Famitsu has new screens of some of Away: Shuffle Dungeon's bosses, including the first, the "blue crablike thing" Dave encountered at E3: Shuffle Show Floor. It stabs with its pointy legs, and is only vulnerable in the (conveniently) bright red jewel on its chest. The other bosses shown include a big blue worm who lives underwater (not a blue dragon), and a big ambulatory palm tree monster.
These bosses can be fought alone or in the special "Raid Battle Mode" that uses local wireless. In this mode, two players can take on a harder version of a boss, and earn better loot for doing so.
For a game whose central gimmick is a constantly-moving environment, video seems like a natural fit for promotional materials for Away: Shuffle Dungeon. It's easier to explain the "shuffling" of the dungeons by just showing you. And yet there really haven't been many trailers for Mistwalker and Artoon's collaboration.
This one features a bit of everything: cutscenes, battling, and lots of walking around in dungeons that get all messed up before your eyes. The boss battles look particularly epic, with the camera zoomed in and panned down for a more cinematic perspective. It's like the game shuffles between a Zelda: A Link to the Past look and an Ocarina of Time look.
Dave mentioned multiple weapon classes in his hands-on report of Away: Shuffle Dungeon, and now Famitsu offers new screens and descriptions of each of the four classes. They're all pretty standard accoutrements of the adventuring business, but we'll take any details we can get about Mistwalker's (otherwise) innovative dungeon RPG.
The sword is (obviously) balanced in speed, attack power, and reach. Spears attack straight forward and can knock down enemies. Daggers have short reach and low strength, but allow Sword (the character, not the weapon) to attack quickly and use combos. The axe is the slowest, but most powerful class of weapons. It can hit multiple enemies simultaneously.
Really, in a game about dungeons whose landscapes periodically shift like slot machine reels, it's probably okay for a few things to be conventional.
When I arrived at Majesco's booth on the now very diminished E3 show floor, I saw their offerings and immediately leaped toward Away: Shuffle Dungeon. The demo build only had one dungeon available, as well as the world hub and a boss fight.
We've got a long time before we'll see Away: Shuffle Dungeon in the U.S. -- it's dated for January -- so we won't fuss over the smattering of screens. The game still looks decidedly odd, but there's nothing like a good dungeon crawl on the DS, and the art style is somewhat better in certain game shots than in others. Slip into the gallery to compare.
Game Watch has a plethora of new screens for Away: Shuffle Dungeon. They run the whole gamut from gameplay shots, down to concept art of a variety of the title's NPCs. There's also some nice information available, such as brief descriptions of all the NPCs and how they play into the game's story.
The latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly features a nice preview of Mistwalker's Away: Shuffle Dungeon, which also happens to contain a nice bit of news: the game is given a January 2009 release date for North America, with Majesco publishing. This is somewhat surprising since AQ Interactive, who is publishing in Japan, owns an American game publisher; in addition, dungeon crawling is pretty divergent from the kind of casual games Majesco generally publishes.
Not that we're complaining, of course. Away looks awfully clever, and we're just happy we'll get to play it. One warning: given the history of this game, we wouldn't get our hopes up for it to make January.
Away: Shuffle Dungeon has already been announced as a PAL release (and sort of announced as a North American release), even though the Japanese version of the game isn't out yet. AQ Interactive, Virgin PLAY, and (probably) Xseed should be able to give us firmer Western release dates for the dungeon crawler now, because the delayed Japanese game finally has its own date. Of course, that date is even later than the vague "summer" named in the lastdelay statement.
AQ Interactive announced the final (probably) release date for Japan yesterday: October 16, right in the middle of the "fall" release window Virgin PLAY planned for Europe. Unless AQ Interactive is planning a simultaneous worldwide release, we expect the late release will cause the European version to get bumped into next year. The U.S. version still has yet to be officially unveiled.
Virgin PLAY sent out a press release today confirming that they will publish AQ Interactive/Mistwalker's Away: Shuffle Dungeon in Europe this fall. They say they're releasing it in "the PAL territories," so Australia is a possibility as well.
