Stickmen Studios’ invent and adventure game Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time is heading to the Playstation Network sometime soon, so says the New Zealand-based developer. The port will receive Move motion control support, a sandbox level to tinker around in, and new in-game abilities.

I’m not usually so immediately captivated by a games tag line, but when I read about a one-person developed DSi-Ware game called Flush the Goldfish I was immediately drawn in. Not because of the title, but because of the promise: a goldfish wearing a spacesuit. How could we possibly go wrong with that one? My brain asked…

Nintendo must be doing something right this go around because, after shrugging off indie game developers and their entire WiiWare store on the Nintendo Wii they seem to be attracting many more developers with their 3DS eShop. Granted the DSi had quite a few indie games as well, but I don’t believe the DSi ever reached the kind of numbers that the 3DS is capable of given the DS’s fragmentation.

Here’s a post-holiday Christmas present for you all, Terry Cavanagh’s fantastic retro-styled platformer is set to arrive on Nintendo’s 3DS handheld in just a few days time. No longer will Captan Viridian be stuck on your PCs screen, immobile.

This year has been great for indie games, but it wasn’t without it’s disappointments. Nintendo’s handling of indie developers and their Wiiware store in general being two very low points. The remake of Nigoro‘s PC freeware classic puzzle/adventure/metroidvania La-Mulana was completed and promptly made it’s way onto the Japanese Wiiware store, but half a year later and the US and EU releases are still caught up in red tape. All hope is not lost, though. In this apologetic blog update, Nigoro tell us that the Wii version is due soon, but also something much more interesting: It’s coming back home.

Brian Provinciano of Vblank Entertainment has just unveiled another new trailer for his sprawling 8bit open city parody game, Retro City Rampage. This time we’re treated to a sneaky peak at one of the games many hidden bonuses. Take a look at this trailer to see a first glimpse at ‘Splosion Man in Retro City Rampage, both as a retro demake of ‘Splosion Man, and then you get to use his splode attack in the main game.

And that’s that. Amanita Design has confirmed to Eurogamer that their indie point and click hit Machinarium will not, after all, be appearing on Nintendo’s Wii console as it was originally confirmed.

According to the Jakub Dvorsky:

Long awaited retro-homage, pixelated open world ‘em up, Retro City Rampage, is nearing release. This started as a part time hobby project for Brian Provinciano of Vblank Entertainment, but it has now grown into something much bigger. He visited Nottingham last week to join in on the fun at GameCity, and I borrowed a few minutes of his time to shove a microphone in his face and ask him some questions. Here’s what he said:

DIYgamer: How many people make up Vblank Entertainment?

Provinciano: I’m the full time guy, and I’ve got another artist helping out, and three music guys.

DIYgamer: It’s a long time you’ve been working on this game, how long is it in total?

Provinciano: It’s been two years full time, and part time: many, many years.

DIYgamer: It seems like a real labour of love? It’s been in your life a long time.

Provinciano: Absolutely, I don’t know how I’ve live when it’s done, it will be really very weird. But it’s a pure labour of love, it’s my dream game. The homage thing is because I got into the industry because of specific games that I love, and I dreamed to one day work on my own Commander Keen, Mario, whatever. So by doing this, I’m really able to integrate doing all of these different genres, all these different styles of games, in this one game. The open world was the perfect medium for it.

DIYgamer: Are there any references to old games that decided to take out, because maybe it didn’t quite work, or it wasn’t as funny as it seemed?

Provinciano: Yeah, there were a few things. I really focussed on fun, and there were some joke that would have been funny, and when I tell them to people they will just laugh like crazy, but they just didn’t really work. Like a Desert Bus joke, the Penn and Teller Desert Bus game, I had designed a mission around that, but it’s just not fun. There’s no point in torturing people, because they’re not going to find it that funny.

DIYgamer: What platforms is it coming to?

Provinciano: It’s coming to XBLA and WiiWare. There’s a possibility of some others, but we’ll see.

DIYgamer: WiiWare? I’ve not heard a huge number of success stories from there recently.

Provinciano: No. I’m purely doing it for the fans. WiiWare is dead. There’s really not much money to be made on there. I’m really just doing it for the fans, and I’m really appreciative of the fans that have been supportive of this. I’ve received a lot of flaming from people that are mad because it’s been delayed or whatever. It’s not the best business advice to be releasing on WiiWare at this point, so it’s just for the fans, I hope they appreciate it.

DIYgamer: It seems to me because of the retro aesthetic, you’ve been able to cram a huge amount of things in there, because it doesn’t take you a huge amount of time to generate assets.

Provinciano: Yeah, the pixel art stuff has been real handy. It’s really amazing how quickly I can throw together an animation. If I’m making a mission, and I’m writing some dialogue, it really is am improv process, just like comedians on stage. I’ll be whipping up a mission, and then as I’m playing it, I’ll think: It would be really great if I could add this little animation there, and I can do that, that’s a huge advantage I have being an artist/designer/programmer. There other thing there too is that once I made a much more data driven system for art, I was able to add much more animation to it, on the technical aspect.

DIYgamer: So you’re on the home stretch now, what are your plans post release? What might your next projects consist of?

Provinciano: I’ve got a lot of ideas. I will be busy for the next while porting, and finishing up the Wii version, and marketing and all that. But I’ve got ideas. There are two specific open world games that aren’t Retro City that I want to do. I don’t think I’ll do those right away, because I think I want to do something different next, then I’ll go back to doing more open world stuff later.

DIYgamer: Projected release date?

Provinciano: It’ll come out in the beginning of 2012. Possibly late January or Feburary.

DIYgamer: Thanks a lot.

[Vblank Entertainment]

The guys from Vblank Entertainment uploaded a new trailer to their Vimeo account a few days ago this time showing off a new playable “character” Biffman! Thriftopolis City’s very own super hero. I mean, every major city needs a super hero right?

The trailer shows off all the hilariously retro chaos we’ve come to expect out of Retro City Rampage only this time it’s from the perspective of a super hero. Naturally this means you get you’re very own specialized car, the Biffmobile, the ability to throw Biffarangs (awesome!) and even a Biffcave to play in!

Gaijin Games taken to their blog to show off some very, very early footage of their upcoming sequel to their original WiiWare hit BIT.TRIP Runner. The game is pretty rough around the edges but it gives you a good idea of what you can, at least, expect out of the game which is to say more or less what you had in the first iteration.

There is something a little different about Runner 2 that they show off in the video and that is the ability jump slide, that is the ability to slide and then jump while sliding. The guys say that they’re preparing a number of fun obstacles where you’ll need to jump slide your way through in order to proceed.