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PixelJunk Monsters (PSN)
- Thread starter MassiveAttack
- Start date
SolidSnakex
Member
Dylan's been posted reponses in that blog entry, this is the most interesting one.
Thunderbear
Mawio Gawaxy iz da Wheeson hee pways games
SolidSnakex said:
Hehe, sweeet!
T_Tokyo2010
Member
I dont know what pixel junk is, but those are some awesome HD screenies. Thanks
Android18a
Member
Even tho the resolution is too high for a proper pixel-art graphical style, I'm kinda put off by the look of it. I'm all for cartoony 2D stuff, but I think the reliance on fairly detailed "painted on" textures on the game objects such as towers and trees looks a little dodgy with the cel-shaded thing too.
I'd have gone for a more flat-colour look with it, and added lighter highlights to the tops of the trees... and definitely not used that wierd drop-shadow effect all over the place. Each tree seems to have shadow not only below it where the light would create shadow, but there seems to be shadow above each tree too?
I just think it looks a little wierd. Alien Hominid does the hi-res 2D thing right, this just looks a bit clumsy to me.
</art nitpick>
I've played the flash versions of this before anyway. Fun, but ultimately kinda shallow...
I'd have gone for a more flat-colour look with it, and added lighter highlights to the tops of the trees... and definitely not used that wierd drop-shadow effect all over the place. Each tree seems to have shadow not only below it where the light would create shadow, but there seems to be shadow above each tree too?
I just think it looks a little wierd. Alien Hominid does the hi-res 2D thing right, this just looks a bit clumsy to me.
</art nitpick>
I've played the flash versions of this before anyway. Fun, but ultimately kinda shallow...
http://pixeljunk.jp/ click on the butterfly!
Pristine_Condition
Member
nofi said:
Works fine in Safari on my Mac.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etObynb6xDQGrayFoxPL said:
direct link to flv: http://pixeljunk.jp/movies/PixelJunk_1_2_movie.flv
Reposting my thoughts from the PSN Content thread, since people are looking for impressions:
If you've played a Tower Defense game, this isn't going to come across as obscure to you - it plays similarly. Each level has a preset layout, monsters come in waves, you have to stop them. One major difference is that you actually control a character (the brown gentleman with a shield on his back), so you do have to avoid running into bad guys or else you drop some gold and can't move for a few seconds.
The controls are very simple - analog stick and the X button, nothing else. Very easy to pickup and play.
Any of the trees you see on the level can be converted into a tower if you have enough gold. I believe there are about 10 kinds of towers - finishing the tutorial unlocks three for use. Like most TD games, you get some for anti-air, some for ground troops only, some fire and ice...I saw some other interesting ones, like a laser tower (pictured below). If you sell off your towers to recover gold, you can't rebuild at that tower site - something to keep in mind strategically. The flags on the towers represent the level - I've seen green, yellow, red, and purple during my play.
Each level seems to have 10 waves of enemies. There's a world map that lets you shift between levels, and there's a healthy number of levels (5 normal, 8 medium, 7 hard) to unlock.
Unlocking new towers for purchase, as well as upgrading your existing towers, can be done through the green round gems you see pictured. Once you have enough (shown on the little sign at your village), you can run back to your village and unlock a new tower. Or, if you want to just upgrade a tower, you run over to it, hit action, and select the upgrade option. Most of the upgrades cost one gem, some cost two. Enemies will always drop gold and sometimes drop gems; some of the trees in the level will drop coins if you touch them.
Towers will also level up on their own through hitting enemies, or you can help power level towers by standing on top of them, at which point your character begins to dance.
Oh, and there's a standard TD mechanic of giving you bonus interest at the end of a level for gold unspent. And you can upgrade this rate.
The animation is very smooth, and the art style is pretty nice. The music - it's ambient electronic-ish. I like it, but the sound effects and music combined to lead to my wife yelling at me to turn the game off because she was trying to sleep. To each their own.
There's some basic HUD elements not shown in these screens - a small strip at the bottom shows the time until the next wave and your gold, and your villagers left are displayed somewhere that I'm forgetting right now. When you're touching a tower, you get an overlay for its range and experience level - all in all, it's very easy to follow if you're familiar with the genre.
Each level has its own online leaderboard, and you get a full set of stats and graphs when you finish a level showing how you fared. There's also a two-player mode that I haven't explored yet, I'm guessing it's local only.
It's really a lot of fun; it's a great console-based TD game. PixelJunk claims it's shipping this month in the US (I thought it had gotten pushed back to January?), and like I said earlier, the version on the JP PSN Store is already localized in English.
I think a lot of you guys are going to dig it. Oh, and I haven't seen anything about downloadable content.
I haven't tried PSP remote play yet, perhaps I'll try tonight.
If you guys have any other questions, let me know.
If you've played a Tower Defense game, this isn't going to come across as obscure to you - it plays similarly. Each level has a preset layout, monsters come in waves, you have to stop them. One major difference is that you actually control a character (the brown gentleman with a shield on his back), so you do have to avoid running into bad guys or else you drop some gold and can't move for a few seconds.
The controls are very simple - analog stick and the X button, nothing else. Very easy to pickup and play.
