Torpex Games

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February 16, 2011

We've collected some nice press comments about Uberschizoid, the hard-core gamer mode in our game Schizoid, where you control one ship with the left thumbstick and the other ship with the right thumbstick:

"If you can do it, you're a freak and should be burned." — Eurogamer

"Evil. I can put it no more plainly. But, like so many challenging videogames, it's evil in a good way."
— IGN

"The other single player mode, Uberschizoid, has the sort of masochistic appeal that hardcore fans and genuine control freaks will find to be truly addicting." — Teamxbox

"Cruelly clever" — IGN

"Unless you're amazing at doing two things at once, you'll have no hopes of getting anywhere in the Uber mode; I didn't even get past the first 10 levels before I gave up out of frustration." — 1UP

February 15, 2011

Microsoft created a trailer for all the House Party games, including Bejeweled Blitz Live, which launches in a week!

February 8, 2011

Major Nelson announced the launch date for Bejeweled Blitz LIVE will be February 23! As part of Microsoft's House Party promotion, you can pick it up for a mere 800 Microsoft Points! That's easily worth the 40 quarters.

January 24, 2011

At last, the news is out! We've spent over a year working under a cloak of strict secrecy on PopCap's newest game, Bejeweled Blitz LIVE for Xbox LIVE Arcade!

See our Bejeweled Blitz LIVE page for the scoop on the whole game — some of the all-new features we created include two-player competitive multiplayer game modes, both local (which we particularly love) and over Xbox LIVE; a new "Party LIVE" game mode where you feverishly compete for points against up to 15 other people in a party room; "Friendscore" tracking, where it's you and all your friends all up on the leaderboards together; good Xbox stuff like leaderboards and Achievements; and all of the game modes can be played either as Classic Bejeweled, in which you swap two gems with each move, or as a special version of Bejeweled Twist where you finally get to twist gems both ways.

April 5, 2010

To all our new Schizoid players: Welcome! Thank you for playing Schizoid! (It's a good week to pick up an online game over Xbox Live.) Our two main tips: (a) Play with a friend; and (b) Stay together!

April 1, 2010

For one week only, Schizoid is on sale for 50% off! The blow-out price is now only 400 Microsoft Points! Click here to buy it or download the trial; or log in to Xbox LIVE with your Xbox 360 and visit the "Arcade" page of Game Marketplace. (This is not an April Fool's joke!)

March 19, 2010

We're looking to hire a Motion Graphics Designer who's fluent in Flash. If you're awesome at this, please check the jobs page.

February 1, 2010

Schizoid is now available for mobile phones, courtesy of SkyZone Entertainment! It's debuting first on Verizon's "Get It Now" marketplace. Check it out here!

December 15, 2009

12 new Schizoid wallpapers posted at the bottom of the "Pix" page for your desktop backgrounds. Enjoy!

July 5, 2009

Richard Garfield wrote about the creation of the "Sixty-Four Guns" level, one of our favorite levels in Schizoid:

Many levels in Schizoid came from a 'master plan' where we explored the game elements we had at our disposal and constructed levels meant to confront the player with many novel situations. As these were constructed, however, there were a lot of levels that emerged from game play that we didn't anticipate, and a lot of the more interesting levels came from a willingness to explore these unexpected areas of game space.

An excellent example of this is the level "64 Guns" which indirectly arose from the final constructed level "Ragnarok". We wanted the final level to be a monumental challenge, perhaps not the most difficult in the game but the most spectacular. It was intended to be a boss level in a game with no bosses. It isn't surprising that in the design we ran up against performance issues - as we struggled to give the player as much as their machine was capable of. It seemed that no matter how many times I reduced the enemies the player would face, there were still performance problems.

At this point I ran a performance test to see what the 'cost' of the different creatures were. I plopped 100 Scorpios on an empty arena and checked the frame rate. Then I repeated with Skulks, Flitts and all the rest. My goal was not to construct a level, but was simply to find the cost of the various creatures in performance rate, so I could adjust the mix on "Ragnarok" in a good way. But when checking the 100 Pulsinators I was dazzled by the patterns the bullets fired in, and became mesmerized flying around the array and picking the pulsinators off, by ones and twos. This was the birth of what was one of the very last designed levels in the game, "Sixty-Four Guns".

