Q-Games' wildly colorful and inherently trippy PSN title, Pixeljunk Eden, has been confirmed for a July 31 release on both the US and Japanese PlayStation Network. The downloadable game, which has captured plenty of attention thanks to a unique art style and mellow gameplay, is the third 2D game in the popular PixelJunk series.

Wait ... isn't that LocoRoco Cocoreccho? Nope, it's the latest model in the PixelJunk line from Q-Games, PixelJunk Eden. It just so happens that this new video of the game's multiplayer shows two little ... things hopping around and swinging from leaves, limbs, and the like.

The "goal" of the game is to collect pollen and make the flora grow – and, as this footage has proven, totally mellow us out. It remains without a firm launch date, but Q-Games has previously alluded to a summer release for this PlayStation Network title.

In closing his GDC post-mortem on the PlayStation Network's PixelJunk games, Q-Games president Dylan Cuthbert briefly showed off the next game in the series of downloadable, 2D titles. PixelJunk Eden comes across as being far more experimental than the independent developer's previous titles, boasting psychedelic visuals, an electronic soundtrack and swinging, ball-based platforming. We're quite sure we haven't written a description like that in quite some time.

Eden started development in June 2007, and Cuthbert told us that he expects it to arrive on PSN sometime "before Summer." Also mentioned but never elaborated on was PixelJunk Dungeons, the fourth title in the series which Cuthbert assured us would, in fact, feature dungeons of some kind. Finally, the presentation revealed that Q-Games would eventually focus its efforts on 3D gaming in a second series of PixelJunk. We'll bring you a full report on the PixelJunk postmortem (and forthcoming games) soon.

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.

Sure, you may be well aware of the fact that last week's 2.1 firmware update for the PlayStation 3 gifted the console with support for the ubiquitous DivX video codec, but did you also know that nestled deep within the update was a new space-faring music visualizer? Seen in motion through the magic of YouTube, it's an incredibly nifty way to relax to those newly unwrapped CDs, but it also makes us wax nostalgic and wonder whatever happened to those grade school dreams of becoming astronauts when we grew up.

The new tool was created by Q-Games, who developed the terrifically fun PSN downloadable PixelJunk Racers, and the studios' PR manager Duncan Flett tells Gamasutra that the project went through a number of changes prior to release, including an initial stint as the boot sequence for Sony's console. Also interesting is that the visualizer uses texture data lifted from the NASA Blue Marble project, making this one of the neatest uses of science since the application of baking soda to vinegar.

Full disclosure: This writer did, in fact, pen stories for Gamasutra in a previous life before his current tour of duty on board the starship Joystiq.

[Via Gamasutra]

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]

This week's issue of Weekly Famitsu has an interview with Dylan Cuthbert of Kyoto-based developer Q-Games. The double-page spread reveals Q-Games' latest project, PixelJunk, which is being designed as a series of "casual games" for download from the PS3's PlayStation Store. We've taken some shots of the first PixelJunk images, as seen on the pages Famitsu, for your perusal. Pictured are three titles in the very early stages of development, including what looks like a static-screen top-down racer and another game that has Lemmingsy overtones. Q-Games is in talks with SCEA to bring PixelJunk to the West.