Any of the trees you see on the level can be converted into a tower if you have enough gold. I believe there are about 10 kinds of towers - finishing the tutorial unlocks three for use. Like most TD games, you get some for anti-air, some for ground troops only, some fire and ice...I saw some other interesting ones, like a laser tower (pictured below). If you sell off your towers to recover gold, you can't rebuild at that tower site - something to keep in mind strategically. The flags on the towers represent the level - I've seen green, yellow, red, and purple during my play.
Each level seems to have 10 waves of enemies. There's a world map that lets you shift between levels, and there's a healthy number of levels (5 normal, 8 medium, 7 hard) to unlock.
Unlocking new towers for purchase, as well as upgrading your existing towers, can be done through the green round gems you see pictured. Once you have enough (shown on the little sign at your village), you can run back to your village and unlock a new tower. Or, if you want to just upgrade a tower, you run over to it, hit action, and select the upgrade option. Most of the upgrades cost one gem, some cost two. Enemies will always drop gold and sometimes drop gems; some of the trees in the level will drop coins if you touch them.
Towers will also level up on their own through hitting enemies, or you can help power level towers by standing on top of them, at which point your character begins to dance.
Oh, and there's a standard TD mechanic of giving you bonus interest at the end of a level for gold unspent. And you can upgrade this rate.
The animation is very smooth, and the art style is pretty nice. The music - it's ambient electronic-ish. I like it, but the sound effects and music combined to lead to my wife yelling at me to turn the game off because she was trying to sleep. To each their own.
There's some basic HUD elements not shown in these screens - a small strip at the bottom shows the time until the next wave and your gold, and your villagers left are displayed somewhere that I'm forgetting right now. When you're touching a tower, you get an overlay for its range and experience level - all in all, it's very easy to follow if you're familiar with the genre.
Each level has its own online leaderboard, and you get a full set of stats and graphs when you finish a level showing how you fared. There's also a two-player mode that I haven't explored yet, I'm guessing it's local only.
It's really a lot of fun; it's a great console-based TD game. PixelJunk claims it's shipping this month in the US (I thought it had gotten pushed back to January?), and like I said earlier, the version on the JP PSN Store is already localized in English.
I think a lot of you guys are going to dig it. Oh, and I haven't seen anything about downloadable content.
I haven't tried PSP remote play yet, perhaps I'll try tonight.
If you guys have any other questions, let me know.
Riskbreaker23
Member
this game sound surprisingly deep for such a simple concept. jan cant come soon enough
N'Gai's got an interview up with Dylan (part one of two) and there's also a preview of Monsters.
EDIT: Dammit, beated by a day....
EDIT: Dammit, beated by a day....
HiVision said:
I did; I was a little underwhelmed. There were some overscan issues, the typical remote play graphical fuzziness cropped up, and the lag on the controls wasn't helping me get to the trees I wanted to.
But it does let you "play online" to register your scores, and it is smart enough to disable two player mode.
Oh, I should note that the level breakdown isn't exactly as I described - after working my way through the easy section of the map, the last level wasn't listed as "Easy", but instead "Special". It was a 20 wave all-fast-spiders level that was an interesting challenge.
It's not the only level that tweaked things, though - one of the other easy levels changes things so the monsters don't drop cash. You have a larger initial allocation, but that's it.
By the way, like PJR, PJM has some hard unlock situations. If you perfect clear a level (no villagers lost), you get a rainbow. You have to get at least 7 rainbows before you can start down the hard path. I have two, I think. *sigh*
memecomplex
Member
What the hell? Why are games on the PSN kicking so much ass?
You see I just upgraded my TV to a 1080p set and been on a buying binge, getting all the natively rendered 1080p games I can get my hands on... Super Stardust HD, Locorocco, PixelJunk Racers and PixelJunk Monsters. They've all been supremely entertaining... but Monsters is really something else!
Looks great, feels great, sounds great. It's bloody fucking ace! It's cheap to boot!
And the co-op play is just so awesome. Been playing it non-stop with my girlfriend... really guys if you like Tower Defense games (or strategy games like Advance Wars), do check this one out. GOTY for me!
There's a really cool interview on Newsweek with Dylan Cuthbert:
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/12/06/the-dylan-cuthbert-interview-part-i.aspx
If they keep this variety and fusion of art and gameplay, I'm going to buy and collect every PixelJunk game.
<3 <3 <3 Q-Games!
You see I just upgraded my TV to a 1080p set and been on a buying binge, getting all the natively rendered 1080p games I can get my hands on... Super Stardust HD, Locorocco, PixelJunk Racers and PixelJunk Monsters. They've all been supremely entertaining... but Monsters is really something else!
Looks great, feels great, sounds great. It's bloody fucking ace! It's cheap to boot!
And the co-op play is just so awesome. Been playing it non-stop with my girlfriend... really guys if you like Tower Defense games (or strategy games like Advance Wars), do check this one out. GOTY for me!
There's a really cool interview on Newsweek with Dylan Cuthbert:
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/12/06/the-dylan-cuthbert-interview-part-i.aspx
If they keep this variety and fusion of art and gameplay, I'm going to buy and collect every PixelJunk game.
<3 <3 <3 Q-Games!
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