From here the level design was fairly straightforward. I played around with the pattern of the guns, using different shapes and different distributions of red and blue. I was mostly looking for the most visually attractive layout since this was one of the key things that interested me, the hypnotic pattern a vast number of pulsinator bullets in tight formation had. I settled on a square grid, and concentric squares of alternating color.

The next thing I dealt with was the tedium of the level — picking off 100 guns was very enjoyable for the first, say, 20, but then it was far too repetitive. First I added turbos. Then I reduced the grid to 8x8. Then I added a few Astramoebas just to shake up the start of the level a bit. Finally, possibly the most important piece of the level was added, a hidden Razorwire under one of the Pulsinators. The Razorwire was added far enough into the grid that players had to learn how to fight the block of guns, but close enough that — hopefully for most players — it hadn't gotten tedious yet. Once found, the players had the immense satisfaction of carving through the remaining guns in an instant.

April 2, 2009

SkyZone Entertainment has announced that they are partnering with Torpex Games to bring Schizoid to mobile! Schizoid on mobile is anticipated to be available in the third quarter of this year.

March 3, 2009

Schizoid has been nominated in the 2008 Xbox Live Arcade awards in the categories of "Best Original Game" and "Best Cooperative Multiplayer Game"! Thank you all very much; we are humbled to be in such great company in these two categories. You can vote by visiting the "Game Marketplace" page on your Xbox 360 console, and choosing "Arcade Awards: Vote Now".

Now you can also use the xbox.com website to command your Xbox to automatically download the free trial of Schizoid, and also command your Xbox to automatically download the voting application.

February 13, 2009

New web page design and a few new screenshots, on the "Pix" and "Schizoid" pages. Enjoy!

August 27, 2008

PAX 10 award

Having won the PAX 10 award, Schizoid will have a station in the PAX 10 booth at the PAX show in Seattle, and we'll be showing it off Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Come by, play Schizoid, and meet the team — Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias will be there Sunday from 2PM to 3PM — and if you bring your Xbox 360 profile on an Xbox 360 memory card, we'll help you get an Achievement.

July 9, 2008

Schizoid is released!

Schizoid is now available on Xbox Live Arcade! Microsoft and Torpex Games made the announcement in this morning's press release. Most of the team stayed up late and grabbed it immediately and played Xbox LIVE games with some new friends who stayed up for the release too.

By the way, Schizoid is localized into English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, Portuguese, and Italian, which should cover anybody reading this web page.

Schizoid is an award-winner! Today, on launch day, Penny Arcade declared Schizoid one of The PAX 10 winners, as one of the year's "ten best in regard to gameplay and overall fun-factor." Thanks guys!

UPDATE 7/14/08: Major Nelson's podcast with an interview with technical director Jamie Fristrom has just been posted.

July 7, 2008

Announcement: July 9 is Schizoid's release date!

July 9 is the big day for Schizoid! See our new "Media" page for three new videos and four new PC desktop wallpaper themes.

June 18, 2008

Schizoid release announced: July!

We've announced that Schizoid will be released on Xbox Live Arcade in July! To celebrate, here are six new screenshots in French, which debuted at JeuxVideo.com:

April 10, 2008

Magazines, Newspapers, and Sploderific

Schizoid

We scored the cover of the most recent, just-released Casual Connect Magazine (link to 11MB PDF electronic edition)
Original Xbox Magazine reviewed Schizoid in their May edition, gave us a rating of 8.0, said our "ingenious co-op level design is full of surprises", and praised our "lots of trippy, hyper-neon eye candy."
Game Informer wrote up Schizoid in their just-released print edition, writing, "If you've got a buddy handy, the clear choice du jour is Schizoid, a co-op game I can safely say feels different from anything I've played before."
The Seattle Times ran a nice piece in their Business section on us and other independent developers
Xbox360fanboy, who named the "Sploderific" Achievement for us, revealed the Sploderific Achievement icon