Blazin' Balls Xtreme Edition

MStar Games announce the pending release of BLAZIN’ BALLS XTREME EDITION, the follow-up to the successful Blazin’ Balls, published in April 2010. The game will be released on the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel for 80 MSP.

Make your spinning, sizzling way along the road as fast as you can without falling through the gaps. Simple? Few will be good or fast enough to complete all 20 stunning 3D levels, but everyone can enjoy the 2-player battle mode - smack your opponent's ball around in the race to the line! Can YOU find your way to the top of the global online score table?

The aim of the game could not be simpler. Guide your ball along the road as fast as possible, avoiding the gaps in the road. The road has a few tricks ready for the unwary gamer however – it’s comprised of coloured tiles which affect your progress in different ways. Players are introduced to the various challenges in the in-game video tutorial.

BLUE tiles throw your ball up in to the air, GREEN tiles speed you up, RED tiles slow your ball down, PURPLE tiles throw your ball backwards, YELLOW blocks distort your view of the road, and CYAN blocks reverse your left and right controls.

Each of the 20 levels has a target time. Complete the level within time for bonus points, or collect points as you go by bagging coins. Every 25,000 points you gain an extra life. High-scores are shared with other players via Xbox LIVE.

Gamers can also compete in the 2-player mode, where the action really gets smouldering! Push and knock your opponent out of your way, in to an obstacle or into a hole as your hurtle towards your goal! With free restarts you can keep the action going over all 20 levels!

Developer DrMistry ( drmistry@mstargames.co.uk) talks up the title: “The original Blazin’ Balls was a really fun but slightly lightweight game. We got great reviews, loads of downloads and thousands of sales, and I’m proud of it! We originally wrote it to be an example project for use in a book, so we left gaps for people to add their own polish, had hints in the code on how to improve the frame-rate, and left the graphical assets fairly simple. The book deal fell through in the end, which is a shame, but it gave me a chance to practice what I preach – polish, polish and polish some more.”

After 4 months of redesign, reworking, writing new music and creating new artwork, not to mention pages of playtesting feedback, the game is now ready to be unleashed. “The result is BBXE, and it’s the most playable game we’ve made. The 2-player mode is way more competitive, and the overall game is almost 4 times faster than the original. New engine, new levels, new audio, new online high scores, new graphics and effects better controls all come together in to a really sweet package. This isn’t one of those lazy reskin jobs – this is the real deal!”

Those of you familiar with Xbox LIVE Indie Games will know that developers don’t control the release of their own game, but rely on other members of the community testing and approving the game in question. As such we can’t give a release date for BBXE, but rest assured we’ll let everyone know when it hits the marketplace.

About MStar Games

We work hard to produce fun, playable and professional games for the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel. Based in the United Kingdom, we’re just two people – DrMistry (design, code and music) and the mysterious, beautiful Charlotta (design, 2D and 3D art). BBXE is the fourth game we’ve released on the channel, following on from Carrum (May 2009), Space Pirates from Tomorrow (January 2010) and Blazin’ Balls (April 2010). DrMistry regularly blogs on our website and is vocal and active on both twitter (@DrMistry) and the XNA Creator’s Club Online – home of Xbox Indie developers (creators.xna.com). Well respected in the community, DrMistry is always happy to share code, give encouragement and help in the accelerating improvement of the Indie Games channel

Our philosophy is simple – games should be fun, worthwhile and as good as you can make them. We’re not in the massager racket, we don’t shoehorn avatars in to our games, and we don’t churn out 2 games a month. We’re currently developing our next game, provisionally titled Xenocide – a journey through the classic shoot-‘em-up arcade games in one unbeatable package!

Media assets for all our games are being made available on our homepage, at http://www.mstargames.co.uk/