Draglade fighting game announced for Nintendo DS

505 Games today announced the release of Draglade, a new fighting game where players use an innovative mix of rhythm and combat to create devastating combos and attacks. Draglade will be launching exclusively on Nintendo DS in March 2008.

In the world of Draglade scientists have discovered that by releasing the energy from atmospheric matter, one can create a powerful audible weapon they call a ‘Glade’. However, the music generated by Glades clashing in combat generates an unmatchable sporting experience; this violent, symphonic ‘Grapping’ quickly becomes Draglade’s premier spectator sport, gripping the world’s population.

Draglade follows in the footsteps of four young Grappers - Hibito, Guy, Kyle, and Daichi - and their quest to reach the ranks of the Major Grappers. The game features intuitive rhythm combat controls, a vast amount of customisable fighting techniques and devastating attack combinations that allow for advanced fighting tactics.

Draglade makes full use of the Nintendo DS dual screen. The top screen shows the battle arena where as the touch screen allows you to mix and match moves to unleash devastating special attacks called ‘bullets’ to defeat your foes! Bullets are used to unlock new special moves or abilities and can even be traded with other players using the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. By utilising the L shoulder button, players can also create their own awesome attacks called Beat Combos, inflicting huge damage based on a special rhythm. Gamers can customise these Beat Combos throughout the game to create their own deadly individual fighting style.

Features

• A unique beat ‘em up game using a stylish mix of fighting and rhythm
• Pick up and play fighting combat with intuitive controls
• Each character can be customised, with their own unique weapons and attributes
• Expand your arsenal of abilities by trading skills with other players
• Collect and unlock ‘bullets’ throughout the game to unleash awesome special attacks on your opponent
• Unlock new characters and special fighting techniques and mix moves to beat your foes
• Use Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to play against other players in a one-on-one test of skill or connect locally with a friend and take on cooperative quests

Draglade will be available exclusively on Nintendo DS in March 2008.

Microsoft Announces First Ever Xbox LIVE Arcade Awards Plus Limited Time Free Download of "Undertow"

As a way to recognise the teams of talented developers who have together created over 112 games for Xbox LIVE Arcade for Xbox 360, Microsoft will announce awards for the top XBLA games of 2007 later this year, with several categories decided by the community. Fans of Xbox LIVE Arcade are invited to cast their votes for the first ever Xbox LIVE Arcade Awards by voting at http://www.xbox.com/xblaawards. Voting begins Tuesday, 22nd January at 10:00 a.m. and runs until Wednesday, 30th January at 07:59 a.m.

The finalists in each category were selected by a panel of consumer and video game industry journalists and the winners will be determined by popular vote. Microsoft will announce the winners at the Game Developer Conference in February.

Below is the list of award categories that will be open for public voting:

· Best Overall Arcade Game
· Best Classic Game
· Best Original Game
· Best Family Friendly Game
· Best Competitive Multiplayer Game
· Best Cooperative Multiplayer Game

Other award categories include the following:

· Best selling game
· Most played game
· Highest rated game
· Staff choice

“Undertow” Free of Charge Download on XBLA this Week

This Xbox LIVE Arcade Wednesday, Xbox LIVE members around the world will be able to download the award-winning “Undertow” free of charge for a limited time. Beginning at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, 23rd January and continuing until 07:59 a.m. on Monday, 28th January, “Undertow” will be available free of charge on Xbox LIVE Arcade.

Developed by Chair Entertainment Group, Undertow redefines aquatic based shooters through a mix of high-definition graphics, intuitive controls and multiple modes of game play action. The game features a full story driven-single player campaign, on and offline co-op, and multiplayer for 2-16 players over Xbox LIVE for Gold subscribers. Players battle for control of the oceans as one of three selectable races, each with four unique, upgradeable units.

In support of the giveaway, Chair Entertainment Group is offering gamers the opportunity to play alongside the Undertow development team on Friday, 25th January at 03:00 a.m. The team will host player matches, provide game play tips and the opportunity for gamers to pick-up Undertow achievements.

Where can I get “Undertow” from?

Undertow: available for free from 10:00 a.m., Wednesday 23rd January 2008 until 07:59 a.m. on Monday, 28th January

It is rated 12+

Finally, don’t forget to check out this week’s new downloadable content for “Mutant Storm Empire.” For more details, please visit www.xbox.com/livearcade.

cdv USA and Fireglow Games Bring New RTS/RPG - "Stranger" – to North America

cdv Software Entertainment USA today announced they have entered into an agreement to promote and distribute developer and publisher Fireglow Games’ upcoming PC-based fantasy title – Stranger.

Stranger, set to begin shipping to North American retail stores on March 3, is a blend of traditional real-time strategy and role-playing elements, set in a rich fantasy world populated by more than a hundred unique monster types. Players will take control of one of three available heroes, enjoying a single-player campaign lasting more than 30 hours, while also being able to take their game online in eight-person Internet multiplayer matches.

