The game is live, I repeat the game is live!

Get it here while its cheap!
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/offers/00000001-0000-4000-8000-0000585503e1?partner=RSS

Now that my shoutout duty is fulfilled I may return to bed and resume my slow agony – man oysters are EVIL!

The game is currently being peer-reviewed, the penultimate state before being released on Xbox Live Indie Games. Unfortunately peer-review isn’t like when all urinals are occupied and you can always pee in the ladies’ washbowl instead: there’s no queue-dodging on XBLIG.

There is no ETA, although it shouldn’t take more than a few days – or maybe even hours. We’re 70% done, it doesn’t mean much as we don’t know exactly how many more reviews the remaining 30% represent (Microsoft likes to keep it a secret, or else people would figure out how the break the mysterious Microsoft Time and that would take away most of the charm of staring at that blue bar’s progress).

Problem is peer-reviews is a volunteer-based system, people do it in their free time and it seems they are currently busy spending their free-time on trivial things such as family gathering and selling unwanted gifts on ebay.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience, we’ve messed up and we’ll whip the coders as a collective punishment – although they’ll probably enjoy it so we’ll also force them to port the game in Java too.

Players may download the first update of Twin Blades for free on the app store, bringing 12 new different ennemies – some of which are armored and much tougher to kill with ballistics!

The update also brings small changes in the HUD where you can now see the icons of the next and previous guns near the currently equipped gun, and we’ve added a glow effet on the second tab of the upgrade shop.

We’ve had reports of players going all the way up to day 20 without seeing the second tab, kudos to you guys as going as far without any life/slash upgrade must have been quite a challenge! We’re sorry the tab was so discrete, we’ll keep that in mind in the future.

Here’s the detailed changelog of the update:

- Added 12 new zombie skins featuring Hawaiian shirts, Chef’s utensils, and mummy-style bandanas.
- Introducing the armored zombie: bullets bounce off its tin can-made bullet-proof vest.
- New OpenFeint achievement: ‘Cassoulet’. Kill 500 armored zombies to unlock it.
- Life potions spawn more frequently.
- The next and previous weapons are now displayed in-game.
- The description of locked items is now displayed in the shop even if the player can’t afford to buy them.
- The current day is now displayed in the in-game pause menu.
- Added a glow effect on the second tab of the upgrade shop.
- The game’s version number is now displayed in the main menu.
- Twin Blades v1.0.1 does not erase the player’s progression and settings from Twin Blades v1.0.

There is more blood, more flesh, more partial-yet-very-acceptable nudity in the HD version of Twin Blades, and its coming to Xbox Live Indie Games very soon!

wtf when? asks SerialKerry95 on our twitter. Very soon, in fact there should be zombies under your christmas tree. Well, provided that you have a Xbox 360 of course, or else it’ll just be the mere boring family gathering. Which is fine I suppose, but lets face it considerably lacks the blood splatters to be be realistically fun.

The game will sell at 240 MS points, and just like with the iPhone version we have some sweet updates in the pipes which includes bosses, new environments, additional slash animation etc etc.

What’s more, these downloadable contents will be FREE for those who have purchased the game early, as a mean to thank our early supporters (or is it as a mean to punish those cowards who’d want to wait for the updates I never recall).

Not only Twin Blades’ trailer is now online, but it also features exclusive footage of the update to come – update which has been submitted to Apple for release in the days to come!

Stay tuned for more soon, and don’t forget to shame our highscores in our contest to win a 40″ canvas of the splashscreen!

Well, on the Japanese App Store at least. Breaking into the top 10 most downloaded games (#3 action game w00t) in this country which inspired us so much gives us the shivers – what if Shigeru Miyamoto is playing our game?!

It could be, it could very well be. We may push supposition as far as to beleive he might even enjoy it. There is this guy 魔法の力 who gave us a 5 stars rating and commented that パソコンのフラッシュゲームみたいなかんじ ボスらしいものはなくひたすら鎌と銃を使って進む横スクロールアクション。. It must be him, I can sense the force is strong within these undecipherable characters.

We’ve also broken into the US top 100. Surely Barack Obama is playing too.

When you create a video game there is always a time where you are a bit nostalgic its going public because you are about to lose the 1st spot on the leaderboard.

Its like surrendering sovereignty of your own game to people who will have no remorse getting better at it than you and beat the bloody high score you thought would be forever engraved in e-stone to mark your supremacy as The Creator.

Mako our concept artist was so fanatic about being the first of us to unlock all the achievements that we thought of a nice way to humble the radiant grin of awesomeness he has been insolently exhibiting these last few days.

We call it on you guys for this contest: Beat Mako’s 1 084 520 points highscore in Twin Blades: The Reaping Vanguard until the 25th of december, upload it to the online Open Feint leaderboard and send us an email at info@press-start-studio.com stating your OpenFeint ID. We will then randomly select one winner among those to receive a 40″ canvas of a game’s artwork dedicated by the whole crew!

A lot of gamers are asking for more content on Twin Blades and we are ecstatic that you guys love the game and ask for more. We are currently working on several updates to come, the first of which will introduce a new kind of zombie. We’ll then work on bosses, another slash for the nun, new environments and a mini-map for players to chose which level to play!

Introducing the armored fella, geared straight from the kitchen (of hell!)

We will also change the pricing policy for the game: we’ll keep the game at 0.79€ (0.99$ US) for now and gradually rise this price as more contents come from updates. Of course those who have bought the game won’t have to pay for updates as those will remain free. In other words we are going in the opposite direction of what big buck publishers do (charge the game full price at release and gradually lower it later).
It’s a bit of an experiment here and obviously there is a certain financial risk but we really want to thank players who have supported us from the beginning, and we think these people should pay less!

The people over at 148apps.com have nominated Twin Blades for Best Graphics in an iPhone application this year! If you share the same belief, find the nun cute or our zombies disturbingly attractive feel free to vote for Twin Blades right here – it only requires a mouse click!

Nominate
Twin Blades
for
Best Game Graphics

Twin Blades : The Reaping Vanguard is now available in 5 different languages on the app store!

http://itunes.com/apps/twinblades

What’s more, the game will be sold for only 0.99 $ (0,79 €) for a limited period of one week, that’s the price of a peas’ can!

Some people may argue it’s also the price of a soda can, it may be true but then we’d have to talk about the debatable benefits of iron versus sweet in the human body which is as endless as the ninjas versus pirate thing and then when would YOU have time to quit reading and go kill some zombies?

Off you go, the nun needs you!