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!

I’ve found the process of retreiving artworks from an elusive concept artist to be quite tedious. These people, ‘the creative people‘ as the politically-correct term seems to be these days, tend to turn into ostriches whenever a situation revolves around their previous creations, presumably because they see it as a flawed thing from the past, an ignomous monster they’ve spawned and are terribly ashamed of.

If you ask me tho, there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact I quite like the first version of Father Richiardo, the nun’s mentor.

In the updated version of Twin Blades Father Richiardo will be the central hub not only for the story as he gives indications to the nun, but also as a 24/7 convenience store as he’s now holding the shop accessible anytime between missions. That’s right, no more waiting until the End of Day to buy new weapons!

Next up we have a tree who’s role isn’t as central in the storyline, but is a nice tree anyway.

All that green stuff (along with many others) fit particularly well in the forest level, which has a certain eerie touch that make it particularly charming (if you take no notice of the zombies).

Feel free to send us your comments if you’d like to see more artworks!

The trailer is live with footage of the update content of Twin Blades, showing off slaaaaaash combos! (applause) The mini map! (applause) New environments! (applause) The story mode! (applause) Badass bosses! (booo)

Let us know what you think of the new content in the comments!

Twin Blades’ update is coming end of march (of this year) on XBLIG and the App store, and we’ve got a screenshot to prove it, featuring the second boss in its dedicated arena!

The scenario gave us a hard time, but it’s finally over with and we are satisfied with the outcome. You guys asked for a storyline and you are gonna get it, hard!

All of the graphic assets are now complete and it is up to Jeff & Fab our two code monkeys to finish the thing (which should take a couple of weeks because of all the stuff we kept adding into the game design while they were asleep).

More screens and vids coming in very soon!

Well Aldex -the winner of our Beat Mako and get reward for it contest- has received his prize and was kind enough to supply us with a picture of it, featuring the canvas, Aldex, his most precious tie and his nicest pecs.

So in turn we’d like to supply him with a picture of the defeated vilain, featuring Mako, his eternal hat and his nicest week-old beard.

With his insolent grin of awesomeness gone everything is at its place, and we’ll be ready to shed some more details about the Twin Blades update at the end of this week!

Isn’t it amazing how people take firm resolutions only to give them up all half a bottle of wine later?

Because this is the whole story behind iPad Twin Blades, the very first iPad optimized game IN THE WORLD. Forget about major publishers, we ain’t just porting our game with a crappy x2 pixellated zoom: we will offer native HD graphics and it’s gonna kick ass.

I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone just yet but in all this excitment I forgot myself and sent a screen to pocketgamer picturing one of the bosses of the update.

(click on the image for iPad resolution)

Obviously the build is still under heavy work – and we’re prioritizing the update more than the iPad version, but it is looking great in the emulator already!
The update will feature bosses, new environments, a story mode, a mini map to let players chose whichever level suits them best and several NPCs. As we stated previously said update will be free to all of you who have already purchased the game.

The update is scheduled for release end of february on the iPhone & iPod touch, and end of march on XBLIG and the iPad. Stay tuned for more screens very soon!

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!

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!