Sideway Message Board

I don’t know how one would ‘hip’ but I’ve made it into a verb and there’s nothing that can be done about that now. Sideway New York is a platforming game with an urban aesthetic, by which I don’t just mean that it’s set in a city, I mean that it contains hip hop music and graffiti. The characters are two dimensional but the world is not, as seen in the trailer here. I don’t know how well it works because I haven’t played it yet, but you can! There is a demo available on Steam and if you enjoy that, the full version will only set you back £5.94.(more…)

The PSN Blog has posted a feature on Sideway: New York, the upcoming 2D platformer from Playbrains that features a lead character actually painted on a wall, and interacting with the environment from a flat plane. Developer Scott Simpson is also interviewed, and talks a little bit about the various mechanics of the game -- working through the levels will allow your character, Nox, to double-jump, glide down a wall, or even leave the wall for a bit to explore the actual 3D world.

The trailer above shows off the game's art style as well -- it's not super realistic, even in the parts off of the wall, but the "sprayed-on" graffiti asthetic does seem to make for a few fun twists and turns. Sideway: New York (the subtitle hints, of course, that it's the first in a series) will be avaialble on October 11 for $9.99 on PSN.

Sony Online Entertainment is really making its mark on PSN this fall. Rolling out alongside the excellent Rochard and the highly-anticipated PAYDAY: The Heist, Sideway: New York brings an impressive visual flourish to 2D platformers. Painted protagonist Nox keeps switching planes in 3D as he hugs the walls and jumps from building to building. Take a look at the trailer.

At last week’s Fantastic Fest in Austin, I caught up with Scott Simpson, director of Canadian developing studio Playbrains (and blog comment-reply record holder with a 100% reply rate!). While he’s answered most of the questions out there, Sideway still holds few more details yet to be revealed, including bite-sized, intra-level time trials to earn collectables and “birds that poop bombs.” I recorded our conversation as we played through some of the game’s early levels.

PlayStation Blog: Where did your character Nox come from?

Scott Simpson, Playbrains: You are Nox, a graffiti artist in New York, but you’ve painted over the wrong man’s tag. That man is the evil Spray, and he has sucked you into his world and you are now graffiti yourself, and you will always be on a surface – on a wall or a rooftop or something.

PSB: Was there an influence from other games where graffiti was a gameplay element, like, say, Jet Grind Radio?

Scott Simpson: Obviously it’s got a lot of Jet Set in it. The game was originally conceived by our partners at Fuel entertainment, their creative director Mike Burns was on a trip to NY one time and was just taken by all the graffiti and looking at it as art and not vandalism. The idea started in his head about living inside the graffiti world. So they’re creating a cartoon series about these characters that’s in development now. [The game] is the lead property in this IP. That where we, Playbrains come in. We just really wanted to make a kick-ass platforming game that we call an “adventure platformer,” meaning it’s got a lot of exploration, there is a some puzzle solving, some action, some melee combat, but at its core there’s a platformer, because we just really like platformers.

PSB: A lot of people were commenting on the use of color in Sideway. We don’t see a lot of pink, for instance. Talk about the artist style.

Scott Simpson: The cartoon series is being done in conjunction with Wild Brain, the people behind Kid Robot, Yo Gabba Gabba, the Ricky Gervais Show animations. So the animations come through there and are being done by those guys. It’s funny, when we originally pitched Sony it had a much more realistic look. Nox looked similar, but the backgrounds were all very real-world looking, so it was very striking. But we just thought for the game we liked the more Team Fortress 2-like look for the buildings; not always right angles, they’ve still got that cartoony look to them. I think if that harms us in any way it might make people thing this is a kids game – it’s certainly not. You’re going to be needing a lot of dexterity to finish the game.

PSB: Let’s talk about the controls. I played Sideway at Gamescom, and it felt like Nox has quite a lot of moves in his arsenal, especially for a platformer.

Scott Simpson: There are actually 16 unlockable moves in the game as you progress. We’re huge fans of exploration and finding secret ways and hidden pieces inside of a level, so the game is set up so that even in the first few levels, it’s impossible to pick up all the [collectable] tags. You just don’t have all the abilities; you don’t have a double jump to start with, and you need a double jump to get to a certain place. We tried to put in as much replayability into the game as we could by making it so you can go back to those secret areas later in the game now that you have a new slide ability or whatever.

PSB: Can you tell me about some of these moves?

Scott Simpson: We’ve got one called Airtime – it’s the one ‘cheat’ mechanic we do have where you can become paint spray and leave the wall. You can only leave the wall for a little bit at a time and only in certain areas or else you drift into the wind.

The glide allows you to spray some paint onto the wall behind you to sort of slow your descent. The paint shield will allow you repel ranged attacks back at your attacker.

