Droplitz Sale-a-palooza: 80% off PC version on Steam, iPhone version only $0.99!

[AtlusAram]

ATLUS DROPS ITS DROPLITZ PRICES WITH LIMITED TIME SALE-A-PALOOZA: 80% OFF PC VERSION ON STEAM, ONLY $0.99 ON APPLE APP STORE!
There's never been a better time to Droplitz like its hot.

IRVINE, CALIFORNIA -- AUGUST 21, 2009 -- Atlus U.S.A., Inc. today announced a couple of major limited time promotions for Droplitz™, everyone's favorite puzzler out now for Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®Network, iPhone, and Windows PC.

Through August 28th, Droplitz for PC is 80% off the regular price on Steam (www.steampowered.com). This tremendous deal is further sweetened by new features introduced in a recent update: leaderboards and Steam achievements!

For gamers on-the-go, Droplitz for iPhone is now on sale for a limited time, priced at an unbeatable, irresistible 99 cents! This sale commemorates the release of Droplitz Lite, the free version of Droplitz for iPhone. Both versions are now available from the Apple App Store.

Droplitz is also currently available for Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network.

###

About Droplitz
In a world where spouts at the top of a screen leak drops of liquid, one player will have to spin a series of round dials studded with different types of path formations in order to link those top droppers to the collectors at the bottom of the screen. Four unique play modes. Unlimited replayability. When drops start dripping, dials must spin. Coming to Xbox LIVE Arcade for Xbox 360, PlayStation Network, Windows PC, and iPhone near you. No droplitz were harmed in the making of this game.

Key Features*

• Infinitely accessible, instantly addictive -- Turn dials, open paths, and don't let the droplitz go to waste! Casual and hardcore gamers alike will be mesmerized as they rotate and connect puzzle pieces to let the droplitz flow and earn high scores!
• Four unique game modes -- Distinct layers of complexity keep the challenge fresh with Classic, Zendurance, Power Up, and Infection modes! Learn how to deal with sluggish, infected dials; strategically use bombs to clear sections of the game board; speed up the action or just aim for the highest score in a limited amount of time.
• Endless replayability -- The timeless satisfaction of making combos, clearing boards, and earning top scores will keep you coming back for more. Ever increasing speeds and larger boards ensure that there will always be a challenge ahead!
• Compete for high scores -- Online leaderboards and 12 trophies/achievements mean that when you're the best, everyone will know it. Score-based gameplay makes every game a competition to get to the top of the charts!

*Features may vary by platform

Droplitz has been rated "E" for Everyone by the ESRB.

###

About Atlus U.S.A., Inc.
Located in Irvine, California and founded in 1991, Atlus U.S.A., Inc. is renowned for its proud tradition of publishing exceptional role-playing games with strong niche appeal. The Atlus library of critically acclaimed video games includes Odin Sphere, the Trauma Center series, and the award-winning Shin Megami Tensei series. For more information, visit http://www.atlus.com.

For breaking news, special promotions, insider info, and more, visit http://www.atlus.com/faithful to join the ranks of the Atlus Faithful!

About Blitz Arcade
Blitz Arcade was founded in 2007 and is dedicated to producing top quality downloadable games across all platforms. Blitz Arcade is a division of Blitz Games Studios and uses its industry-leading proprietary technology, BlitzTech. Blitz Games Studios is based in Leamington Spa in the UK and was founded in 1990 by industry veterans Andrew and Philip Oliver and now has more than 200 staff. Its six divisions encompass mature titles (Volatile Games), Serious Games (TruSim), family titles (Blitz Games), in-house technology (BlitzTech), downloadable games (Blitz Arcade) and its education division (Blitz Academy).

For more information, see www.blitzarcade.com or contact Debbie Henderson, assistant PR manager at dhenderson@BlitzGamesStudios.com.

About Steam
The leading online platform for PC games and digital entertainment, Steam delivers new releases and online services to over 20 million PC users around the world. For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com.

©2009 BLITZ GAMES STUDIOS LTD. Licensed to and published by Atlus U.S.A., Inc.

[Gott]

I was going to create a new thread, but the forum won't let me - there seems to be something wrong with the permission settings.

I just purchased the game and while I'm happy with its current discount price, I'm not exactly happy with its quality.
The number of bugs in this game is overwhelming.

I'm experiencing just about every single bug reported (and ignored) on the official Steam forums: http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...play.php?f=643

The biggest blunder is, that this has to be the only game produced in the last five years that actually doesn't correctly work on a dualcore CPU!
This has got to be a bad joke or an almost unforgivable oversight. The game only works at its intended speed after manually setting affinity to a single core: Gameplay too fast bug?
The same bug is also causing horrible audio-glitches.

Of course, like with most users, if I simply start the game like any other, all I'm getting is a black screen. Well, I do have a GPU by a rather obscure company called "nvidia" ... you might not have heard about them, but they are producing quite a bit of hardware lately.

Switching between fullscreen and windowed mode with the typical alt-enter keyboard shortcut doesn't work either, of course. Well, why would it ... too conventional for you?

The game does work after manually forcing a resolution and forcing it into running in a window ... but on my "exotic" resolution of 1280x1024 the aspect ratio is off so notably that the cursor reminds me of an Easter egg.

I guess the fact that achievements don't trigger correctly can be considered a minor inconvenience. And this hopefully also explains why hardly anyone even achieved the easiest of them: http://steamcommunity.com/stats/Droplitz/achievements ... or does that simply mean that people weren't even able to get the game to work?


I know I only paid a very generous discount price but I was still expecting a working product that received a minimum of testing.

