Archive for December, 2009

03 Pixel! Pastagames & Arkedo are coloured in blue!

Monday, December 21st, 2009

herveDear friends,

jaquette_pixelAfter Maestro! Jump in Music’s long production phase, Hervé Barbaresi, our Artistic Supervisor, had the idea of make a game with:

  • a cat,
  • big fat pixels,
  • platforms,
  • and pixels inside the pixels!

When one of us has a project so close to their heart, we fight to make it happen; and when we do, we take some friends on the road with us. The one and only Arkedo, our neighbours and soul mates, have accepted that we ride along in their wonderful “Arkedo Series” on the Indie Games section of the Xbox Live. There was “01 Jump!” then “02 Swap!” so we gladly present “03 Pixel!”.

Maïwenn Rapine from Arkedo has handled the programming, Hervé did the rest. The rest of us sneaked around, tested and smiled…

pixel_3We would love to see this Indie Games section take off for it is a great way for small studios like ourselves to share our games with you.

The development environment is technically mature and impressive, no need for development kits nor expensive tools. If you have and Xbox 360, you plug it in, you work from your usual computer, and when you’re done, boom, you deploy and simply play on with the Xbox pad on your HD TV! Amazing stuff, really!

When the game is complete, submit it to the game community, your peers may validate it, and you’re online!!! Concerning 03 Pixel, it took exactly 22 hours. Trust me, when you have worked on other devices with other kinds of submissions… the simplicity feels as odd as it’s welcome!

pixel_1Ok then, what’s the catch?

  • Extreme piracy? Nop.
  • Restricted access for developers? Nop.
  • Slow, complicated, cannot make good games with the technology? Nop.

So we jumped in, and will certainly jump in again! We’ll make other game according to how much income we get from the games already out.

pixel_2This is a solution we are trying after the enormous trouble we have had with the distribution of Maestro! Jump in Music, we will try others until we find good ones…

It is with great pleasure than we now can say, for a mere 240 Microsoft points, and with a few thumb flicks, you can get 03 Pixel! wherever you are from!

You can even try it before buying. For only 8 minutes… more than enough to hook you ;) You can get it from your PC or MAC, and play in 5 minutes on your Xbox 360.

Do you speak FRENCH, or ENGLISH?

DSCN1265We believe that this game will please you as much as it pleased us! Within the first few hours, 03 Pixel! is one of the best-rated (by players) games, next to 01 Jump! and 02 Swap!

We’d love to know what you think of it!

Edit (22/12/2009): 240 Microsoft points, not 230 :)

jaquette_pixel