Super Crate Box Message Board

If you donated $25 or more to the Venus Patrol Kickstarter fundraiser back in September of last year, check your email: Gun Godz, the retro hip-hop FPS developed by Vlambeer of Super Crate Box fame, and Capsule, the "minimalist sci-fi/survival-horror" title from Canabalt's Adam Atomic are both waiting for you.

As we found out late last year, Capsule's heavily stylized visual aesthetic and atmospheric, claustrophobic sound design are best enjoyed while wearing headphones in a darkened room, as are Gun Godz's Wolfenstein 3D-inspired graphics and Doseone-infused hip-hop soundtrack.

While our mom's word is good enough for us, others may have more fiscal ideas on what makes someone a success or not. For developer Vlambeer, it's neither -- they gauge success on how many crates iOS players have collected in Super Crate Box.

The developer has set up a number of tiers for unlocking free content in the game, the first being five million. Players quickly surpassed that and reached ten million, prompting this 1.1 update today which adds new control options (jump and shoot!) based on player feedback, and two new unlockable characters. One is unlocked after collecting 1000 crates, the other by reaching 5000 kills.

Finally, Vlambeer teases a new update when 40 million crates have been amassed. You'll also save a princess or something, but we're sure you've already done that once or twice in your lifetime.

Guys, I want to like Super Crate Box on iOS so, so much. I really do. Vlambeer's latest release is a port of the truly wonderful (and completely free) PC, Mac, and Winnitron 1000 game that I've devotedly recommended to friends and readers repeatedly since playing it at last year's GDC.

In short, it's a 2D action platformer in which your goal is to survive a non-stop onslaught of monsters falling from a hole in the ceiling toward you, while collecting boxes with randomized weapons (revolver, shotgun, rocket launcher, etc.). The more boxes you collect, the higher your score. Also, there are fire pits at the bottom of the screen that you can burn to death in, and enemies that fall into the pits will respawn at the top, only faster and meaner than before. It's a wonderful little loop of partially randomized risk/reward and it requires precision at very turn.

There's one major blockade standing in the way of me enjoying the portable version of SCB, unfortunately: virtual buttons. Stupid, awful virtual buttons.

Vlambeer is "speechless" after 1,000,000 crates have been collected in Super Crate Box iOS in a little over 12 hours after the game's release. The math gets tricky here: that doesn't mean the $1 app has sold a million copies, since collecting dozens of crates is the focus of the gameplay, but it does suggest the title is doing well.

"We're afraid Apple hasn't shared sales data with us yet!" Vlambeer's Rami Ismail told Joystiq when we asked. "Apple hasn't selected their features for the week yet, but Super Crate Box came from nowhere and climbed to the top 100 paid apps in many countries around the world. We're practically speechless at what a rollercoaster ride this launch was."

The success comes as happy New Year's present. The studio spent the latter half of 2010 dealing with the Radical Fishing debacle, in which it saw an iOS clone of its browser-based game hooking App Store customers.

We've been unabashed in our love for Vlambeer's Super Crate Box, so we were more than a little excited to discover that the incredibly difficult, multiplayer survival-shooter ... thing has a launch date for iOS: January 5, 2012. The news was revealed via Vlambeer's official site a little while back, actually, but we somehow missed it (we're gonna pin it on too much eggnog).

Vlambeer fans will no doubt be wondering whatever happened to the game's previously announced September 2011 launch window, as we were. It turns out that, between the Radical Fishing debacle and the PC/OS X version of Super Crate Box being a bit of a mess in terms of code, the porting took longer than expected. The game's launch is now officially official, though, as it's already been submitted to and approved by Apple for a January 5, 2012 launch. Vlambeer tells us it'll be a universal App (meaning one purchase works for both iPod Touch/iPhone as well as iPad), though pricing hasn't been set just yet.

We can't help but worry about the controls in the iOS version of Vlambeer's Super Crate Box, since we're pretty bad at the PC/Mac version even with a controller. The above video, demonstrating the virtual d-pad controls on an iPad, helps ameliorate our concern, as the player appears to be successfully moving around! Of course, if you want a real controller, it also supports the iCade cabinet.

In the blog post containing that video, Vlambeer also addressed Muffin Knight, yet another mobile game cribbing from one of Vlambeer's designs, this time Super Crate Box. The developer remained sanguine about the situation, saying that "Muffin Knight isn't a 1:1 clone of Super Crate Box," and even praising the effort that went into the theme and design. "We think Super Crate Box iOS & Muffin Knight can easily co-exist without biting each other & for us, that places it a long way ahead of Ninja Fishing."

Indie shooter Super Crate Box is heading to iPad and iPhone next month. The news was announced by developer Vlambeer in a new video, which you can see above. You can also catch a glimpse of the title's wholly excellent gameplay.

Of course, if you just can't wait until September, you can always download the free version for Mac or PC. Either way, you should really play it sometime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=LzAr4yVyKSo Vlambeer's Super Crate Box—which you can play now, for free—is coming to Apple's iPhone, iPod touch and iPad next month, thanks to the porting prowess of Halfbot (developer of The Blocks Cometh, FYI). Watch and see why it might be worth your dollar(s). More »

You've never played IGF Pavillion game Super Crate Box? Well then, let's fix that right now (it's free!).

Unfortunately, if you weren't at GDC -- or aren't a resident of Winnipeg, Canada -- it's going to be a bit difficult to check out the game's two player co-op mode, housed inside of the wonderful and mysterious Winnitron 1000.

Anticipated indie arcade title now available for free.