SouthPeak Games, publisher of Two Worlds as well as the uber-cute DS title Ninjatown, has secured an impressive $12.9 million in private funding. As reported by VC blog VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi, the financing is particularly interesting given that most investments of this sort are directed at the online games, virtual worlds or social networks, rather than the more traditional console and PC game space that SouthPeak calls home.

The company will have no shortage of projects on which to blow its newfound cash, with a number of other titles on deck including XBLA puzzler Roogoo, Monster Madness: Grave Danger for the PS3, and The Temptation, which is totally not-an-expansion to Two Worlds. With multiple sequels planned, Takahashi also notes that the pub sees last year's Xbox 360 and PC RPG as its biggest success to date, though it's a sentiment obviously measured in something other than review scores.

It's not often we read a press release lauding a game for "[updating] the square peg in round hole premise to a whole new level," but that's just how Roogoo is described. You can find out for yourself this Wednesday, either through the demo or by plopping down a virtual Alexander Hamilton (800 MS points).

Also coming this Wednesday (and also for 800 MS points) is Aces of the Galaxy, which looks to be a frenetic on-rails space shooter for those who haven't gotten their space shooter fills with Ikaruga. Both titles will be available this Wednesday, June 4 at 4:00 a.m. Joystiq Standard Time.

If you've got Microsoft Points burning a hole in your pocket, and are left wanting for yet another Xbox Live Arcade puzzler, next Wednesday's release of Roogoo may be just up your alley. Publisher SouthPeak has announced that it will drop the puzzle game onto the service for 800 MS Points ($10), promising all the fun you and up to three other players can have by sliding pegs of different shapes into their appropriate holes ... all while trying to save an alien race.

While the game draws more than a little influence from toys aimed at toddlers, our recent hands-on time with Roogoo still managed to keep us entertained, though you can judge for yourself when the puzzler drops onto XBLA on June 4.

Heard of Roogoo? Don't worry if you haven't. It's fallen a little under the radar, but our recent hands-on with this XBLA title has us hankering for more. Describing the game's premise does it little justice, simply because it seems like something that would barely entertain a three year old. However, under the game's cute exterior and almost-mindlessly simple gameplay lies a lot of depth and fun.

Roogoo follows one of the cardinal rules of the puzzle genre: inexplicably, things are falling from the sky. Blocks of various shapes will descend from above, and players must rotate platforms to allow these shapes to continue their journey downward. We're certain you've played with preschool toys that are similar to this: star goes in star, triangle goes in triangle, box goes in box, etc. The shoulder buttons rotate the platforms, and the A button lets you accelerate the falling piece.

As we warned, this description does little to make the game sound very entertaining. Trust me, I had the same reservations as you're probably thinking when approaching this title. However, things get surprisingly (almost embarassingly) difficult later on. Enemies will spawn in holes, and can only be knocked off by accelerating blocks on their heads. Blocks won't only come down faster, but they'll come down more than one at a time, forcing players to look at multiple levels of play at the same time. Jumping to one of the later levels had us reach miserable failure in a matter of seconds, as we collapsed under the overwhelming weight of colorful children's blocks.

Two Worlds didn't exactly make SouthPeak a household name, and we're willing to bet Roogoo won't either (oh well, there's always Ninjatown). But the North Carolina publisher has thankfully taken a step back from last year's grandiose flop and teamed with developer SpiderMonk Entertainment to release a simpler project, Roogoo. The game title lacks any coherent meaning, until you consider that gameplay is based on the simple concept of matching different-shaped blocks to corresponding holes -- an exercise many of us practiced back in diapers. And so, "roogoo" is perhaps a nod to those days of gurgling baby-speak.

In development for Xbox Live Arcade and Windows, Roogoo is better described as a puzzle game which "tasks players with guiding meteors in the form of shaped blocks though a series of rotating disks as a means of saving planet Roo and the entire Roogoo race." Didn't you know? Your parents were training you to one day save a doomed alien race! Roogoo is slated for release this April.

[Via press release]