"We're very pleased to work with cdv USA on this title,” said Ludmila Ludvig, Managing Director of Fireglow Games. “Their experience in releasing successful strategy and role-playing titles makes cdv USA the ideal local partner to deliver Stranger to North American audiences.”

For more information about Stranger, visit the official Web site at http://stranger-game.com.

IBM Completes Lineup of Speakers at Serious Games Best Practice Symposium on 31st January

With IBM speaking about their recently released serious game: Innov8, the signal is there that this market is maturing – and fast. This symposium moves the community beyond the rhetoric to explore best practice in design and development across the Web, Virtual Worlds and Handhelds

IBM completes the unrivalled complement of experts contributing to the realization of a serious games best practice roadmap at this symposium. For the first time, detailed post-mortems are explored from across a variety of serious games for client organizations; including those in the health service, the ‘Big 4’ accounting firms, recruitment and school education. One of the key areas of focus is best practice across platforms: Web, virtual worlds and handheld devices. There is also a session dedicated to existing best practice in games development where games designers and developers share their expertise with the serious games audience.

Martine Parry, production director of event organizer Apply Group said: “We aim to produce a guide to best practice in serious games development on the basis of the findings at the symposium and we will make this available to the delegates for free and to the wider community when it has been refined further. There are only 2 weeks to go before the symposium so if you want to get involved then book one of the few remaining places at http://seriousgames.eventbrite.com .”

The other speakers include: Kevin Corti of PIXELearning; Jez Harris of Buzz developer Relentless Software; Brian Rodway of Affinity Studios; Dave Taylor, National Physical Lab; Graham Brown-Martin of Handheld Learning; Ron Edwards of Ambient Performance and the Chairman Donald Clark: a learning guru and formerly CEO of Epic.

Towards Best Practice in Designing & Developing Serious Games for Learning & Communications: Focus on Web, Virtual Worlds and Handheld Platforms runs all day on 31st January, 2008 at games association ELSPA premises in Soho, London. More information and booking is here: http://seriousgames.eventbrite.com

YoYo Games passes 10,000 uploads to become the World's largest online games site

10,000 games uploaded in 200 days represents a ground breaking achievement for YoYo Games, a start-up games company which looks set to shake up the booming casual gaming industry with a fresh, innovative approach to games creation, publishing and distribution.

The site (www.YoYoGames.com) hosts exclusively user-generated games, community-submitted content with a community based review and ratings system highlighting the very best of these games, and allowing them to rise to the top.

“Since we launched in May last year we’ve been amazed by both the quality and the quantity of games that have been created by the YoYo Games Community.” said Sandy Duncan, CEO of YoYo Games. “We have often been referred to as the ‘YouTube of Games’, and with this incredible volume of content, we’re starting to believe this ourselves!” mused Duncan.

The YoYo Games website is designed to make it easy for game developers to upload, rate, review and share their games with a fast growing community of casual gamers.

Unique to YoYo Games is the “Game Maker” software, now in its seventh release. “Game Maker has been empowering people, often with no previous programming experience, to create sophisticated casual games since 1999” said Prof. Mark Overmars, the creator of Game Maker and one of the founding members of the YoYo Games team. “Game Maker is undeniably more powerful and flexible than Flash and unlike Flash has been designed from the outset to be an environment that is uniquely purposed for game development.” he added.

In the inaugural Winter game creation competition for the YoYo Games community, the winning game, Frozzd, is a highly original two-dimensional platformer, set amongst frozen and slightly malevolent planetoids. The creator of the charming “Wubbly” universe explored in Frozzd, is Netherlands based developer, Jesse Venbrux, who, at just 20-years-old, worked solo on the project. He wins the top prize of $1,000 and community kudos for his efforts. The runners up list reflects the global nature of YoYo Games user base with fantastic games emanating from Russia, Australia, and the Americas.

“Frozzd is more than just a visual and technical achievement, it’s living proof of the creativity that can be unleashed by the Game Maker community” said Michel Cassius, co-founder of YoYo Games. “More than just games, YoYo Games has created the world’s largest single games developer community with more than 75,000 registered developers from all over the world, ranging in age from under 8 to over 80”, he added.

Reduction in the price of games

Following the strategy developed in mid-2007, the Handcase from the day on January 20, 2008 reduced the prices of all their games. There is no promotion, reduction is final. The average reduction is 30%, but some games are 55% cheaper.

Ricardo Garay, director of Handcase explains, "... had planned some actions aimed at expanding our participation in the segment of games for palm, one of them was offering more products, this month reached the mark of 98 games, the other was to reduce the prices, but needed to evaluate how much reduction, and what would be the impact on our market share, reason why announce now."

