Those of you who have been following since the beginning know of our habit to be late to celebrations such as birthdays, weddings, Halloween etc. Rest assured that for 2010 we took the firmest resolution to abide to our persistency in punctuality failures.

Thus we’re happy to wish you all a happy new year 2010, 6 days behind!

We’ve got plenty of things going on, the most urgent of which being the upcoming updates for Twin Blades. Now rest assured that we have read carefully all your feedbacks and are actively working on adding cool stuff to the game.
We’d like to take this special occasion to thank all of you not only for buying Twin Blades, but also for your kind words and enthusiasm – its been really heart-warming to see people appreciate our game so much and its really pushing us forward.

So thank you 2009, its been a kickass year for the Press Start team: we’ve been rejected over and over (and over) but in the end you showed us the light – and a little bit of glitter too.

[JeffEdit: OMG Phil, so cheesy!]
[PhilEdit: 'tis the last time I give you administrative rights!]

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.

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!

We could finally set a strict release date and even attach a price tag to the game:

Twin Blades will be out december 7th at 2,39€ (2.99$). We said we would reward fans who have been supporting us while we were in development and thus we will launch the game at a discount price of 0,79€ (0.99$) for the first week!

And here are 3 new screenshots introducing the flamethrower, the skill shop and the third environment, boy it feels like its Christmas already!