atlus-usa posts

Trine 2 is already shaping up to be an impressive follow-up to developer Frozenbyte's original game. Recently the game's publisher Atlus USA released a new trailer showing off more of what we can expect to see in the sequel.

As in the first game, Trine 2 will be a mixture of fantasy side-scrolling action with a lot of physics based puzzles to solve as well. As you can see in the trailer, the sequel has gotten a nice graphical upgrade with lots of colorful and well designed levels and creatures to check out. It almost makes up for the fact that we will have to wait until later this summer to actually play the game.

Download the Trine 2 Alluring Adventure trailer at Big Download

Fans of developer Frozebyte's cult hit puzzle-action game Trine will have to wait a little longer for the sequel. Trine 2, first announced back at E3 2010 in June for a spring 2011 release date, has now been pushed back to a "late summer" 2011 time frame via an email note from its publisher Atlus USA. No reason was give for the delay.

While Trine 2 was first announced back in June 2010 it wasn't until October of that year that Frozenbyte confirmed that the sequel would indeed be released for the PC platform. You can learn a little more about the game via our interview with Frozenbyte's CEO Lauri Hyvärinen that was conducted just as the game was first announced.

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.

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."

Developer Frozenbyte created a sleeper critical hit in 2009 with the release of Trine, its downloadable title that combined platform action with physics-based puzzles and co-op. After lots of hints, it was announced At the tail end of E3 2010 that Frozenbyte would be making a sequel to the game in collaboration with publisher Atlus.

While the game isn't due out until the spring of 2011, Big Download has gotten some of the first details about the sequel direct from Frozenbyte's CEO Lauri Hyvärinen. In the first official interview about Trine 2, he gives us the scoop about what to expect from the next game in the series:

2009's release of developer ACE Team's weird first person shooter Zeno Clash was one of the highlights of the PC indie scene last year. While the team has already said it's working on a Zeno Clash sequel it looks like the next game to be released from the team will be something totally different.

In its E3 2010 game line-up Atlus revealed it would publish Rock of Ages from ACE Team. There's still no word on what kind of a game it will be or when it will be coming out but we are going to take a shot in the dark and predict it will not be a game adaptation of the recent Broadway 80s's hard rock-themed musical.

[Via Joystiq]

Altus USA is usually known for bringing a number of Japanese DS, PSP and PS2 titles to the US. Today the publisher announced plans to release a downloadable puzzle game, Droplitz, for the PC and various other platforms. The game comes from developer Blitz Arcade.

The title has players rotate circles that form paths down to the bottom allowing "droplitz" to hit the bottom and thus earn points. Four gameplay modes (Classic, Zendurance, Power Up and Infection) will be included and online leaderboards will also be supported. The game is set for release sometime in the late spring time period by Altus. However no price point for Droplitz has been revealed.