum of 60% of the purchase price) are donated to OneBigGame.

About charity partner Save the Children

Save the Children is the world’s independent charity. We’re outraged that millions of children are still denied proper healthcare, food, education and protection. We’re working flat out to get every child their rights and we’re determined to make further, faster changes. How many? How fast? It’s up to you.

www.savethechildren.org.uk

About charity partner Starlight Children’s Foundation

When a child or teenager has a serious medical condition, everyone in the family is affected. For 25 years, Starlight Children’s Foundation has been dedicated to helping seriously ill children and their families cope with their pain, fear and isolation through entertainment, education and family activities. Starlight’s programs have been proven to distract children from their pain, help them better understand and manage their illnesses, and connect families facing similar challenges so that no one feels alone. Through a network of chapters and offices, Starlight provides ongoing support to children, parents and siblings in all U.S. states and Canadian provinces with an array of outpatient, hospital-based and Web offerings. Programs are also delivered internationally through affiliates in Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom. To learn more visit www.starlight.org

OneBigGame – “Play, so others can’’