Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure combines a block-matching, DS puzzle game--think Panel de Pon/Planet Puzzle League--with a side-scrolling platformer. This puzzling mash-up keeps the blocks on the bottom screen, Hatsworth jumping up top, and you toggling between each to maintain progress. We recently played this stylish title, due at the beginning of 2009. With so many small things to get right, we're uncertain that the puzzle-platformer will work, but we're impressed by its potential.

Whether or not we think Braid is brilliant (and we do) no game is too angelic to escape our probing eye. We dig deep to find the real dirt that the big boys don't want you to know about, like bugs. We've used our investigative skills to find out about two from a secret source who ... oh, who are we kidding? They came from Jonathan Blow, the guy who created the game.

The bugs are a bit too specific to fully explain here, suffice it to say that if they hit you it's going to mean a fair amount of backtracking. They don't seem to be especially common, but they're serious for those who've been afflicted. The good news? While Jonathan Blow is spilling the beans he's also working with Microsoft on solutions.

Update: Blow's posted a few temporary fixes for one of the bugs.

One of the things we made sure to do at E3 this year was to spend a significant amount of time with the IndieCade folks. Then we sat on that info long enough for some of these games to get picked up, have a successful release, come out with sequels, spawn movies, novels, comic books, become part of the general pop culture bloodstream, and then fade into nostalgia, and for that we apologize. Actually, I'll apologize, I did it.

But in all seriousness, a lot of the more fun and innovative stuff we saw at E3 wasn't actually being churned out by big studios and publishers, but being worked on by small groups with tiny budgets and just a love of gaming. Read on to find out all about the IndieCade games that we saw on display, and why you'll want to be playing them now.

Jonathan Blow's masterwork, Braid, has quickly become the water-colored poster child for indie game development. However, while both critics and players alike have been singing the game's praises since it was released a week ago, there are some things that Blow wishes would have turned out differently. Specifically the XBLA demo, which he originally wanted to represent a larger portion of the full game, a bubble that Microsoft was only too happy to burst.

"There was one little issue at the very end of development when [Microsoft] wanted me to make the trial version shorter than it was," recalled Blow in an interview with SavyGamer, adding belief that "it's ok to give people a significant portion of the game because if they like it, they'll want to play the rest." Nevertheless, this apparently didn't jibe with Braid's publishing overlords, as Blow noted that he and Microsoft argued back and forth over the demo's length before settling on the teaser we have today. So, tell us, was the result enough to make your virtual wallet 1200 MS points lighter?

Neat hat on a clever noggin news now, with EA announcing Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure (working title), a platformer/puzzler for the Nintendo DS. Developed by an EA Tiburon team under the publisher's Casual Entertainment label, Hatsworth hopes to fuse the "action of an adventure game with the challenge of a puzzle game," with players switching between "action-platform" screens and "the increasingly challenging puzzle world."

EA promises over 30 levels and five "exotic" worlds for the geriatric genius to explore, complete with power ups, enemies and "outrageous world-ending bosses." The game's executive producer, Scott Walker, describes it as "an incredibly unique game" that you "won't want to put down" once it ships in 2009 -- which either means it's very good, or it has some sort of explosive detonator strapped to the back of the cartridge.

Gallery: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure (DS)

Jonathan Blow's Braid is drowning in critical acclaim, just now hitting an average of 93 on Metacritic and becoming the 8th highest-rated Xbox 360 game on the console. The official Braid Blog takes the opportunity to point out that indie developers don't need to make cheap PopCap clones to be successful; if they do something different, their work can be recognized. Yeah? Well, this industry is all about sales so ... how's the game selling on XBLA?

Blow cites VGChartz's ballpark figure of 28.5k copies sold and estimates that the number "seems to be in the right neighborhood" as of last Saturday. Does that mean his struggle with the game's pricing has paid off in a big way? Apparently not. Blow contends that Braid will need to sell a lot more to be profitable but "things are looking promising now." We'll say! Let's put that estimate up against the top XBLA launch figures in a thoroughly unscientific breakdown*:

1. Braid, ~28.5k units
2. Rez HD, 25k units
3. Ikaruga, 22.5k units
4. Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1, 16.5k units
5. N+, 13k units

*(Figures represent sales gathered from the first three days of availability. Blow's ballpark figure was posted on Saturday, three days after Braid's Wednesday launch).

Talk about some serious monkey business. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sega's debut effort on the iPhone App Store, Super Monkey Ball, has racked up 300,000 downloads since it debuted on the service June 11.

At $9.99 a pop, that means the game has brought in just about $3 million for Sega, with Apple taking its 30% "upkeep" share off the top to the tune of $899k. Both parties must be quite pleased. Sega certainly is. Based on what SOA prez Simon Jeffery told the WSJ, the future looks to be full of iPhone games from the publisher. Speaking on the sizable sales of SMB, Jeffrey said, "That's a substantial business," adding, "It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform."

