atlus posts

ACE Team's upcoming downloadable action-strategy game Rock of Ages is still one of the most original looking games we have seen in a while. But the game's publisher Atlus USA is giving fans an extra special April Fools's treat; a free game that gives a 2D perspective on things.

The free game, Pebble of Time, is set up on a web site made to look like it's the product of just one person, an indie game developer who complains that ACE Team stole his idea for the game to make Rock of Ages. He (or rather the site) states, "II was really hoping the success of Pebble of Time could afford me some like, eye transplant, or cyborg eyes, which would be cooler. Or could it be that visor the guy has on Star Trek." It always comes back to Trek.

Download the Pebble of Time Free Game at Big Download

If there's two things videogames have taught us, it's these nuggets of truth: guys with big swords are nasty and never put your treasure where other people can find out about it. This is the gist of The Cursed Crusade, a game which follows a group of corrupted crusaders as they make their way to the holy land and slaughter everyone along the way. As one would expect, this involves demons, plenty of crusader-driven imagery, and swordplay. THere's not really a whole lot else to this trailer, so we can't comment on anything but the art style.

Download HD The Cursed Crusade 'Ambitions' Trailer
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We quiver with excitement every time more information comes from the developers at ACE Team, and this trailer is one of those. Detailing the power-ups in Rock of Ages, it shows off a few abilities we've seen before but had never really been given clarification on. It appears that, at the very least, the rock will get four power-ups: increased damage resistance, increased damage, land poisoning, and double jump. If there are any more power-ups to be had, ACE Team is keeping their lips understandably sealed on what they may be.

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Rock of Ages' premise is both original and fun, something which games can have one or the other but rarely both. This week the development crew at ACE Team posted up its first blog about the "rolling a boulder through different art periods" title with a look at how they tried to balance the 2D and 3D art together.

The blog shows off a couple of the team's attempts at solving the 2D issue including one where it used sprite art to convey a 2D figure in 3D space. It's, well, kind of creepy and we are personally glad that ACE Team abandoned it. In the end the team decided to make the objects that affects the rock's movement in the game 3D and make everything else 2D. We just can't wait to push that rock down a medieval painting when it's due out in 2011.

Ready for another medieval-based action game? Atlus USA hopes that you are. Today the publisher announced its plans to release The Cursed Crusade, a new action game set in 12th century Europe. The game's official web site has already gone live and while it shows the game as coming just for the Xbox 360 and PS3, Atlus USA's Twitter page and the end of the game's teaser trailer both show its coming to the PC as well.

Developed by Kylotonn Entertainment, the game will be a co-op third person action game focusing on two characters: "Denz, a holy Templar, and Esteban, a roguish mercenary." The characters will apparently be dealing a lot of death and destruction across the cities of Europe using over 130 weapons, 90 combo moves and the ability to "transform the world around you into a flaming red vision of Hell, increasing your strength and your ability to perceive hidden things, all at the expense of your humanity." The game is due out in the summer of 2011.

Trine was one stellar indepedent game, and Trine 2 looks just as good as the first. However, it's not merely going to be a rehash with new levels. It's also including some new gameplay mechanics. The two new ones shown off in this trailer are air currents (which push around the wizard's conjurations) and the knight's projectile reflection. There's also multi-character co-op play, but that's not a new feature, as it was in the original game. The more we see of Trine 2, the more excited we get. The original was pretty fantastic, after all.

Download HD Trine 2 Gameplay Teaser Trailer
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When it was first announced that develper Frozenbyte was going to create a sequel to its cult hit downloadable action-puzzle game Trine we were very excited. So excited in fact that we managed to get the first interview posted about Trine 2. However the sequel's publisher Atlus would not yet commit to announcing which platforms Trine 2 would appear on.

Thankfully our (small) worries have been done away with. Frozenbyte and Atlus have now indeed confirmed that Trine 2 will be released in spring 2011 for the PC platform (alongside the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles). The original Trine was released for the PC first with console ports coming later but there's no word if that will be case for the sequel. In any case, you can breath easier now.

[Via email press release]

A late breaking development on Monday has put the fate of a well known Japanese publisher, as well as its US subsidiary, in question along with the fate of two recently announced downloadable games. Gamasutra reports that Index Holdings, the parent company of game publisher Atlus, has "dissolved" Atlus in order to focus its attention on "profitable core areas".

According to the report the Atlus brand name will continue but at the moment it's unclear how the brand will live on. It's also unclear how this will affect Atlus USA, the North American subsidiary to Atlus. Last June at E3, Atlus USA announced it would publish two downloadable games in 2011; the puzzle-action sequel Trine 2 from developer Frozenbyte and the unusual looking strategy game Rock of Ages from developer ACE Team.

Update: A post on the Atlus USA's message board states, "Don't worry, guys. This is just some corporate organizational maneuvering and won't affect anything we do."

There are few original ideas for games. We see a ton of titles that, while well made, go over the same stuff over and over again. And then there's ACE Team. The Chile-based development studio made a huge splash in 2009 with the release of Zeno Clash, a unique mix of first person shooter and melee fighting in a strange fictional world that looked unlike any game we had seen before or since.

But ACE Team isn't done with surprising us yet. At E3 2010 the developer revealed its next game Rock of Ages, a unique blend of action (rolling a boulder down hills) strategy (defensive units set up to stop the boulder before it hits a castle) and historical art styles (five art styles from Earth's past), all in a mix of Monty Python-like animation visuals. The game is due out in 2011 via download from publisher Atlus and in one of the first interviews about the game Big Download got ACE Team's co-founder Andres Bordeu to give us more info about Rock of Ages including what the game was previously called.

ACE Team is one of our favorite independent developers, thanks to their freshman effort Zeno Clash. Now they're bringing us a new game that looks to be just as artistic and goofy. Rock of Ages, if this trailer is any indication, is something of a cross of a tower defense game and pinball with destruction physics. If there's one thing that Red Faction taught us, it's that a game with wanton building smashing with plenty of accompanied debris is incredibly fun.

Download HD Rock of Ages Trailer (66MB)
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