• Lanning believes that digital shelf space is infinite, and is positive about digital distribution; sel-publishing means they don’t have to work with big publishers and make huge returns.
• When designing games, Oddworld takes less of a direct “you are in the story” approach common to other games, and instead allows the player to sit back and watch the story while still allowing their influence to be felt.
• Lanning talks about wanting to engage with audience more directly, saying he wants to “make our audience feel heard” and that Oddworld listens to its fans
• There has been no advertising for digital rereleases, instead relying on guerrilla marketing and pre-existing brand visibility

AATG: Oddbox is a wonderful package of your games all wrapped up neatly on the Steam digital platform. Now Steam Bigscreen has launched, do you have any plans to patch in more controller options, as Xpadder seems the only solution for some of the games.

SG: Xpadder? Not sure what you need that for… do you mean the original Abe titles? We’re looking at something that might help in that area, but we’re not talking about it yet.

By now you’ll have eagerly lapped up all the information from the Sony PlayStation announcement. You’ll have seen our name in the list of confirmed developers. We’re delighted to finally be able to tell you that JAW are developing for the Sony PlayStation 4. We can’t talk about what we’re working on just yet. Just be assured it’ll be worth the wait.

Jonny Eveson’s poster design for New ‘n’ Tasty.

The updated poster for “New ‘n’ Tasty” (above)—redesigned by Jonny Eveson (who you may remember as the creator of these gorgeous art deco-inspired Oddworld posters)—will hopefully fit in to a HD world a lot better than the original version – and from what we can gather, we can expect to see more reimaginings from Eveson in the near future:

@oddblog thanks! More to follow ;)

— Jonny Eveson (@JonnyEveson) January 25, 2013

And as the cherry on top, the original teaser is introduced with “we’ve been working on some cool ideas for you guys to enjoy outside of the games”, suggesting that we may be seeing printed posters gracing our walls as well.

You may have heard about PSOne Classics, the recent addition to Sony’s PSVita which allows players to download and play games made for the original PlayStation console. Well, Oddworld Inhabitants have announced in a post on their website  that Abe’s Oddysee and Abe’s Exoddus are a part of the opening lineup, alongside over 100 other PSOne games.

PSOne Classics allows players to buy and download PSOne games and play them on their PSVita. If a player has previously bought a PSOne game through their PlayStation 3 they can simply redownload it or transfer it from the PS3, without having to repurchase the game.

Unfortunately, the regional differences between Europe and America were quite staggering – Vita owners in America initially only had access to nine PSOne games, while European customers got the full lineup of 130. Both Oddworld games were at first only available in Europe, and were not included in the nine available to America.

Luckily an expansion of the catalogue was promised, with Alf happily confirming via Twitter  that Oddysee and Exoddus would be coming soon to American Vita owners. Both Oddworld games were made available in North America in an update only a single day later.

The boat has really passed on that one. We’re winding up development on Stranger’s Wrath HD and Munch’s Oddysee HD. Blame Microsoft for not letting us publish on Xbox 360.

The boat has really passed on Microsoft publishing it. We’re talking to third party publishers about publishing Stranger’s Wrath HD on Xbox 360.

3DTV support Scour the wilds, ruins and hideouts for scumbag Outlaws with the latest stereoscopic broadcasts from the Mongo River. Oddworld has never had so much D! PlayStation Move support Immerse yourself in the action by pointing and firing from your very own crossbow. (Note: Your PlayStation Move controller is unlikely to resemble a crossbow.) Video recording and uploading Record your victories, failures and candid moments straight to your PlayStation 3, and upload them directly to your YouTube account. Brightness & Gamma controls No need to visit Doc for a new pair of eye-spectacles, now you can change the visibility of the very world around you with our brand new sliders. Audio fixes Tired of lazy Townsfolk cutting themselves off mid-sentence? Fed up with soft-spoken Live Ammo? Is the soundtrack to your adventure jolted, often absent? Never fear! Our audio fixes fix your audio! Increased crosshair visibility 9 out of 10 bounty hunters say they prefer our newer, opaquer crosshair. “It’s so much easier to see!” said excited Corn Jaws of New Yolk City. Fixed Quicksaves and Autosaves Before, you could only load full saves from the Load Game screen. But now you can revert back to your most recent AutoSave and QuickSave for added convenience. Extra subtitles The accessibility of Western Mudos has taken a step up with the introduction of additional gameplay-relevant subtitling in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. Performance Improvements Ask at your local General Store or Black Market for all available improvements to your experience of life.

