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2010 Independent Games Festival accepting submissions

by Griffin McElroy { Jul 9th 2009 at 12:00AM }

If you're ready to unleash your totally deviant, totally original and totally counter-cultural Tetris remake upon the world, your best chance to do so has arrived. The Independent Games Festival is now accepting entries into its Main and Student Showcase categories. You've got until November to get your submissions in, and finalists in the Main Competitions will be announced January 4.

If you're looking for reasons to enter your humble project, the festival's organizers have about 20,000 good ones, and by "ones" we mean dollars, by which we mean $20,000 is the grand prize for the competition. In addition, finalists will have their games exhibited on the GDC show floor, where they can be played, admired and possibly exalted by the gaming press -- a treatment received by titles such as World of Goo and Castle Crashers in the past. If your game is of that caliber, we highly suggest throwing your hat into the ring.

Super Meat Boy character select screen reveals playable Alien Hominid [update]

by Ben Gilbert { Jul 5th 2009 at 7:00PM }

Things are on the up and up for Super Meat Boy developer Edmund McMillen. After releasing This is a Cry for Help last year and subsequently announcing SMB for WiiWare, he put his indie cred on display for the world in adding Braid's Tim to his upcoming game. And now, during a live video interview with Bytejacker, McMillen ~~revealed~~ The Behemoth's Alien Hominid as another playable character!

Quickly panning to his computer screen during the interview and teasing it, one of our wonderful readers snagged a screen grab so we could share it with the world. Now the real question: Castle Crashers characters playable as well? Hmmmm, McMillen? Hmmm?

(We love you. Please?)

Update: It was pointed out by a few astute Game Informer readers in the comments section that Alien Hominid was actually revealed as a playable character in a recent issue. Sorry, folks!

(Thanks, Zack!)

Castle Crashers reached one million players today

by Majed Athab { Jun 22nd 2009 at 6:00PM }

The developers of Castle Crashers must have been ecstatic when its XBLA baby grew to house over 900,000 users last month, but this probably doesn't compare to the excitement felt today. At 12:57pm, The Behemoth diligently verified via its Leaderboard numbers that its behemoth of a game has broken the seven-digit barrier, becoming host to exactly 1 million players.

Castle Crashers has reached this momentous milestone rather quickly, having been out on the market for only 10 months (hey, that's an average of 100,000 new players a month) and to celebrate, The Behemoth gave away a set of uber-fantastic stuff. If you signed up previously, you could've won a bag of prizes which included a custom Castle Crashers Xbox 360 Elite. Congrats to whoever won, and to The Behemoth!

Castle Crashers hits 900,000 players, Behemoth offers prize for guessing date of millionth

by Alexander Sliwinski { May 13th 2009 at 8:10AM }

The Behemoth took the time out of its busy Crying Sugar Cube Leprechaun (not real title) development to reveal that the Castle Crashers leaderboards have passed 900,000 users. That does not mean there have been nearly a million sales of the game, but it does mean that Castle Crashers has been doing well on XBLA, a mere 8 months after launch.

The company's site is now challenging users to guess the exact date and time that the main Castle Crashers leaderboard will hit one million players. The winner will receive something "SPECTACULAR." Best of luck, but don't get The Behemoth too distracted with your entry on the company's forum, it has another game to finish.

The Behemoth promises new game info in July, shows off artistic bento

by Alexander Sliwinski { Apr 13th 2009 at 10:00AM }

Feeling obligated to update its blog, developer The Behemoth showed off some Castle Crashers bento (above), created by Anna the red, and stated that it would have more information to share about its third game in July.

The Behemoth is teasing that its (currently untitled) third game will makes an appearance at San Diego's Comic-Con, taking place July 23-26. That's too bad -- we were hoping to see more of the Crying Sugar Cube Leprechaun at E3 in June.

XBLA Awards: Braid can't rewind loss to Castle Crashers

by James Ransom-Wiley { Mar 23rd 2009 at 6:52PM }

Castle Crashers recovered from a 4-month gimp to be crowned the Xbox Live Arcade "Game of the Year" in the second annual community voting awards. Somewhat surprisingly, Castle Crashers also managed to nab "Best Co-op Mode" despite being virtually unplayable online for four out of its seven months in release. On its way to top honors, The Behemoth's beat-em-up notably beat out its fellow indie nominee, Braid, which was famously dismissed by an American youth spokesperson.

Braid's losing streak continued in the "Best Single Player Game" category, which was claimed by Orange Box cutout Portal: Still Alive (oh right, it has "exclusive" challenge maps), but Jonathan Blow's timeless effort did mange to win "Best Innovation" amid stiff competition. (We were certain Kefling's innovative "use of Avatars" was a shoo-in.)

The complete list of awards and recipients is posted after the break.

Continued →

SXSW 2009: Being Indie and Successful in the Video Game Industry

by Kevin Kelly { Mar 17th 2009 at 12:15AM }

There's a wealth of indie-related gaming panels and goings on at SXSW this year, ranging from the previous "Games By The People, For The People" panel, the GameSalad folks, and the retro-cool Get Outta My Face arcade cabinet. Heck, there's even a company that wants to bring back Hypercard stack games. So we went back for more indie gaming panel goodness, just because we could.

This was a panel by the game developers this time, rather than the people who run the companies ... so what did we learn? A lot of the same from the previous panel. Sadly Jonathan Blow couldn't make it, and was replaced by the above inflatable doll with the Freddie Mercury mug. Although covering his absence nicely were panelists Kellee Santiago from thatgamecompany, John Baez of The Behemoth, Ron Carmel of 2D BOY, and Joel DeYoung from Hothead Games who moderated. Check out the highlights after the break.

