PixelJunk Monsters to stalk PSN in January

Those who venture onto the PlayStation Network in January may be surprised to find the place overrun with monsters, and even more surprised to learn that dispatching them doesn't require a shotgun, nor a first-person perspective. Posting on the official PlayStation blog, Q-Games President Dylan Cuthbert calls "PixelJunk Monsters" a real-time strategy game wrapped "in a completely different style and mode of gameplay that the Japanese public (and hopefully the West too, of course!) would really get into."

He hopes that you'll get into the game's hand-drawn 2D artwork, as well as the fact that a cheeky little monster replaces the floating (and enormously bossy) cursor typically found in the RTS genre. You'll control the "defender-of-the-forests type chap" as he collects money and sets up defensive towers throughout 20 stages, each of which has undergone a rigorous testing and balancing procedure. We're also told that -- if you're not too busy fending off adorable monsters -- a tower's defenses are mysteriously improved by doing a jig in front of it.

(Guttural clarification: There are no creatures called "jigs" in the game. We checked.)

[Via PS3 Fanboy]