The weirdo inhabitants of Oddworld are as disgusting as they are adorable as they are awesome. Their demented, clever world is different in each entry, as is the themes, atmosphere, and characters you encounter, which is what makes each game so memorable. The spaghetti western vibes of Stranger’s open world are totally disimilar to the oppressive workforce foundry of Abe’s Oddysee. There’s something a little gross about everything that isn’t beautiful here, people and places alike. Everything about Oddworld has the imaginative qualities of a child’s wonder fused with the strange maturity of a not-quite-right adult. The result is a world we’ll always remember.

“Rightfully so, we had our arses ripped a new one,” Gilray says. It got under his skin. He didn’t sleep for two weeks. “I was terrified I’d killed Oddworld.”

The Bitsquid engine is designed to have some of the same core functionality and attributes, while being more lightweight and functional for digital download game development. “The ability to scale and iterate quickly without sacrificing quality is a key component to creating quality games that live up to the Oddworld name and reputation,” said Stewart Gilray, CEO of Just Add Water. “After a good deal of shopping around, we found the Bitsquid engine to have the perfect combination of power and flexibility for our needs.”

The irrepressible Lorne Lanning joined GameCity live from Oddworld Inhabitants HQ in Berkeley, California for ‘From The Desk Of…’ in which he examined the Oddworld legacy, the future of Oddworld Inhabitants and the HD remake of his critically acclaimed game Strangers’ Wrath. Oh, and the ‘weaponisation of pop media’. It was powerful stuff. Filmed at GameCityNights, Nottingham, UK April 28 2011

Protest Mode

Oddworld Inhabitants is currently undergoing unscheduled blackout in protest of SOPA and PIPA. We’d link you to the Wikipedia articles on them, but, well… Please try back in 0 days, 23 hours, and 30 minutes (on Thursday January, 19 at 10:49 am). Sorry for the inconvenience.

And good news for PlayStation Plus subscribers! Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD will be 30% cheaper than usual for a limited time! Starting on January 17 in North America and January 18 in Europe and Australia, this special offer runs for two weeks, so if for whatever reason Stranger’s low price is too much for you, check this deal out!

To everyone hoping we’d be announcing the release date today for Stranger’s Wrath HD, sorry to say that is not the case. We understand it’s been frustrating for many of you not knowing when you can expect to play the game, but these things take time to work out! But we can reveal that we will be announcing the release dates on Wednesday 7th December. In the very near future you’ll also be able to enter competitions to win free PSN download codes!

So yes, Just Add Water’s done us all a real favour here, recovering the best Oddworld game ever made for a generation that either missed it the first time around or is just too lazy to get the original Xbox out of the attic.

Characters

• All 84 character models have been updated with increased polygon counts and higher resolution textures.
  • This includes all three variations of Live Ammo: Those in the environment, those on the Crossbow and those in the General Store.
• Wolvark Sloghandlers now release Slogs instead of Slegs.
• Professor Dimble now has glasses and an academic tome.
• Jo’ Mamma has a deeper voice.
• Environments
• All environments have been given higher resolution textures.
• Most vegetation has been updated with increased polygon counts and/or higher resolution textures.
• A lot of environment is now reflected in water where it didn’t before.
• Pipes and barrels rounded.
• Added Blisterz Booty’s broken crud gun to the floor by his bola’d body, as it is in the opening CG Cinematic.
• Sekto’s Office has been changed to more closely resemble than seen in the CG Cinematic.

Audio

• All game audio (voice, sound effects and music) have been upgraded to 16-bit 44KHz from 8-bit 11KHz or less!
• Support for 5.1, Dolby Digital and DTS.
• New female voices have been recorded for two characters.

