Some of you guys might (definitely) have experienced some troubles while running Twin Blades on a Mango-updated windows phone 7. Problem would be simple: the game would not run at all. With the only known workaround being not to launch the software.
So after 3 months of long and tedious debates we have come to the conclusion that it could very well be what you’d call one of these ‘critical bugs’ sort of things, so we promptly flagged it in ‘will not fix’ and texted Microsoft to patch their OS before embarking to the edge of world (our local pub).

Turns out the Redmond dudes were already in their own local pub after a long day of will-not-fix duties, and we sort of crashed into what some professionals in the industry would call the twilight zone of the bug-tracking chart, a mysterious void where all sort of stuff happens, including but not limited to some good old think-out-of-the-box kind of brainstorming after a few pints of lager.

“So hey” we thought, “wouldn’t it be quicker to patch the good stuff? ‘cuz it’s easier“?

By the time we realized it actually involved us to work we had already given our word so after everyone sobered up and checked their respective lower-backs for any undesired new tattoo we’ve laid bare our matter, placed it at the center of our collective attention and crushed it with a mind of ice. And voilà, mesdames & messieurs, how a patch is born.

Version 1.3 is now undergoing the very last stage of its gestation in Microsoft’s QA labs and should be running up and cutting zombies in half within a week!

Rejoice, Windows Phone 7-owning-gamers of the world, for Twin Blades is about to return to your well-gatekept platform in a matter of days!

Microsoft has decided to celebrate the US indie day by offering the game back to the world – this time including Germany- on July 6th ! That’s two days later than the much-needed fireworks admittedly, but hey you can’t be both the ban-hammer champion AND consider such petty things as calendar relevance.

Some ink has been spilled when the game has been banned on February 2nd, speculation went wild and we chose to stay quiet. We owe to all of you an explanation, which I would have given if there hadn’t been this guy on the internet who conveniently got it all right three months ago so I can save myself the trouble of actually explaining everything and instead copy/paste his stuff like journalists do.

Twin Blades was an Xbox LIVE branded game on WP7. Twin Blades has also been released on other platforms (Xbox LIVE Indie Games, iOS, PSP, etc). The game is the same on all platforms. The ESRB rated Twin Blades as M on PSP. This rating retroactively applies to all versions of that game, not just the PSP game. Since Microsoft complies with ESRB ratings, they must ensure that no one under 18 has access to M rated content. On Xbox LIVE you cannot download M rated content if your account does not indicate you are 18. Windows Phone 7 has no such restrictions in place at this time. Therefore, to comply with the ESRB, Microsoft removed the game. The game is still available on other platforms (iOS specifically) because others (Apple specifically) does not adhere to ESRB ratings.

Thank you gb330033, for the sake of precision I would add that the ESRB rating only covered the PSP version and didn’t actually cover any other platform, its just that uncle Mic’ likes to be extra careful when it comes to protecting our innocent children from cartoon zombies.

Anyway the new update (or Twin Blades 1.2) changes the color of the blood from gore-red to spinach-green. It also changes the way users’ music is handled in the background when playing the game, which is more of a guideline-compliance thing than a bug-fix.
Everything else, gameplay, achievements, storyline etc. remain untouched. You don’t HAVE to update if you’d rather have your blood red, but if you do there will be no turning back.

Apologies to those who bought Twin Blades, had to reset their phone for whatever reason and couldn’t download the game anymore, there was nothing we could do.

It took a while for the update to be released, and in the words of Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka: “let’s just say, Microsoft has a lot of lawyers” – which leads me to believe he single-handedly sucked up all of their legal resources and left us none to file our one page amendment.

So yeah, in fine we blame it all on Angry birds.

It’s an avalanche of good games coming to Windows Phones 7, and we are very proud that Butterfly is part of the snowing deluge which will overwhelm your cravings. And your girlfriend’s. And your nephew’s. And your mum’s.

Butterfly is about blossoming flowers, and it’s something everyone can do. Because we figured even bloodthirsty zombie-killers want a little blossoming break in their day from time to time, it’s what makes us better human being.

Do yourself a favor and make your world a tone brighter today by watching the trailer below!

Now for the good part: the game sports 12 official Xbox Live achievements and 200 G, although Microsoft didn’t tell us grams of what. Butter presumably, although it’d make a weird cake I think.
Oh but it also features Xbox Live Leaderboards, so your nephew can shame your highscore. And your mum. And quite possibly even your girlfriend. That’s right ladies, we know you like it more than nothing else when you castrate our e-penis.

The game is available like, right now for a mere 2,99$ ! And here’s the deep link direct to flying goodness on the Zune Marketplace:

And if you like the game graphics you can download a bunch of stuff over on our Download page!

We’ve been admittedly very busy for the last few months. Tinkering with the WP7 prototype we looted from the cold dead hands of a Microsoft rep turned out to be more fun than work as Fab single-handedly ported 90% of Twin Blades’ code in a fortnight.
“All along while eating pizza with my other hand” he claimed, which didn’t impress his mum whose appreciation for his achievement came second to her concern for healthy diet.

The game now boasts 20 genuine Xbox Live Achievements and Live-tied leaderboards so you can not only dwarf your noob friends’ score but also humiliate them publicly, which is precisely what hardcore gaming is all about.

Twin Blades: The Reaping Vanguard has been released alongside Windows Phones 7 and is doing pretty well, being featured in the top 10 best selling apps of the Zune Marketplace right now and, most importantly, scoring at 4,5 stars rating!

