We’ve been radio-silent in recent weeks but behind the scenes it’s been a wild and exciting lead-up to the upcoming debut of our first game, Bastion. Our whole team’s been heads-down putting the finishing touches on our first production level, which will be playable at PAX Prime starting Friday, September 3. So get ready for a slew of info about what we’ve been working on for the past year. We’re so happy to get to unveil what we’ve been working on at a place like PAX, where people will get to experience it firsthand and tell us what they think. Expect lots more news from us this week, and if you’re going to the show, be sure to drop by and visit us at the PAX 10 floorspace. Until then, we leave you with a small sample of one of the many scenes we’ve created for this game.

This Kid's just about ready to get moving.

We’re excited to announce that we got into the PAX10 and that we’ll be at PAX Prime 2010 in September!  We’ll join nine other independent games that were hand-picked by a panel of judges to be showcased at the event. We’ll be revealing more information about our game leading up to PAX. We hope to see you guys there, so you can get hands-on with the game.

Thank you to the judges and Penny Arcade for selecting us!

We’re super excited to welcome Jen Zee to Supergiant Games to be our artist! She joined us in June and came to us from Gaia Online. She’s does all the hand-painted 2D art work in our game and 100% of the cosplaying that happens outside of our house.

Her talents include creating beautiful, lovingly crafted art and fighting Akumas. We’re really lucky to have her!

I am trying to get her to play in my D&D campaign. I think she might also be a nerd, but I’m not sure yet. What do you guys think?

~ Amir

Our friend Greg Kasavin, who we worked with at EALA, has started an awesome blog about games and narrative featuring exactly the kind of  insight and wit that made him one of the sharpest developers we’ve ever designed with.  His most recent post covers video game villains,  the “bad guys who overcompensate for their flat desires with huge lifebars.”

He covers notable bad guys from Bowser to Mike Tyson and even the garden-variety undead in Plants vs. Zombies about whom he observers “the zombies are sincerely hungry for brains — you’d want to give them your brains if you didn’t need them.”

Is Mario the only game with an awesome jelly fish enemy?

This is all relevant because we’ve been thinking a lot about antagonism, antagonists and enemy design.  It’s true – our game has enemies – you heard it here first.  I have learned from enough Will Wright talks that a lot of the best game designers take their inspiration from places outside of games.  With that in mind, and probably thinking too literally, I went to the “Extreme Mammals” exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences to comb mother nature for our very own set of goombas, zombies and cliff racers. They wouldn’t let me take pictures inside so instead I ended up sketching pictures of improbable primates and prehistoric armadillos.

Speaking of inspired creature design, Max from Unknown Worlds – the guys working on Natural Selection 2 – played our game recently at Thirsty Bear in San Francisco.  Thanks again, Max!

Natural Selection features a fair amount of "extreme" flora and fauna