Critter Crunch Message Board

This week, Toronto-based developers (and good friends) Queasy Games & Capy are putting their classic PSN titles on sale. To mark this occasion, Jon decided to dust off the actual guitar used to create the tunes in Everyday Shooter and jam out the games’ first track, alongside our cuddly orange friend from Critter Crunch. Take a peek:

Everyday Shooter & Critter Crunch may be markedly different games that took alternate paths onto the PlayStation Store, but they share a lot in common. Here’s a little bit about why these games are important to their creators/teams:

Five years ago I released my first game, Everyday Shooter, in which you play through an album of musical shmups, where every sound effect is a guitar riff or note harmonizing over an all-guitar soundtrack. So as you play the game, it feels like you’re jamming along with the music. Each level/song/track has a different vibe, look, sound and gameplay mechanic — kind of like how songs on an album flow through different moods.

At least that’s what it is for most people. In actuality the game was built on ten years’ worth of failed experiments. It’s a game about growing out of the art-game-theory-I-am-a-genius-look-at-me BS I had built in my head. It’s about shedding my ego and getting back to the basics of making a simple, GOOD video game. It’s about becoming the student learning from the masters.

I packed a lot of personal memories into this game: I see the little Lego tanks and spaceships I built as a child in level 5, my obsession with strawberry picking in level 7, the first three-chord progression I ever wrote on guitar in Level 1… and I see all the undeniable influences of the time: Every Extend in Level 1, Warning Forever in Level 2, Miyzaki’s Porco Rosso in Level 4… and I cannot deny the inspiration I found in Rez and Lumines.

Everyday Shooter is probably the 8th, or 10th, or 12th (I’ve lost track!) game I ever made, but it was the first game I was truly proud of. Right now it’s on sale for a dollar. A dollar! I’d love for you to try it, and if you do, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.

– Jonathan Mak, Queasy Games

Many years ago Capy wasn’t making the types of games we are now. We worked on games for big movie brands on a platform not a lot of folks cared about. Out of that dark time came one bright light: a silly little arcade-style puzzle game starring a cuddly orange blob who used his tongue to feed critters to each other. That game, originally called “Top of the Food Chain” before being officially dubbed CRITTER CRUNCH, became our first console title, launching on PSN in October of 2009.

Looking back, I can say that Critter Crunch happened because of Everyday Shooter. Not directly of course, but in a very real, indirect way. As we toiled in the furnaces of work-for-hire, our good friend Jon Mak was releasing a crazy, personal, aesthetically-driven game on a major console. Everyday Shooter was inspirational to us, and to be honest we felt like we needed to make better games because of it. Around the same time our friends at Metanet released N+, and it was these twin forces that gave us the courage to make games we truly cared about. Critter Crunch was our first step in that exciting direction. It was our first truly ‘independent’ project in the new era of Capy, and set us on the (amazing) path we’re on now.

We wanted to make something with the beauty of Miyazaki or early Disney animation, but at its core was a love-letter to games like Dr. Mario & Magical Drop. We wanted to cram it with jokes and charm and character and multiplayer modes you could play with friends or significant others.

To this day, we still love the heck out of Critter Crunch. And we hope you love it too, or will love it if you buy it while it’s on sale for $0.99.

– Nathan Vella, Capy co-founder & president

Fast-forward many years, and the strong friendship and mutual respect which (at least partially) began with these games led to Queasy asking Capy to help out on a crazy musical toy-meets-platformer called Sound Shapes. And we all know how that turned out! Stay tuned for some fun stuff we have planned for the first anniversary of Sound Shapes’ launch on August 7th.

So, if you own Everyday Shooter and/or Critter Crunch, Capy and Queasy thank you. If you don’t, please take this chance to give them a shot for a single dollar each.

Thanks everyone!

Critter Crunch is now available on Steam and is 10% off until September 18th at 10AM Pacific Time!

Critter Crunch is an award winning, arcade-style puzzle game, starring the loveable Biggs. Using his long, sticky tongue to grab critters from vines above, he feeds them to each other until they burst, dropping tasty jewels for him to gobble up.

Capybara Games' colorful puzzler Critter Crunch is gonna puke rainbow chunks September 11 all over Steam.

"The game will be available for both PC and Mac, support mouse/keyboard or controller and have all the great online modes - including the ability to play PC vs Mac and vice-versa," Capy founder Nathan Vella told us today. "All for the same $6.99. And barf. Rainbow barf."

Critter Crunch began life many moons ago as a mobile game, then became a high-profile PSN game and struggled in the the sales department. Critter Crunch was also available as an iOS title for a brief time, but due to complications at a higher level, Vella can only say, "The publisher chose to remove it from the app store."