It's worth noting that these purchases, unlike those via XBLA or PSN, were made sight-unseen, as the App Store does not offer a SMB trial version. Now, if Sega would just release a patch to allow calibration of the iPhone's accelerometer so we can play SMB without staring straight down at it ... that'd be bananas.

Your first reaction to Fantastic Contraption is going to be one of complete befuddlement. Not only will you not understand the game, you won't be able to comprehend why we selected it for the FGC. But trust us: Hang in there. Because once the game's intricate mechanics reveal themselves to you, we predict you're going to have a really hard time stopping.

The idea is, at its core, simple. You're trying to build a contraption that can get a pink ball to a pink square. You don't even have that many tools to work with, just a few different types of wheels and rods. The challenge (and the joy) is figuring out how those components all work together in-game.

If we have a problem with FC, it's that the tutorial could be a bit better. But at the same time, we can understand why playing with the physics is probably a lot easier than trying to get someone to understand them. Give it a spin and let us know what you think.

[Thanks, BitPicnic]

Braid is good, but the biggest hurdle seems to be its pricing (frequently discussed lately by creator Jonathan Blow). With most of the Joystiq staff too busy playing the XBLA time-bender this weekend, our cohorts at X3F (the blog formerly known as Xbox 360 Fanboy) have stepped in to lay out the reasons why you should really care about Braid. Click here and get edumucated.

The inevitable "Is that a ninja in your pocket?" jokes will have to wait a little while longer – two weeks, to be exact – as Atari has announced a release date set-back for the DS and PSP versions of N+. The games, which both include features, puzzles, and even screen-scrolling schemes exclusive to their respective platforms, will sneak onto shelves August 26. They were originally slated for August 12.

They say "good things come to those who wait," and in this case the "good thing" isn't just take-anywhere ninja magic ... it's $10 off the original $29.99 price point for both versions. Whether you're planning to stealthily snatch up the DS or PSP version of N+ (or both) they'll only set you back $19.99. Arigato, Atari!

Source – DS Fanboy
Source – PSP Fanboy

There's a really interesting discussion going on in the comments section at Braid designer Jonathan Blow's official blog, as he attempts to explain why he's a bit disappointed the game has to arrive for 1200 ($15), rather than the 800 ($10) points he would have preferred.

Though he says Microsoft pushed the $15 price point, he admits he's also got his own financial concerns to consider that make the price a lot more palatable. Blow also says he's worried about ending up like Jeff Minter, who wanted his game Space Giraffe affordably priced but didn't recoup enough as a result. It's a surprisingly frank discussion, and one well worth checking out.

This Wednesday marks the opportunity to become a tie-wearing time traveler in Jonathan Blow's Braid, an "artful puzzle-platformer" and the next volley in Microsoft's all-out August Arcade assault. You'll traverse multiple worlds as you search for a princess (yes, the abducted kind) and wrap your mind around various instances of time behaving badly -- that includes rewinding, time streams, parallel realities, time dilation and "perhaps more."

Oh, and you'll be wanting to know the price of all this. Well, we hate to rain on your Braid, but despite Microsoft's earlier denial, the game will indeed cost 1200 ($15).

During the Develop conference in Brighton, England, Sony Japan Studio producer Tatsuya Suzuki told Eurogamer that there are no plans to create a sequel to the PS3 and PSP puzzler Echochrome. Instead, he and Jun Fujiki, the Kyushu University researcher who helped develop the game, confirmed that they will expand on Fujiki's work in "3D trick imagery" in a completely new title.

Those hoping for more Echochrome shouldn't feel totally forgotten; the duo also mentioned that the original game is being remimagined in two dimensions exlusively for PlayStation Home. The game will appear in the virtual space as an "arcade game" along with titles previously announced by Namco.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]
Source – Eurogamer
Source – Develop

We're not entirely clear on how all this cultural bomb terminology works. Last month, after we'd heard that Boom Blox had toppled with 60,000 in North American sales, we were more than willing to wittily label the game as "a bomb." However, EA's post-earnings conference call has now revealed that Boom Blox has sold 450,000 units since launch (no region specified). Since it's no longer a bomb, do we imply that EA and Steven Spielberg's collaboration -- considered by many reviewers to be the bomb -- has been defused? That doesn't sound like a good thing.

Hoping to make a comeback with that 365-point quixotry play in Scrabulous? US and Canadian Facebook users were likely dismayed to find out this week that Scrabulous has been disabled. The region-specific lock likely has to do with Hasbro's license for all Scrabble video games, which is for US and Canada only (Mattel owns the rights for the rest of the world). In the interim, you can always play the official Scrabble Facebook app care of Electronic Arts, although it lacks the panache of the seemingly now-defunct Scrabulous.

[Thanks, Andrew B]