Posted by Al
Fri, 2nd Jul 2010
Hello all! Another Friday is upon us, so here’s some more news on our forthcoming PSP/PS3 Minis title, Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags!
This week’s update is focusing on the game’s first 3 bosses:
Level 1 – Earth – Boss: Mother Ship
The Mother Ship leads the first Scumbag invasion party to Earth, and is very protective of her brood. Unfortunately for Ace, he’s in her way. Between firing gloop-covered newborn Scumbags from her nether regions, the Mother Ship is usually found aggressively protecting her babies with her mouth cannon, giant rolling pin, and fearsome chest laser. Where, oh where is her weak point? Maybe if Ace looks for something red?
Level 2 – Asteroid Field – Boss: Asteroid Eater
Once Ace clears Earth’s orbit he’s forced to navigate through a dense asteroid field – unfortunately it’s teeming with Alien Scumbags! To pave the way for their invasion, the Scumbags have an Asteroid Eater clearing a path for their huge Factory Ship. The Asteroid Eater is too tough to take down, even for Ace, but maybe he could make it bite off more than it can chew? He’d better watch out for all those asteroids too!
Level 3 – Factory Ship – Boss: Scum Bot
Once inside the Factory Ship, Ace discovers it’s busy manufacturing its latest super-weapon to unleash on Earth’s innocent citizens, the mighty Scum Bot! Once assembled, this mighty metal monstrosity attacks with laser fire, rocket boosters, mines, an arm-mounted wave beam and a formidable chest-mounted super-laser. What will happen once the laser works up enough charge to fire? I wouldn’t want to be around to find out!
There are still two other fearsome bosses to reveal - more on them in the coming weeks. Overall, we’ve still got lots to do to finish the game but I think we’re now ‘over the hump’, and things are shaping up really nicely. We can’t wait for the game to be up on the PSN Store for you to try!
Ace Armstrong should be ready to take on those Alien Scumbags around late August this year. We’ll get a firm date up on the blog as soon as we can: once we know, you’ll know.
That’s it for now; more news next week. :-)
Al - Senior Producer
P.S. Here's an exclusive look at another piece of Ace artwork - Ace Armstrong immortalised in his very own comic book cover!
Posted by Al
Fri, 25th Jun 2010
Hi everyone! As it’s Friday, here’s another update on all things Laughing Jackal.
First up, Vibes has begun to do the rounds on the various gaming websites, with some excellent reviews. pspminis.com gave us a very respectable 8.5, while pushsquare.com also gave us 3-out-of-four squares. Elsewhere the mighty Eurogamer were similarly impressed and awarded Vibes 8/10. Thanks to everyone at the sites above for taking the time to look at the game, and for all your positive feedback. We’re still being approached by lots of other sites, so more news on those ratings as they come in!
On the subject of Vibes, some players were experiencing issues with the game last week that have now been fixed. We are now in the process of getting the game back through SCEA and SCEE’s QA submission queue, which should hopefully be sorted by this time next week/early the week after. Once that’s done people will be able to re-download the game free of charge! Thanks again for your patience on this if you’ve experienced these issues. :-)
What else is happening? Well, Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags is continuing apace and we’re finalising the various enemy waves in the missions using a natty editor we hope to take forward into other shooters or other scrolling games - I’d personally like to do something along the lines of Contra, but we’ll see. I have a feeling we’ll be going a little more ‘old skool’ for our next Mini! ;-)
Ace should be ready to take on the Alien Scumbags around August this year. More concrete news on a launch window as and when we get it.
See below for some new Ace Armstrong related imagery while you wait for the release:
Our 'ace' new logo
An angry 'scumbag' - help!
Ace blasts off!
That’s all for now. See you again next week!
Al - Senior Producer
Posted by Al
Fri, 18th Jun 2010
Hi everyone,
Just a quick update on our two most recent Minis titles, Stellar Attack and Vibes:
Stellar Attack is now 100% confirmed for release on SCEA’s PSN Store on June 29th 2010 at $4.49, after a last-minute hiccup was discovered on the day it was supposed to be released. This is a slippage from the anticipated date of June 22nd but we’ve had the new date rubber-stamped by SCEA, so US gamers waiting for their fix of turret-related violence can finally get involved.
Apologies once again for this problem.
Right, on to Vibes, which has already been released and can be purchased now for $5.49 on the SCEA store and £3.99 on the SCEE Store.
We’ve had feedback from a couple of users relating to a rather obscure issue in the ‘song select’ menu. This has been fixed and the game will be going back into submission today (both EU/US versions). Once we’ve got approval version 2 will be available to download from the PSN Store free of charge. If you are one of the few who have encountered problems and had their save corrupted, we apologise.
The only way to counter this is to delete your save data and just be very careful in the song select menu until the new build is available.
More news coming up next week regarding Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags, our forthcoming shoot-em-up for Minis. Thanks to everyone for their patience regarding both Vibes and Stellar Attack. We’ll do our very best to make sure these kinds of issues don’t happen again! :-) Sorry guys!