Display

• Everything now runs at 720p, 60 FPS, widescreen.
• All UI menus have been updated with a new design based on original unused concepts.
• Textures added to stamina and bounty bars.
• Save game GUIs replaced with standard PlayStation 3 interface.
• New posters now occupy the inventory menu when no bounty is accepted.
• MLAA – Full screen PS3 only anti-aliasing

Difficulty

• All armour upgrades now actually increase Stranger’s health.
• Added difficulty levels to the game: Easy, Medium and Hard.
• In easy mode:
  • Stranger has twice the health.
  • Enemies have half the health and stamina.
  • Enemies’ stamina recovers half as fast.
• In hard mode:
  • Stranger has a third less health.
  • Enemies take a bit more to kill

Unlockables

• 37 trophies: 23 bronze, 8 silver, 5 gold, 1 platinum o 18 of these are brand new, not in the PC port.
• Unlockable concept art and movie extras for completing each region of the game.

• Stranger Hair
• Stranger Crossbow
• Stranger Hat
• Stranger Pants and boots
• Stranger Beard and Nose
• Stranger Skin
• Stranger Poncho

Goodness, we’ve “updated” a lot, actually almost the whole game has been updated, Movies, audio, textures, UI, environments, characters, HUD, visual FX (full MLAA on PS3), We’ve added in a few easter eggs, we’ve fixed a few things that were actually broken in the Xbox version. As for creative freedom, with the UI we went back to the original designs that Oddworld created in 2002 that they couldn’t use on the Xbox. But as they had only designed 4 of the 13 UI screens in the game, we just created the others based on those. Also, we only had Lorne’s approval on one item, the rest was entirely up to us.

No, unless we end up releasing a boxset in the future. Mainly as, we and Oddworld are small indie companies now, to be able to afford to release on Disc is a MASSIVE risk. You have to pay a lot of money to get your discs manufactured, I think something like $10 per copy, so if you do the maths, having 200,000 copies made would cost us at LEAST $2,000,000 and that simply is not possible for us.

• Every character model has updated polys and textures
• The average number of polys in each character model has jumped from around 1000 to 3-4000
• 35+ PS3 Trophies, including a Platinum
• Completely changed the game’s HUD to match the original designs created by Oddworld Inhabitants
• Re-rendered all CG cutscenes to 720p resolution
• Improved audio, including newly-recorded dialogue for female characters
• Some brand new Easter eggs, including a reference to Munch’s Oddysee and another reference to an unnamed Oddworld game (described as “the game that isn’t Munch or Stranger”)

we’re not 100% what we’re going to be doing with it yet, all we done know is that we are starting from scratch, in some respects, We’re not just taking Oddysee and making it higher res, the backdrops are now going to be full 3D environments, but the gameplay is still going to be 100% 2-dimensional. It’s going to be the game that Abe was originally, same sound, it’s going to look the same but more. So like, the environments will be living, not just like in the old games where you had an occasional background animation of a barrel going by or whatever.

• The Stranger engine will be reworked into a multiplatform game engine, and will possibly be used “to do one or two different games which we have not talked about yet in the Oddworld universe”.
• Hand of Odd is briefly discussed, with Gilray dropping some clues that the game’s original design documents are being adapted to work in a modern gaming industry; differences in input devices is highlighted as a major consideration.

SG- Yes. There’s a timeline of Oddworld document that covers around 2-3 thousand years of Oddworld time, and the games so far have covered two, maybe three hundred years, so you know, there’s around two and a half thousand years left to explore… GFB- Kind of like the Old Republic and then the Star Wars films, Middle earth…. SG- Yeah, you know…you play Strangers Wrath and you get to later on in the game, the Mungo Valley area, and there are roads there that have been demolished…where did they come from? All that kind of stuff, so you have to think, the Strangers Wrath version of Oddworld is like the second age effectively, in some respects. And again, Oddworld is an entire planet. The games so far have been based in two different parts of one continent of that planet, so there are other continents on Oddworld, other civilisations and stuff, there is stuff designed and written down, other characters created I mean, we found a document the other day that had, they aimed to have 300 different species. When Strangers Wrath came out they had a list of forty five species, Hand of Odd was ninety five species, so we have all of these species, well, not all of them, but most already designed and written. Yeah, you have Slogs, Slegs, Sligs, Baby slogs, so that’s four species there straight off. It’s all there! It’s this massive wonderful universe to work within. Some might say it doesn’t leave a lot of room to be creative, but I say that it’s easier to start off with a chessboard and design new pieces, than to start off with a blank board and have to design a game from the start. So yes, we have a whole universe that we get to play in.

