Bursting With News... And Suns

Art by Claire Hummel. Copyright ©2010 Microsoft

One of the games I've been designing was announced at GamesCom in Cologne a couple weeks ago. Remember those silly ducks I mentioned a few months back? That was part of an ongoing scheme to create a game world that lives across multiple screens and game styles.

Here's another step in that direction.

Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst is a game for the new Windows Phones coming out later this year. We decided it would be fun to combine Bing maps from the real world with light, splashy "stretch & fling" mechanics. The result? You get to defend your own house (or school, or favorite restaurant) from marauding, mutant Freaks and Cell rebels from Crackdown 2. You can station anyone from your Friends list on Xbox LIVE at a gun turret and help them level up -- even when they're not playing Sunburst. Once everybody has a big, juicy base built up, players can coordinate to detonate huge Sunburst devices to clear Freaks from a cities, states, or entire continents.

Below is a clip of our Senior Producer, the redoubtable Justin Robey, showing off Project Sunburst on the show floor at GamesCom:

Pocket Gamer also gave us a nice callout as an anticipated title for those swanky new phones.

The reception has been really encouraging so far. The game is still in production, but it's coming together really well, due to an incredibly talented team of programmers, artists and testers. I'll keep posting about the game as more news and announcements unfold in the weeks ahead. Look for us on the floor at PAX this coming weekend!

CK