Looking for Twin Blades assets? Feel free to browse over our Download page to retreive a bunch of ‘em in our updated press kit!

Looking for a cool game on your band new Samsung Wave phone? Lucky you, Twin Blades is available right now from the Bada store almost everywhere in the world!

Not only does the game sport high-res graphics fit for the S8500 800×480 screen, but it also contains an exclusive new environment featured below:

Peeps in Russia, China, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Canada and Mexico may have to wait a couple weeks before Samsung makes the paid-apps store available in your countries – which according to the intel retreived from a Korean ninja should come up late june/early july.

As for our fellow Brazilians and Koreans I’m afraid it’s a no-go, apparently your respective governments take the matter of video-games so seriously that there will be no games at all on the Bada store in your countries. It’s a little be more complicated than that but the lawyer-ninja bore us to sleep before we could understand why exactly games are banned there. Sorry pals.

Alas, this one contest is for Press Start Studio.

The folks over at computerandvideogames.com have nominated Twin Blades into several categories for the 28th Golden Joystick Awards!
Votes are user-based, and I was told people with bad karma problems could redeem of few good points by voting for Twin Blades in the Portable, Downloadable and Ultimate Game of the Year categories.

Voting is open until may 27th and no registration is needed.

Now whether or not they actually are giving winners a gold-plated joystick and, most importantly, whether said joystick would feature Japanese components remains unknown.

KidKobun even made us this nice looking mockup of where you can vote for Twin Blades, and because his mockup features much better-looking arrows than mine it is showcased below.

We have passed the point where Twin Blades has become profitable (which sounds like a delectable dessert to our ears).
So we’ve got this big bag of money right now and being a big bunch of nerds we had no idea what to do with it, so we made a quick vote and unanimously decided to spend it all on custom t-shirts.

And because we have too many of these classy t-shirts, we thought we should give them away to our most dedicated fans. But we’re not going to throw them away randomly, or else where would the feeling of achievement be in that? How could you unsuspiciously parade in the streets with your PSS t-shirt and swell with pride in society without emanating the subtle odor of own sweat?

We’ve noticed Twin Blades had its fans and we like that, a lot. But further than that we’ve also noticed how some of these fans take initiatives to actively participate in the promotion of the game. And we want to reward those active fans, and we want to equip them with the best gear the world has to offer so they can beat the crap out of the other games’ fans.

Thus, we collectively decided that Phil should sacrifice the unique custom Twin Blades joystick he crafted out of a Xbox 360 pad and equipped with full Sanwa/Seimitsu japanese parts, and give it to our best uberfan.

Well that’s interesting, now how exactly do I become an uberfan so I can beat the crap out of other games’ fans with a unique joystick in a cool t-shirt? you ask. And the good news is we haven’t set any boundaries for that. All you need to do is promote Twin Blades in any way of your choosing and send us a picture or whatever you did at uberfan@press-start-studio.com before the 30th of may to enter the contest!

Get involved, do it your way! You could either tell about the game and how much you’ve liked it on your favorite forum like Gamer_Kyio did on IGN, or send a message to your daily game news blog to incite them to update their review with the DLC, or draw some fan art like Aphex did with the nun (along with a completely NSFW version), or send a tip to any website you think would like the game like KidKobun did with Mtv, or use your own prose to post a review of on the app store, possibilities are endless, creativity is all yours!

Aye, after months of hard work the free DLC is now available for download on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel!

As previously stated the new content brings a storyline, boss challenges, a mini map navigation system, 11 new environments, more awards to unlock, additional slash moves and plenty of other improvements.

Go ahead and enjoy the treat – we look forward to hearing your impressions!

Edit: The DLC has also hit the app store, ready your iPhones!

Yes, the DLC is on its way. The peer review of the XBLIG version is roughly 85% complete and the iPhone version is still making its way to you.

In the meantime I’d like to introduce you with a neat little feature we haven’t mentionned before: you will now be given the opportunity to set the level of transparency of the HUD all by yourself!

In the story mode we have de-zoomed the action slightly in order for the nun not to overlay with the controls too much. But for those of you who can find the controls solely with the Force™ rather than relying on your good old eyesight will be pleased to know that you can make the bottom-screen icons completely disappear if you so wish!

Oh yes, you can also adjust the level of the in-game sounds and music separately as well. But who would ever want to lower the sound of an imploding zombie head I wonder.

And as a special treat I’ve also added a screen of one of the new environments at night time – featuring what seems to be the most popular weapon of all: the flame-thrower of course!

It seems it has been following my whole career on the production side of the games industry, everytime I am in the vicinity of a coder announcing (with a certain pride) something like “this is it, we’ve fixed everything ’tis the last build we’re compiling”, it is bound to fuck up.

This time the curse has been very creative and we have uncovered a nasty hidden bug at the last minute that corrupts the saved game if the player leaves the mini-map under certain conditions.

One wonders why we don’t use the famous ‘if(m_CorruptSavedGame = 1) return UncorruptSavedGame‘ line but Jeff & Fab insisted that coding didn’t work like that and we needed the late working hours to fix it thoroughly instead.

So we’re holding on the release until it is fixed, because even if only 2% of the players encounter this bug it is potentially so frustrating that it would completely destroy the user experience.

Please bear with us while we process the sacrificial chickens to counter the curse, we’re getting there I swear. ‘Tis the last build we’re compiling.

Update: The DLC has now been submitted both to the App Store and XBLIG peer review!