prison-break posts

It's really, really hard for us to get excited about a game based on a TV series that was once hot but then fell apart in its last year before it got canceled. Yet that's what the upcoming game adaptation of the cult hit TV show Prison Break has to deal with. It's going to be a tough sell to get anyone to be interested in this title but publishers Southpeak Games and Deep Sliver are going to give it a shot.

Developed by Zootfly, the game does do something smart in that it's set during the show's first year. The game's storyline runs parallel to the first season's prison escape plot as your player character is also sent to Fox River State Penitentiary to find out why a person with no criminal record like the show's lead Michael Scofield would suddenly decide to rob a bank. Southpeak says to expect the game to ship to stores on March 30 for the PC for $39.99. We suspect only diehard fans of Wentworth Miller will be interested.

[Via Joystiq]

German-base Deep Silver is apparently planning to get more involved in the US game market. Today the publisher announced a new arrangement with Southpeak Games that will have Southpeak become the official distributor for all of Deep Silver's upcoming games.

As part of the new deal, Deep Silver's parent company Koch Media has bought a minority stake in Southpeak Games. Specific financial numbers were not announced. Deep Silver released the RPG Risen last year and their upcoming PC game titles include the open world action title Ride to Hell and the upcoming game adaptation of the canceled TV series Prison Break.

It was a rumor last year but today the official word is that a game based on Prison Break TV show is on its way to the PC and other platforms. Too bad the TV show itself was canceled by Fox earlier this year. The game was known to be under the Brash Entertainment publishing wing before they imploded in the fall of 2008.

Thankfully the game, developed by Zootfly and now to be published by Deep Silver, follows the events from the TV show's first (and best) season. The game's storyline runs parallel to the first season's prison escape plot as your player character is also sent to Fox River State Penitentiary.

Your goal? Find out why the TV show's main character Michael Scofield would suddenly decide to rob a bank even though he had no previous criminal record (as fans of the show know, he got himself arrested so he could go to jail and try to free his brother who was framed for murder and about to go to the chair).

Your new character will meet several folks from the TV show and use "diverse climbing and stealth skills" to explore the prison. There's no word on what your character does when, or even if, he finds out the truth about Scofield's plans. There's also no word on when the game itself will be released.

We saw this coming a mile away. Following word last week that 18 month old game publisher Brash Entertainment had basically shut its doors, Variety is now reporting that two of the company's third party developers are suing Brash to get back money they say are owed by the publisher. One is 7 Studios, who worked on the close-to-release Six Flags Fun Park and also another game based on an upcoming animated movie 9.

The other studio suing Brash is Zootfly, perhaps best known for a game it would never make; a proof-of-concept idea for a Ghostbusters game that was famously shown on the Internet via a Youtube video but then got "Foxed" by Sony because of their own plans for a Ghostbusters title. Zootfly apparently worked on a game based on the TV show Prison Break for Brash but now says Brash owes them $748,000 for their work. Brash CEO Mitch Davis has not commented on the lawsuits.