This action is only for Brazil?

"No, it is for the whole world, for all the stores, who buy today no matter the country pay the same, the exchange rate are minimal, what matters is that the user of palm, turn on your device and have fun with Handcase games, pay very little and have much fun, the rest is details."

I have to warn 3 new freeware games on our website.

For enjoy access www.handycase.com/eng

Ship Simulator 2008

Leading computer software publisher Lighthouse Interactive and developer VSTEP, invite you to sail the open sea in the World’s best nautical simulator. Today they announced that Ship Simulator 2008 has begun shipping to major retailers across Canada and the US.

This true-to-life naval simulation for Windows® includes many great new features, such as: multiplayer (LAN and online), a highly customizable mission editor, 16 new ships, and three vast new environments (San Francisco, Marseille and Southampton/ Cowes/ Solent). A bilingual French/English version will be released in Canada for Francophone fans. Ship Simulator is available in 20 countries and 7 languages, selling over 280,000 copies to date.

SUMMARY

With the growing number of Ship Simulator users worldwide, VSTEP is continuously adding new content and features. In Ship Simulator 2008, players will need to perform a multitude of tasks, all set within stunning 3D environments. They will take control of a wide array of vessels – from massive cargo ships and ferries, to speedboats, yachts, water taxis, personal watercrafts, and even the mighty Titanic! The waters you sail are as varied as the ships, including the harbors of New York, the Thai Phi Phi Islands, Rotterdam and Hamburg, plus three newly added harbours: San Francisco, Marseille and Southampton/Cowes/Solent. Ship Simulator 2008 incredibly recreates real locations from around the world and presents players with the challenges of commanding the vessel of their choice on the open sea.

FEATURES

• Dynamic ocean waves, with realistic ship motions
• Long distance travels, open ocean voyages between ports
• Visible damage system
• 50 new complex and challenging missions
• Extensive day, night and weather systems
• Open sea, plus 7 harbour environments including San Francisco, Marseille and Southampton/Cowes/Solent
• 16 ships, each with walkthrough functionality and interactive bridge controls
• Controllable container crane
• Advanced vector graphic sea chart based on realistic 3D seabed models, with full-screen display option, transparency setting, and high level of detail on text and depth readings
• Advanced damage system showing dents and holes in vessels after severe collisions
• Free-roam mode allows players to choose a ship, an environment, weather conditions, time of day, and set their own waypoints
• Extensive mapping options for keys and joystick buttons
• Advanced rope system, which allows you to connect and disconnect player ships to other ships or mooring boulders at will (anchoring is now also possible)
• Mid-mission save function
• A system for sinking ships when damaged below the water line
• Advanced system for scoring and ranking in different ship type classes, linked to your online profile on the Ship Simulator forum
• Mission editor, so you can create your own adventures and share them with your fellow players on the forum
• Multiplayer free-roaming, including towing and chat
• In-game downloading of new missions, created by other players

To find out more about Ship Simulator 2008 and to keep up with the latest news, visit:
www.lighthouse-interactive.com and www.shipsim.com.

RealtimeUK & Buzz Monster Rumble

2006 saw Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) launch the junior range of their highly successful Buzz! franchise, with RealtimeUK producing intros for both Buzz! Junior: Jungle Party, and Buzz! Junior: RoboJam – so we were pleased to be invited by SCEE to produce the intro for the third in the Buzz! Junior series, Buzz! Junior: Monster Rumble.

The brief from SCEE for Monster Rumble was to introduce four very cheeky monsters, in a 60 second intro that would act as a teaser for the game. As the game is aimed at young players aged between six and nine, SCEE’s focus was on fun, humour and mischief – with just the right amount of scariness for our younger audience.

The RealtimeUK team started by playing a demo of the game to gain an understanding of the monsters and the game itself – and to make sure they could reflect the game accurately in their intro piece. SCEE provided some concept artwork and reference material to inspire the team when putting together the script and storyboard for the intro.

RealtimeUK’s Animation Director, Chris Fenna, explains, “Our task was to encapsulate all the fun and mischievousness of the game within a 60 second intro. With four cheeky monsters and a Transylvanian Castle to play with, we had plenty of source material to create a movie; the challenge was to distil this into one minute.”

RealtimeUK’s solution features a mad professor in his lab performing a Frankenstein style monster creation, which takes a turn for the worse as he ends up creating four mischievous monsters. The monsters then stage an escape, hurtling through the house and into the swamp outside, leaving the mad professor bewildered at what he has unleashed on the world.

While the monsters closely reflected the in-game creations, the mad professor, being a brand new character, was created entirely from scratch by the RealtimeUK team.

“One of the more challenging aspects of this project was the highly stylised modelling, as this is one of the most cartoony-like animations we have produced”, says Chris. “The animation was pushed to be as creative and funky as possible and the monsters were developed to be entertaining and full of bounce.”