Given the talent of the folks at Capy Software (who've made the excellent Critter Crunch, Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, and most of the programming behind Sword and Sworcery), you'd expect them to prototype an interesting game in less time than it takes some to develop a full game. You're partially right -- they made seven.

All seven games from Capy's internal game jam are now listed over on the company blog, and to a title they all sound pretty good. The Final Act has the player acting on stage to win a battle, Ferret Wings features Captain Farris the Ferret fighting against Adolph Hamster, and Jetman Adventures (above) is described as "a kind of touch screen Panzer Dragoon/Defender hybrid with Fruit Ninja influence." Yes please!

Unfortunately, these are just prototypes developed over the two-day period of a game jam, so they're all unfinished (one turn-based tactical game, for example, didn't get any further than having just one unit), and most likely unplayable by the public. But one of these might plant a seed for Capy's next title, and when that flower blossoms we'll be happy to stick our noses right in it.

#holidaycards Capy, makers of Critter Crunch, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and Sword & Sworcery, wish you a happy holidays with plenty of presents puked under the Christmas tree. More »

Adorably disturbing (rainbow vomit!) puzzler Critter Crunch is now free for PS+ users. Even if you don't have PS+, it's still worth grabbing this game at $6.99. Also, on the opposite end of the cuteness spectrum, the brutal Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days demo is now public.

Check out the full update after the break.

Choose your platform to view the corresponding release list:
(Note: Continue past the break to view both release lists.)

Sure, Critter Crunch is cute. But it is also barf-inducingly hard. Thankfully, a new patch (releasing today) will help make the more challenging stages "less insane." In addition, the patch adds support for in-game XMB music, so you can play while listening to your extensive Miley Cyrus collection. The full patch notes are below: Additions: XMB Audio support Language select available for all! Hey losers! You get a little XP even if you lose in multiplayer Tweaks: Player feedback regarding DIFFICULT LEVELS has been taken to heart. Tough levels got a little less insane! Coop networking tweaks to decrease pesky lag Multiplayer "Disconnects" are now awarded more accurately Catching a jewel while feeding glorious vomit to your son will no longer interrupt you Your rank will now be retrieved more reliably when playing Adventure Nasty bug fixes: No more annoying audio glitch No more Wins/Losses upload issues when the server is in "'maintenance" mode Player score for Challenge levels now correctly handled in ALL cases "Barf Success" icon now shows up correctly in ALL cases "King of the Jungle" Trophy now successfully unlocks correctly even with a score of 0

You have officially run out of excuses for not purchasing Capybara's hyper-cute PSN puzzler, Critter Crunch. Amazon.com is currently selling game codes for half off the usual $7 price -- that's only $3.49! It's likely that the PlayStation Store will also price-match this deal when it updates later today. But do you want to risk missing out on one heck of a deal? We think not. Update: Burn Zombie Burn is also on sale for half off the usual $10 price. That's $5! [Via @superpac]

Critter Crunch sales haven't been all sunshine and rainbow vomit for developer Capybara Games. The Examiner took note of a post on NeoGAF in which a representative for the developer said the team was "very sad" because the game is "not selling so hot." He went on to say that next week's demo will hopefully spur more folks to gobble down the adorably disturbing puzzler.The $7 price for entry easily makes Critter Crunch one of the best values on the PSN, so what went wrong? The entire situation reminds us of a panel we attended at the Game Developers Conference this year, where several developers of downloadable titles noted that sales for digitally distributed titles drop off dramatically during the holiday season. Braid's Jonathan Blow noted that "March or June or August" are the release windows that downloadable game developers should hope for.Honestly, if Capybara wants to push some sales, it'll send us a picture of its little guy crying (no, sobbing) and we'll use it in a post to break people's hearts and guilt them into buying the game.[Via Destructoid]

There are many, many titles on the PSN that have amazing art atop a relatively simple gameplay concept. Capybara's Critter Crunch is no exception. However, we'd advocate it may deserve a purchase for its premise alone: Adorable fuzzball eats cutesy creatures and then vomits them up in a rainbow into another even-more-darling puff's mouth. How can you not support the mind that came up with that? Check out the full PSN update after the break. Choose your platform to view the corresponding release list: (Note: Continue past the break to view both release lists.)

We speak a lot about the adorable properties of Capybara's roly-poly puzzle title, Critter Crunch, but we think they truly come out in the title's latest trailer, seen above. It's easy for developers to create fuzzy creatures that make our hearts go a-flutter -- it's considerably more difficult to make those creatures remain precisely that cute while they vomit into each other's mouths. In fact, it almost makes them cuter. We know it defies logic, but you're going to have to trust us on this one.