14 DAY TRIAL // Indie studio Press Start has finished work on its Twin Blades: The Reaping Vanguard and has got it all ready for download. Twin Blades is a bit of a quirky mash-up of ideas and concepts, the kind that has you tilt your head with a dumfounded look on your face as you try to discern what it is. TB is a side-scrolling, arcade shooter that takes place in a medieval-fantasy world in which zombies seem to have become more numerous than the street beggars of Assassin's Creed. Of course, these zombies have to be put down, and gamers will get a chance to step into the robe of a somewhat less-than-peaceful nun to end the nightmare.
The anime-styled preacher of God has quite an arsenal on her side, and it's not the Bible or the litany. With the scythe as a melee weapon and up to six differently ranged ones, from pistols to machine guns and nukes, gamers will get the chance to take out the hordes of zombies in style. The nun also possesses special skills and abilities that can be trained and upgraded, and they'll all be put to use into defeating the seven different types of zombies present in the game.
Additional content will be available for the title in the first quarter of 2010 in the form of free DLC. However, if you haven't purchased it by the time the DLC is released, then you should know that the game's price will increase as the DLC becomes part of it. “It's a bit of an experiment, but it's the best way we've found to reward fans who've supported us since the beginning,” Philippe Rapin, producer at Press Start Studio, said.
Currently, the title is priced at 240 Microsoft Points, and is available for download on the Xbox Live Arcade Indie Games platform in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. “What typically happens in the industry – especially in the digital market where prices fluctuate almost on a daily basis – is that publishers regularly slash prices to manipulate the download charts and then raise it again,” Rapin added.
“We're in the industry too, but we're players before anything else and we hate it when we're blatantly being milked. When someone buys Twin Blades he also buys both insurances that we won't cut its price the day after, and that we'll put his money to good use to develop more content that will come for free: it’s a win-win situation, a sort of investment in gaming.”