Continued →

The Behemoth revealing trailer for third game next week

by Alexander Sliwinski { Mar 10th 2009 at 10:09AM }

The Behemoth has announced that it's ready to unveil a trailer for its third game on March 18, "just a few days before" the Tokyo Anime Fair. The latest post on the company blog informs that several of the developers are going to the Tokyo Anime Fair on March 20-21 and will showcase Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers and "an uber-early version of Game #3." So, if you're in Tokyo, would you kindly upload any gameplay video you capture to YouTube?

As an amuse bouche, The Behemoth also showed off an image from the new game (pictured). Early idea on a name: The Crying Sugar Cube Leprechaun vs. The Helghast.

[Thanks, Adam M O'Neill]

Castle Crashers dev's third game closer to unveiling

by Randy Nelson { Mar 9th 2009 at 8:10PM }

The Behemoth, developer of Xbox Live Arcade favorites Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers is preparing to reveal its third -- as of yet unnamed -- title. The dev has been teasing "Game #3" on its blog and Twitter feed for some time, updating the latter today with, "Trailer for game #3 is complete!"

Given that the 2009 Game Developers Conference kicks off in San Francisco in only two weeks' time, we'd say the odds are good that Game #3 will get a proper unveiling -- and title -- during the event. Predictions? Let's hear 'em in comments.

[Via Primotech]

Virtually tour Behemoth and get a peek at new project

by Justin McElroy { Mar 3rd 2009 at 2:32PM }

OK, so maybe the tour video of indie dev The Behemoth's new San Diego office isn't exactly newsworthy. In fact, the video we've posted after the break is basically just Dan Paladin pretending that he's different people from the staff before (in most cases) admitting that he doesn't really know what they do.

But we thought you might be interested to see the sculptures of animal orbs at this same link, which is supposedly from a "secret project." Animal Orbs Pinball? We can only hope.

Continued →

The creation of Castle Crashers' chilly Frost King

by Dustin Burg { Feb 3rd 2009 at 6:00PM }

The crew behind Castle Crashers, artist to the stars Dan Paladin and programmer elite Tom Fulp, just willingly pulled the curtain back from their super secret design process. With the curtain removed, we get an insider's look into the creation process and how the evil Frost King came to be. As you can see per the art above, Mr. Paladin puts a heavy coat of "artistic magic" over the placeholder designs which sort of remind us of some sort of third grade school art project. View the creation of the Frost King in the 650% normal speed video that's embedded after the break. That Paladin has talent!

Continued →

World at War and Castle Crashers top Live charts

by Dustin Burg { Jan 20th 2009 at 1:30PM }

New Xbox Live activity figures for the week of January 12th have just made their way online thanks to one Major Nelson and claiming the number one spot is Treyarch's Call of Duty: World at War. That zombified weekend must have helped. Halo 3, CoD4, Gears 2 and Left 4 Dead round out the top five. As far as Xbox Live Arcade games go, Castle Crashers sits on top, partly due to the fact that new DLC just released. Full list of Live rankings for retail, XBLA and Community Games is viewable after the jump.

Castle Crashers King Pack available now

by Richard Mitchell { Jan 14th 2009 at 11:45AM }

The bad news: There is no new Xbox Live Arcade release this week (we do get something next week, though). The good news: There is new downloadable content for Castle Crashers and it's only 160 Microsoft Points. The description for the content in Marketplace is shamefully sparse but, thankfully, The Behemoth has already detailed exactly what the pack contains. So without further ado, the King Pack includes the following:

2 new playable characters: The King (duh) and the Open Faced Gray Knight (not to be confused with an open faced club sandwich)
New Pelter animal orb (which appears to be a seal, cute)
3 new weapons: NG Lollipop, NG Gold Sword and the King's Mace

You can see some of the new content in our super secret spy pic above. The King is a special character, as his magic actually heals himself and the other players, which is unique among the various magics in the game. He also only has three teeth, which also makes him special.

Download the King Pack from Xbox Live Marketplace

This Wednesday: Castle Crashers DLC hitting XBLA

by Ross Miller { Jan 13th 2009 at 12:56PM }

We've got new Castle Crashers DLC coming to Xbox Live Arcade this week for 160

($2), according to Major Major Major Major (Nelson). As of this writing, no other details were available on his site nor on the Behemoth's blog, but we suspect it's probably the new characters and weapons we heard about in September. Sure, it's not technically a new title, but we'll let them slide this time. After all, it could be worse. As for the week after, you've got The Maw.

Castle Crashers 'King Pack' DLC releasing this Wed [update]

by Dustin Burg { Jan 13th 2009 at 12:30PM }

Update: GSB informs us that the DLC will contain two new characters (Open Faced Grey Knight and The King), a new seal animal orb named Pelter, three new weapons including the Gold Sword, and a King's Heal potion that heals your entire party.

Thanks to one helpful Major Nelson, we've just been informed that Castle Crashers' firstest downloadable content will be releasing to the Xbox Live Marketplace this Wednesday and will be priced at 160 Microsoft points. The King Pack is the DLC's name and if the name is any indication of what'll be included in the paid content, we'd say there'd be a king involved in it somewhere. Now that we think about it, the new content will probably look something like this.

We've contacted The Behemoth regarding this Castle Crashers DLC and are patiently awaiting concrete details.