After writing an open letter explaining his fiancée's frustrations with PixelJunk Monsters' difficulty, BPPS writer Ryan Hewson received a response back from Dylan Cuthbert, president of Q-Games, saying help was on the way. Cuthbert had alluded to a major PJM patch before, but now he explains some more details of what's coming to PJM and PixelJunk Eden.

The lord of PixelJunk says PJM will receive a free patch adding Trophies, along with Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert difficulties to the game. Online rankings will maintain the existing difficulty level for fairness -- which we guess is hard? Eden will also receive an expansion pack and may receive a "namby pamby mode" for a more casual experience -- we'd settle for some control mapping functions to seperate silk and jump ... not to mention mapping the instra-drop to a button instead of waggle. No dates on any of this, but we're contacting Sony about some form of ETA.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Buried deep down on a PlayStation Blog post about PixelJunk Eden and the Trophies available in the game, is an odd little paragraph about possible Trophy support for PixelJunk Monsters. Dylan Cuthbert, president of Q-games, developers of PJM and PJE, mentions he's been "inundated" with requests for Trophy support in Monsters. He says the company is looking into it and will badger the game's producer at Sony, Deborah Mars, "to get some dates set."

The information is a bit ambiguous and we're guessing is designed as a tease for an incoming PJM patch. Cuthbert also says the patch will "implement XMB music and a couple of other things." Considering we know PlayStation Blog posts are "checked," information like this doesn't just slip by. Looks like we're going to have to stop playing PJM Encore and wait 'til that Trophy patch gets added, because we're guessing the achievements won't be applied retroactively.

We probably shouldn't be telling you this, but updates on this site are very likely to cease tomorrow, what with the PSN update bringing us the expansion pack to Q-Games' addictive tower defense game, PixelJunk Monsters. Featuring a new island, 15 additional levels, five new music tracks and a $5.99 price tag, PixelJunk Monsters Encore will have us erecting towers for several days at least. Longer if we try to get all the rainbows.

Oh well, we suppose we'll just keep recycling all the posts about Grand Theft Auto IV.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Sony recently showed off near-final builds of its next wave of original PSN games, and even committed to release time frames, according to MTV Multiplayer. Though weekly releases on the PS Store are largely kept behind the big, black curtain until showtime, it appears that Sony is trying to steal some attention away from the recent bevy of WiiWare boloney "buildup" and the well-oiled Xbox Live Arcade machine by generating previews of its own. So how 'bout those dates:

• Late April: PixelJunk Monsters Encore (expansion pack)
• Early May: Echochrome
• May: Elefunk
• Late May / early June: WipEout HD

You bought the game! Now play the demo. PixelJunk Monsters: THE DEMO arrives today, just 28 days after the full game. Brilliant. In other news, now that the PS Store's catalog of Jet Moto games is finally complete, maybe next week Sony will let us revisit something other than x-treme hoverbiking.

Check out the complete list of content after the break, including PC Store additions -- or head over to PS3 Fanboy for European update details.

The PlayStation Store gets another heap of PixelJunk today, as Monsters replace Racers in Q-Games sophomore effort, offered for a mere $7.99 ... for a limited time. The update is rounded out by a pair of demos (this one and that one) and a lonely PS1 game, in addition to a smorgasbord of DLC – nope, not the new Guitar Hero tunes.

Check out the complete list of content after the break, including PC Store additions – or head over to PS3 Fanboy for European update details.

We recently discovered that we've been playing tower defense real-time strategy games completely wrong all along. It's not entirely our fault, mind you, as the genre's name misled us to believe we had to, you know, defend the towers as opposed to using them to protect an utterly hapless village. We'll improve our understanding when PixelJunk Monsters erects itself on the PlayStation Network next Thursday, January 24th, and encourages us to throw in the tower as often as possible.

Developed by Q Games and illustrated with hand-drawn 2D artwork, PixelJunk Monsters sees players constructing all manner of defensive towers in a bid to wipe out marauding monsters. Destroying a lush forest provides the material and the gold and gems looted from fanged corpses provide the financial power to your gauntlet of startlingly efficient death. Really, it's just the sort of cute game Japan needs to overcome its weird PSN phobia.

Speaking to Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, Q-Games founder Dylan Cuthbert has discussed some of the challenges facing PixelJunk Monsters, a real-time tower defense title for the PlayStation Network. Cuthbert, who has contributed to everything from Ape Escape to Starfox, noted that beyond the usual control and balancing issues, the real difficulty involves getting Japanese gamers to purchase bite-sized games online.

"So far, it really hasn't caught on in the same way it has in the West--the problem in Japan is a traditional aversion to using credit cards, as opposed to the West where it is second nature," he explained. "A lot of restaurants over here don't accept any credit card at all, and when you order things online to be delivered the majority of people pay on delivery or even by online bank transfer as opposed to using a credit card. Pre-paid cards are definitely the way to go forward to solve these problems, but they only rolled out recently, so we'll just have to wait and see."

It's odd to see the game (which arrives on our PSN in January) facing this external obstacle, especially since it was designed with Japanese sensibilities in mind -- those folks aren't too keen on real-time strategy either, it seems. Perhaps PixelJunk Monsters will find success on our shores, preying on our habit of whipping out the plastic whenever instant gratification is in view.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

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]