The last time I saw Slam Bolt Scrappers it was running on developer Eitan Glinert’s laptop in the middle of a crowded hallway at March’s Game Developer’s Conference. But when I went to check it out at E3 last week, the glowing white wall showcasing the enormous logo of Sony Online Entertainment gave the experience a different vibe entirely. The game is headed for release on PSN in 2011. But outside of some cosmetic upgrades, additional in-game powerups, and being able to play a four-player battle match with three other DIYgamer staff members, the game remains the fun and colorful experience I saw earlier this year.

If you’ve never heard of the game, it’s quite simple. Your team gets a column to build armaments in using Tetris-style blocks. But instead of building rows, you’re building varying sizes of square boxes (of different colors). The bigger the box, the more powerful piece of the puzzle you’ve just built. This means there are two important factors in setting your side up for a win: build fast and build big.

Because you control a construction worked who can fly around the screen, you can also place pieces under blocks that have already been placed. This is because it’s not a matter of the pieces stacking up to the top of the screen, but rather building structures to fight off your opponent. To gain more building blocks, you must fight off creatures that fly into your screen. In this new build of the game they also shoot at your structure to try and derail your efforts of construction.

Eitan showed me the latest additions to each side’s arsenal. The original mode I played included purple lasers, red missiles and blue shields, but the new build of the game includes two intriguing new weapons. They are the green drill cannon and the white snowball machine. If your side builds a green drill cannon, you will shoot drills at your opponents structure, and until the opponent punches the drill off, it will keep attacking the piece of the building it landed on. And to further create humorous inconveniences, the snowball machine shoots balls of snow at your opponent, which will fill in gaps and slow down their building efforts. To clear the snow away, they have to punch it off of their structure. By the time someone builds a 5 x 5 snowball machine, it’s hilarious to watch the giant snowballs careening over to the opponent’s side and creating a true headache of virtual snow-shoveling.

Before each match you can choose your loadout of cannons. Thus, the DIYgamer team battled with the standard laser, missile and shield combo while I snag an early moment with Eitan to play with the green drills and white snowball machines. Much like at GDC while he was explaining the game to me, I also managed to dethrone the creator at E3 – though he’ll again claim it was only due to the fact he was talking. This build of the game also allowed for a music select screen, though playing on a single flat-screen amidst the cacophony of the E3 show floor, I daresay couldn’t hear a single peep from the game.

For me, Slam Bolt Scrappers is continuing to shape up as a solid entry into the downloadable marketplace arena. It’s a great experience to play alongside friends you can swear at (I’m looking at you Erik) and once you’ll be able to get online and challenge strangers, it should get even more interesting. Fire Hose Games was not talking about the campaign mode just yet, but as a battle mode experience alone the game is completely solid already.

As the months tick towards 2011, we’ll continue to keep an eye on this one as it’s making all the same conference appearances that we are.

Erik had this to say about the game: “A puzzle-game hidden behind a multiplayer action beat ‘em up, SBS at very least brings something you don’t see everyday in the way its blended genre gameplay.”

As Arsen and James emerge from the lingering haze of E3, I’ll add in what they had to say as well.