As much as we wanted to be in a place where you could make your own graffiti on the wall, it’s very difficult to do with a standard controller. So the paint shelf is a way to quickly spray in an area where you can fill in some paint and create steps in an area.

A lot of these aren’t even necessary to finish the game. You’ll never be at a place where you’ll need an ability and have not had the chance to pick it up yet.

PSB: Tell me a bit about this drop in-drop out couch co-op.

Scott Simpson: It is fun to play with a friend. You’ll be on the same screen at the same time. It gives you a different way to solve puzzles. It’s not intended to be a “girlfriend mode” where you’re just tagging along (see what I did there?), but you’re actually both advancing the story equally. If you play as the second player you’ll play “Fume”, your Yoda-like sidekick who’s actually guiding you through the world here.

Sideway: New York is just around the corner, if you will. A PSN exclusive, you can pick it up on October 11 for $9.99.

#sideway I thought I was going to dislike Sideway New York, despite our previous impressions. The title screen looked bad. I was afraid the music would get on my nerves, but I found myself enjoying it, as it fit perfectly with the game. As I played on, all I could think was "This is why you don't judge book covers" or something like that. More »

In Sideway: New York players take on a graffiti artist turned into a piece of his own art after taking on the wrong tagger rival. More »

I’ve liked the look of this one for a while, but I had seen the words “PSN exclusive” being bandied around. Reasuringly, the developers Playbrains (who you may remember as the folks that brought us that Madballs game) recently confirmed that yes, Sideway is “definitely coming to PC – via Steam”. That screenshot doesn’t really do the game justice, so embedded beneath is a trailer that shows off the unique set of mechanics that set it apart from the competition. (more…)

We already knew a little something about most of the games seen at Comic-Con this year, from the well-traveled Gears of War 3 to the just-announced Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but Sideway stands alone as the only brand-new title playable on the show floor. It's a platformer coming to PSN with an interesting origin, and a premise that literally turns the genre on its side.

The game (which was referred to as Sideway: New York on promotional posters at the con) is part of a property developed by Fuel Entertainment, a creative house that's also working on a deal to turn the idea into a TV cartoon. They teamed up with fellow Ottawa, Ontario-based developers Playbrains to handle the development and Sony Online Entertainment to handle publishing; the PSN title will serve as an introduction to what the team hopes becomes a larger universe.

That universe centers around Nox, a graffiti tagger who himself is turned into art by a rival tagger named Spray. The game sends Nox around 15 different platforming levels, each one of which is painted on the side of a building, essentially placing his 2D action in a projection on a 3D world.

Oh dear, sweet PlayStation.Blog, how I have missed you. When we were last snuggling under the covers in the fall, I was announcing Sideway, our upcoming action platformer based on the in-development cartoon series from the wonderfully twisted minds at Fuel Entertainment. I then spent hours (which turned into days) hanging out in the comments section, waiting for somebody to ask me about my dogs or that time I met Kris Kristofferson.

But no. No, all you wanted to talk about was the game.

And what a game it has turned out to be! If you don’t believe me, CRAM THESE INTO YOUR EYEBALLS and I dare you to tell me I am wrong!

Oh, did the screenshots convey that we have hours of mindbending levels full of danger and challenge that will make the paint run from your veins? Or that we support drop-in, drop-out couch co-op so you can play with your friends or that the bosses in the game are unlike any you’ve come across in your gaming life before?

Did the shots at least convey the basic conceit of the game: that you painted over the wrong dude’s tag, and that you, in fact, are now a moving 2D painting in a 3D world?

Regardless, if you’re interested in seeing what all of the above is really like, we’re juuuust putting the finishing touches on a demo for Comic-Con this week in San Diego. Oh yes, my friends, that’s right—when you come by Sony Online Entertainment at the Con (Booth #4436), not only can you check out the awesomeness that is Sideway, but you can also win some cool Skullcandy headphones and earbuds when you come by and play the game. Perhaps most importantly, as a bonus, you’ll get to hear me kvetch about the heat and how much more crowded and sweaty Comic-Con gets every year and that Patton Oswalt really should be the next Robin.

“But whoa there, champ…What about me? I’m not going to be in San Diego this week. How do *I* get to experience this magic of which you speak?”

I am glad you asked, friend. Because if you read the headline at the very top of this blog post, you will learn that immediately following it is the Earth’s very first look at the teaser trailer for “Sideway”. See? Reading can be fundamental *and* rewarding.

Hope that wets yer whistles, folks! You can come by and play it with us this week at the Con!

As always, you can always follow us at Twitter.com/Playbrains to get development updates and upcoming giveaways as we get ever-so-closer to the release of the greatest action platformer…of all time…

You've played platformers before. But have you played a platformer where you are living spray paint? That's what you'll get to do when Sideway is released on PlayStation Network (PSN) later this year...