PSN’s PixelJunk $1 Sale Starts Tomorrow!
This year marks Q-Games’, the maker of the PixelJunk series on PSN, with Eden having been recently released on Steam, tenth anniversary in the gaming business. To celebrate this milestone event, Q-Games has slashed the prices of their PSN games! When tomorrow’s PlayStation Store update goes live, PixelJunk Eden, PixelJunk Monster, PixelJunk Racer, and PixelJunk Shooter will be available for $1 each while PixelJunk Monster Deluxe, PixelJunk Shooter 2, and PixelJunk SideScroller will receive a 50% price deduction. This offer will be valid for only one week, so jump on it quickly. After you’ve watched the trailer for the sale below, join us after the jump to see what each game is about!
PixelJunk Racers was the first game in the PixelJunk series. This game was avoided by many because of how different it was. Racers is basically a top-down racing game with hundreds of little card on-screen at once. What really set this game apart from the other games on the PlayStation Store though was that it supported up to 7 plays simultaneously! Now how many games do you have that do that? Although the crowd was small, Q-games felt that its following was large enough to update the game, transforming it into PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap (hey, it’s free DLC, you don’t get that too often) which added new tracks, trophy support, and ghosts to race for the best time online.
PixelJunk Monsters is where the series really started to develop a strong following. Monsters was a tower defense game that functioned just like other tower defense games that you’ve played, except for the fact that you controlled a little creature that would collect coins and gems from fallen enemies. These coins and gems were then used to upgrade and gain new artillery. Following Monsters success, Q-Games released an expansion, PixelJunk Monsters: Encore, that added an additional 15 levels, thus bringing the level count to a nice 36!
Ah yes, PixelJunk Eden, this game served as my introduction to the franchise, and one of the first PSN games that I played! Eden puts you in control of yet another creature (you’re following the pattern right?), but this time you have to swing around each level collecting pollen so that the various flowers in the level would bloom, thus allowing for more room to maneuver. Once a certain amount of flowers bloomed, you could choose to advance to the next level, or continue until time ran out. This particular PixelJunk game was the first game on the PlayStation Network to have trophies with its release. Neat eh? Oh, and like Monsters, there was also an Encore expansion to Eden, which added more levels, gameplay elements, and more! Did I mention that Eden has three-player Co-Op?
PixelJunk Shooter took the PixelJunk franchise and made it more action-oriented. While it still maintained its charming nature found in the previous titles, Shooter featured multiple enemies for you to fight as your ship dove further and further into the depths of a strange cavern on an alien planet. Your task was to collect the survivors that had lost contact with your vessel and….well, the ending is surprising to say the least. Like Eden, Shooter also had cooperative play, but this was limited to two players.
PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe marked the franchise’s first, but not last, time on Sony’s PlayStation Portable. Monsters Deluxe was basically a second expansion that incorporated everything from the previous game and its expansion while also adding more levels, enemies, towers, music, videos, concept art, and special features. Yeah, this game was packed with content. If you have a PSP, then I’d recommend that you pick up this version. Vita owners will be happy to know that this will be coming to the Vita Store on May 15th.
Following the success of PixelJunk Shooter, Q-Games set to work on a follow-up, PixelJunk Shooter 2. This sequel picks up right where its predecessor left off, I won’t mention where that is for spoiler purposes, but if you feel like jumping straight into this game, then you’ll be happy to know that it starts out with a convenient little flashback that cover the events of the previous game. Like Shooter and Eden, Shooter 2 features an in-game recording feature that allows the player to record up to 10 minutes of footage, anywhere in the game. This game also marked the first time a PixelJunk game has ventured into the online territory (unless you count Racers’ Ghost s). Shooter 2′s online came in the form of a versus mode which required the two opposing players to safely extract a survivor from the center of the designated level and back to their home base before getting blown to smithereens by the enemy.
PixelJunk Sidescroller is….hard to describe. The best way I can describe it is a retro-looking sidescroller, akin to arcade games of the same genre, with the mechanics and models of PixelJunk Shooter. I suppose we could label this as a “spiritual sequel” to the Shooter series because of what happens in its climax, but because I haven’t had any experience with this entry in the franchise, I’ll just leave it up to you to find out how it ties in with the other two entries.