So basically guys, the game is great. Graphically it looks completely gorgeous, with amazing characters and environments, it sounds brilliant too (all the original sound samples and effects have been quadrupled in quality) and all in all Stewart and everyone at JAW has taken a fan favourite and improved it in almost every single way. I for one, cannot wait for it to be released, and i’m sure, no…I GUARANTEE that if you’re a fan of Stranger’s Wrath and the Oddworld series in general you’ll be more than happy that the series is in the hands of everybody at Just Add Water.

It brings us great pleasure to announce that we’ll be collaborating with our good friends at Oddworld Inhabitants on special Trixel and Oddworld-related content, to be detailed in the near future.

We’ll announce specifics about the project in the next couple of months. In the meantime, Adept Games’ Creative Director Daniel Boutros had this to say about the upcoming collaboration:

“I’m a big fan of the Oddworld universe games and team, and I’ve been wanting to work with them on something a little different for quite some time. I can’t wait to show people what we’re cooking up.”

Stewart Gilray of JAW LTD / Oddworld Inhabitants, had this to say…

“At Oddworld we’re always looking at new and interesting ideas in getting the universe out there. When Adept came to us with their ideas and thoughts for a tie in, there was no way we could say no.”

ABOUT TRIXEL

Trixel is a unique logic puzzle game built by Adept Games; a small crew comprising of games industry veterans and new blood alike. Trixel earned 8/10 and above critic review scores across the board, has gained numerous accolades since release, including a Best App Ever 2^nd and 3^rd place finalist in Puzzle and Family categories (2009) and many “game of the week” accolades from Metro UK, T3, WhatTheyPlay and others.

Many fans of oddworld are disheartened to know that it is unlikley that Microsoft will allow Oddworld games to be released on the Xbox 360.Us as fans have decided to start a petition and let Microsoft know just how much we want Oddworld to be released on the Xbox 360!Please help us get a much loved game on to a much loved console by signing this petition. Thankyou :)

The first design is ‘New Yolk City’, inspired by the largest conurbation you romp around in the game. Taking its visual style from the wild wild west – and incorporating a gloriously wide-eyed Clakker – this iconic design is the perfect souvenir after a journey around the Western Mudos! The second design is ‘Sekto Springs’, which is based upon the 100% ‘authentic’ beverage at the heart of Stranger’s adventure. Refreshing and with a little hint of continental style, this tee is a salute to the world in which the game is set.

We’re also starting to notice a number of people with, getting or thinking of getting Oddworld tattoos. We can’t get enough of this dedication, and we want to show the world how much you love Oddworld, so we’re going to have a dedicated skin art gallery just as soon as we have a large enough collection. So if you’ve got Abe on your arm, a Slig on your shin, or a Wolvark on your… skin, then send in photos at the same address!

Right now we’re just finishing up various PS3 specific elements, then we’ll be at Beta. During Beta we will be optimizing the heck out of the game. Currently it’s running at 60fps 90% of the time, we want to ensure that it’s 60fps ALL of the time. As to what can players expect… It IS the same game it was in 2005, we’ve just polished it, lots more polys, much more detailed textures. We’ve doubled resolutions most of the textures in the game, in some cases even more. We’ve pushed out the view distance in some places just to give a much better view of the vistas in the game.

Higher resolution images of the new Abe, Scrab and Paramite models have also been posted on the blog of Tom Bramall, one of JAW’s 3D artists.

2011 New Media Film Festival Q & A session with Expert Game Creator Lorne Lanning, Director Spencer Halpin and Producer Ramy Katrib. Moral Kombat takes a look into the controversial subject of violence in video games and examines the conflict between the game developers rights to create and its potential impact on children.

Lorne Lanning at SXSW 2011

Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath coming to PS Vita this holiday season, with cross platform cloud saves #E3

“In a way that allows the player to play the same game as a full console title or as a handheld title. It’s also allowed us to improve on the design in terms of being able to affect things directly.” Elaborating on this, he added as an example: “Abe can pickup a fellow Mudokon by simply tapping the screen, and other gesture-based input”.