Low res proxy versions of the monster characters were used to drive the cloth simulation, which features during the opening sequence. “We started with default cloth parameters and then went in to make fine adjustments to achieve the best results”, continues Chris. “Matte paintings produced in Photoshop were utilised for all the outdoor background environments. These were based on concept work and in-game reference and were mapped onto flat planes and layered up in the backgrounds of each shot.”

The final animation was a massive success and SCEE felt that the brief had been fulfilled superbly.

Tony Prosser, Managing Director at RealtimeUK commented that “our team enjoyed working on the Buzz! Junior: Monster Rumble project. They relished the challenge of creating new characters and bringing these mischievous monsters to life. We look forward to working with SCEE again in the near future.”

TheFunded.com Featured at Casual Connect Europe

TheFunded.com and the Casual Games Association announced today that Adeo Ressi will be making an exclusive European appearance at Casual Connect Europe, the third annual Western European Casual Games Association Conference, on February 7, 2008. This will be Ressi’s first formal speaking engagement since the November 15, 2007 “Inside TheFunded.com” event in Palo Alto, CA.

Adeo Ressi is The Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online resource for CEOs to research, rate, and review venture funds worldwide. Since its inception in 2007, TheFunded.com has grown to more than 5,000 members. Most recently, Adeo founded and was CEO of Game Trust, Inc., the leading community and ecommerce software platform for online casual game play. Adeo will be available to speak with press at Casual Connect Europe, who are encouraged to coordinate meetings with the listed media contacts.

“Casual Connect is a great event for developers and publishers in Europe,” stated Adeo Ressi. “I am excited to help the next generation of entrepreneurs at the show learn how to navigate the complex fundraising landscape.”

“As the casual game industry matures and investors are beginning to see the advantages of investing in the casual games space, understanding the investment community is of the up-most importance to developers,” said Jessica Tams, managing director of the Casual Games Association. “Adeo is a valuable resource for the casual games community in the process of working with capital.”

About TheFunded.com:

TheFunded.com (http://www.thefunded.com/) is an online resource for entrepreneurs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. Founded in mid-2007 by a serial entrepreneur, Adeo Ressi, the site has attracted over 5,000 CEO members from a wide variety of industries, and TheFunded.com now provides a forum for exchange of strategies and tactics to build a successful business.

About Casual Connect Europe:

Casual Connect Europe is designed for industry professionals, industry executives, and professionals interested in creating, marketing and distributing games for players worldwide. Casual Connect Europe 2008 is the ninth conference organized by the Casual Games Association who also published reports on the industry and a regular industry magazine.
For more information on Casual Connect Europe 2008 please visit: http://europe.casualconnect.org/

TIGA Awards finalists revealed

TIGA, The Independent Game Developers Association, today announced the list of finalists ahead of the prestigious annual 2007 awards ceremony which takes at the Haymarket Hotel in London on 30th January 2008.

The eventual winning TIGA members will have been selected by their peers and will represent the cream of European Development industry talent. For the first time, the 2007 awards include two additional categories; 'Best technology' and 'Best cross-media application of games' designed to represent the diversity of the development sector.

The nominations are:

• Best PC/Console Game developed by a TIGA member 2007 - Geometry Wars: Galaxies – Doublesix (Kuju Entertainment), Colin McRae: DiRT - Codemasters Studios, Worms XBLA – Team 17

• Best Handheld/Console Game developed by a TIGA member 2007 - Geometry Wars: Galaxies – Doublesix (Kuju Entertainment), Crush – Zoemode (Kuju Entertainment), Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron - Rebellion

• Best mobile game developed by a TIGA member 2007 - Championship Manager 2008 – Dynamo Games, Sonic Jump – Airplay, Tomb Raider Anniversary - Finblade

• Best Technology 2007 - The EGO Engine – Codemasters, Super Rub a Dub Water Effect – Sumo Digital, Alice Server – Nice Tech

• Best Cross Media Application of Games 2007 - Realtime UK, Audiomotion, Triage Trainer – TruSim Blitz Games

• Best Developer - Greatest contribution to independent games development during 2007 by TIGA member - Blitz Games, Sumo Digital, Denki

• Best Player - Greatest individual contribution to independent games development during 2007 - Ian Baverstock, Fred Hasson, Jason Kingsley

Commenting on the nominations, Fred Hasson, TIGA CEO said, "Despite increased competition from studios in tax-break countries we're very proud of the outstanding work delivered by our members. These awards are won by and voted by our members and this kind of peer-to-peer recognition of excellence is the most sought after"

Taking place at the Haymarket Hotel, London on the 30th January 2008, the 2007 TIGA awards were voted on by TIGA members. Voting is now closed, TIGA would like to congratulate all the finalists and wish them well for the night.