Archive for the ‘hothead games’ Category
DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue Available Tonight, Free DLC for Decisive Purchasers
Posted by Chris Mitchell in deathspank thongs of virtue, dlc, hothead games, PlayStation Games, PSN, Trailers on September 20th, 2010
Greetings citizens! This is Chris Mitchell from Hothead Games brimming over with tales of DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue!
DeathSpank: Thongs Of Virtue is our wonderful, full-figured sequel to DeathSpank but with more and better everything. Of course you and everyone you associate with will know that DeathSpank is our hilarious, exciting, highly rated action-RPG mixed with adventure gameplay. Some describe the series as “Diablo meets Monkey Island” but I’d rather describe it as “DeathSpank-Like”.
No doubt by now you’ve played through your multiple copies of the original DeathSpank game (thanks for buying those by the way) and wonder how we can possibly top the tooth and nail action? We wondered too but luckily we had a brainstorm. We took DeathSpank’s patented sword fighting action and added….guns! Guns in a video game? It’s crazy I know, but in the course of his new adventure entirely too many grenades, guns and bombs will be used in the search for Justice. Statistically speaking at least some of them will even be used correctly.
Oh and speaking of adventure, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue has even more adventure gameplay woven in with the slashing, bullet-shooting exciting combat. Many brains will be teased, fortune cookies opened and possibly internet FAQs consulted by our players in the name of a puzzling good time. DeathSpank: TOV was made at the same time as DeathSpank so we were able to take lessons learned on DeathSpank and craft an even better game with deeper adventure gameplay.
Naturally his enemies are pretty well armed themselves with heavy machine guns, airstrikes and the latest in monocle technology to keep things nice and perky. The enemies are far more varied themselves and the bosses (if I may be so bold) are just excellent. We now have many times the number of big bosses that must die at your hand.
This sequel also gave us a nice chance to go all Michael Bay on things. Everything is bigger and more explody. You get a far larger world to adventure in and incredible environments and holiday-themed terrors that need to be filled with holes. There’s more quests that need to be done and more varied quests as well I should add. Oh and what’s this? A pirate ship? Yes DeathSpank gets to go a-plundering thanks to his ally Captain Taint, scourge of various seas.
Naturally DeathSpank’s not the sort of guy to adventure alone, friends of yours (or mine, I won’t judge) can jump in and jump out of co-op action using classic Sparkles or the all new Steve! Steve Von Prong was raised by multi-level marketing ninjas in the deadly ways of the unicorn. If you figure out what that means, please let us know as we’re quite curious.
Gamers who purchase DeathSpank: T.O.V. in its first week will also receive two pieces of free downloadable content: the Snowy Mountain Dungeon, a terrifying, ice-covered dungeon frozen in the North Pole where evil enemies of ice, flesh and terror dwell and a new playable co-op character, Sidekick Tankko. Half-man, half-spider and all awesome, Sidekick Tankko is a deadly warrior who spews mighty clouds of poison and entraps enemies with his inescapable web attacks.
That’s all I’ve got for now but I await questions! Let me have it internet and you will have answers in return. They may not be good answers but you get what you pay for around here.
DeathSpank Delivers Justice to PSN Tomorrow
Posted by Chris Mitchell in deathspank, hothead games, PlayStation Games, PSN on July 12th, 2010
Hey everybody this is Darren Evenson and Chris Mitchell from Hothead Games. We’re here to talk about combat in DeathSpank.
In case you don’t know already, DeathSpank is an action-RPG mixed with adventure gameplay. A lot of people are saying it is like Diablo meets Monkey Island which is appropriate because Ron Gilbert, the co-creator of Monkey Island, was the Creative Director for the game. The quick summary is that the game has a ton of action, a ton of loot and is as funny as hell.
An early design goal for combat was that it needed to be approachable but with surprising depth. Gamers had to be able to pick up the game and figure it out immediately but make little discoveries as they continued to play.
The first thing players use are mortal weapons. This large collection of blunt objects and sharp things do physical damage to enemies. They’re an effective and satisfying way to smash enemies or put holes in them.
Next up are what we call elemental weapons. These are imbued with mystic energies that are more effective on the right enemy, or far less on the wrong one. For example, you can use fire weapons on ice monsters, nature weapons on ghosts, you get the idea. It’s a simple thing but results in the player constantly making small tactical choices.
After that are Weapons Of Justice, crazy-powerful items that are most effective when DeathSpank’s Justice meter is full. How do you fill that meter you ask? Good question. Well the slow way is to button mash. The fast and totally more fun way is to create your own combos by using a variety of weapons, filling the meter quickly while doing bonus damage. Weapons of Justice can fling lightning, stun enemies or drive them into the ground!
And then there’s Runestones. These are looted from extremely hard to kill creatures but give DeathSpank some of his coolest abilities. To use a Runestone, DeathSpank uses a Weapon of Justice in one hand and an elemental weapon in the other in a two-handed strike for devastating results. Enemies are flung into the sky by geysers, have souls pulled out of them or are filled with dozens of flaming swords.
We’ll stop there but mention things like tactically divine airstrikes, poison-coated crossbow bolts, and portable black holes (no really). On top of all that there’s a whole defensive side to DeathSpank, with dozens of potions and over a hundred pieces of unique armour for the min-maxers out there.
Ok this is usually the part in the post where the developers mention something they ‘heard in the hallway’. We’ll let you in on an industry secret, those are totally contrived, they didn’t hear anything, there probably wasn’t even a hallway. Have fun storming the castle!