And what worries me most is that Droplitz has been out for 8 weeks without a single patch even announced.

Is there a slim chance that these bugs will be addressed in an update or will you simply keep ignoring them?


P.S: I'm sorry for being so harsh but it really annoys me that more and more games are released without proper testing and end up never getting fixed ...

[NullPointer]

Thanks for your feedback. We are aware some users have issues with the game. We don't want you to think we threw the game out there without testing it, because we didn't. The best thing you can do is to report your issues and configuration details (full details, get a DXdiag readout) and forward it to enquiries@BlitzGamesStudios.com.

For now, let me address a couple of your issues to the best of my knowledge.

A) Dual Core CPUs - The game was built for cross platform compatability, with the PC, XBLA, and PSN sharing the same code base to allow a unified development process. In other words, the PC version wasn't build separately from the ground up targeting a multi-core Windows-based PC. To do so for a $10 game (which we are selling for $2) wouldn't make much sense. Blitz has done an impressive job launching the game on four, count them, FOUR PLATFORMS within a 3 day period. To the consumer, it might seem normal and easy, but in reality, it's really really hard unless you are EA or Activision.

That said, I run a multi-core machine here, and the game certainly doesn't run too fast. I would guess this has to be a configuration-specific issue.

B) Sound Glitches - The audio issues may not caused by dual core CPUs, to my knowledge. We have one known configuration that has glitchy sound, but it is a 4 year old laptop with no dual core. This one has an on-going investigation.

C) 3D Hardware - The game worked on all the Nvidia configuration we tested it on. If you are having issues with the resolution or black screening, try hardsetting the resolution it via the command line. There are details in the readme. Again, this is configuration specific.

D) Achievements - The achivement bug is a known issue that is being addressed currently.

Again, Blitz is working to address any issues they can, but ultimately, they need information about the issue, how to cause it, and what kind of hardware you are running.

[Gott]

Thank you very much, NullPointer.
I certainly did not expect this qualified and fast level of support. You might want to register on the official Steam forums and help other users seeking help as well.

A) Dual Core CPUs - Oh, I'm aware of the perils of multiplatform development. But then again, Blitz is doing that to increase their potential customer base, it's a business decision and as a customer on one of these platforms I'm not sure why I should accept this or Droplitz' current discount price as a valid excuse for low quality and bugs.
The simple fact is that Droplitz is not performing the way it should on Windows and there are several similar reports on the Steam forums reporting the exact same issue. Droplitz is not using the Windows API for timing and while bypassing it, is not taking current power management features into account.
Droplitz might be working for you because for some reason you aren't using the power saving features of your modern CPU (and wasting unnecessary energy in the process) or you are using AMD's or Intel's "Dualcore Optimizer" - which are meant to improve compatibility with legacy applications sporting this bug, and not as a remedy for current ones. Droplitz does not perform correctly on two different dual core machines with Windows Vista and a clean installation of Windows 7 RTM (thanks to TechNet). I'm quite certain that the majority of dualcore-PCs is actually affected by this bug and at least one review on Metacritic sounds like its author simply might have mistaken this bug for steep difficulty.

B) Sound Glitches - My sound issues are fixed as soon as affinity to a single core is set so I assume that these are related to A)

C) 3D Hardware - again, I experience the "black screen" bug on two different machines with different hardware and there are reports by several other users that bothered to post on the Steam forums.
My main PC is far from exotic with it Nvidia GTS 250 and their latest 190.38 drivers. Neither is the resolution of 1280x1024 on my monitor ... Droplitz might be tripped by the fact that I'm using two monitors with this resolution, but dual monitor set-ups are far from exotic these days and almost all other current games and applications are having no problems with this.

D) Achievements - I'm looking forward to the update and not only because of this bug.


Well, I'll try to create a report tomorrow ... it's kind of late here.
If you're honestly committed to fixing this game (and I'm willing to believe that you are) you might want to go to the Droplitz-Steam-forum and ask others to file their bugs like that as well.

[Gott]

After installing AMD's dual core optimizer the game is working at its intended speed. While this is an acceptable workaround, I would prefer if the underlying problem were fixed.

I even managed to fix the aspect ratio after tweaking my long list of launch options ... still, this is something I should not have to do.

Achievements are still 100% non-working for me ... and I really hope I'm getting them once this is fixed.

Another annoying bug: Droplitz doesn't use Steam's per-game language settings (one of Steam's greatest features) and uses Windows' language settings instead.
This wouldn't be that big a deal if the German translation actually were complete. So far several buttons (for example in the Leaderboards) are labeled "Tranlation required".

I'll be compiling a list of these bugs now ... let's hope BlitzGamesStudios will appreciate the e-mail.

[Enzeru]

This is a pretty epic sale. 2 dollars? That's what I call budget gaming.

[PunkySkunk]

I found the email this morning and decided to buy it, being just $2 and all. Sadly, it doesn't actually work and gets stuck on a loading screen with a spinning icon for an indefinite (greater than 10 minutes, I know that much) period of time and never reaches any sort of menu screen.

The Atlus logo looks really nice though. At least that loads just fine! Well, it was only $2 and Atlus is $2 richer now, plus it's on my Steam account if I happen to use a computer that it works on.

Disappointing, but at that price I can't really complain. I just hope your next game on Steam actually works!

[Rhylos]

Will achievements be awarded retroactivily? It's obvious that it saves your scores and your highest multiplier, so will the achievements that pertain to those be awarded after the patch?

And when can we expect a patch?

[PunkySkunk]

I've played it now. It's not that fun, I found it to be pretty boring.