The press release is unusually interesting, as it provides the first official English-language details of Away's storyline. Away: Shuffle Dungeon is the story of Webb Village, a small town whose residents disappear randomly, a phenomenon known as Blue Dragon Away. After a girl named Anella gets "awayed" in his place, a young man named Sword finds himself the only remaining resident of Webb. Sword must enter the "Shuffle Dungeon" to rescue the villagers.
As if our recent poll regarding Blue Dragon Plus and Away: Shuffle Dungeon hadn't already put you on the spot enough, now you'll have to choose one for really reals. AQ Interactive's latest financial report confirms that both will hit North America in this fiscal year, and also mentioned a localized version of the Korg DS-10 (which we already knew about).
Incidentally, there's a further four third-party portable games being brought over by Xseed, and Siliconera reckons that those could include Flower, Sun and Rain, Lux Pain, and Dungeon Maker DS. As European versions of the firsttwo have both been rumored, we'd tend to agree!
With all of the impending games to hit the DS, which excite you the most? We don't have to tell you how pumped we are for Super Dodgeball Brawlers and the games coming from Mistwalker, but what about you all? What titles on the radar have you all giddy and feeling funny in the pants? Space Invaders Extreme?Edgeworth's game?
The official website for Mistwalker's Away: Shuffle Dungeon is up, with something to help pass the time while waiting for the dungeon crawler's eventual release: a Flash minigame based on Concentration/Memory (click on the circle with the word "open" on it). Away: Shuffle Minigame (that's the official title!) comprises three levels of Memory played on a 6 x 3 grid, with the goal of flipping matching pairs of cards to reveal portraits of Away's characters.
For the first two levels, it's straightforward enough: you have 60 (and then 50) seconds to find all nine pairs, just like any other Memory game. In the third level, all the cards are blank but three: one pair to match, and one card that resets the locations of those two cards. Oh, and the rows of cards are constantly moving around. At the end, you're awarded with a desktop wallpaper. Have fun! Or just download the wallpaper here (1024x768, 1280x1024).
A struggle has begun in the Nintendo Fanboy offices. We have divided the dungeon we reside in, one half of the staff staking claim to their side, while the remainder of us blog from within the sanctuary of our side. The argument that has split us so? What looks more interesting: Away: Shuffle Dungeon or Blue Dragon Plus?
The conflict has grown so large that it has spilled out onto the site proper, where we hope you, fine reader, can help us resolve it. We've put up a poll (placed past the break to keep the front page tidy and so those who hate polls and having their voices heard won't be bothered with it), so cast your vote and be heard. Help us stop before we sacrifice Chris to our god, Sakaguchi-san.
AQ Interactive has just registered a U.S. trademark for the name Away: Shuffle Dungeon. This leads us to one of two conclusions: they're thinking of releasing the game over here, or they're just trying to keep some jerk from making a game called Away: Shuffle Dungeon. It's ... probably not that. We doubt any other publisher would be that audacious (nor would they have a reason to be).
This is good news for a couple of reasons: first, and most obviously, we assume that there are people in the U.S. who would like the opportunity to play the dungeon crawler, and this is encouraging for them. Second, the fact that AQ Interactive is doing something like this makes it seem more likely that Mistwalker is going to finish and release the game at some point.
Away: Shuffle Dungeonlooks like a very interesting game to us. The roulette-style mechanic of changing up the area in which the player is traversing looks to be one that will allow the game to keep things fresh and instill a feeling of tension in the player throughout their experience, creating an overall engaging piece of gaming. We're psyched for the game, to tell the truth.
What about you all? Does this latest trailer for the game get you pumped for Away: Shuffle Dungeon? Does it not look like your kind of game?
Famitsu has new screens of some of Away: Shuffle Dungeon's bosses, including the first, the "blue crablike thing" Dave encountered at E3: Shuffle Show Floor. It stabs with its pointy legs, and is only vulnerable in the (conveniently) bright red jewel on its chest. The other bosses shown include a big blue worm who lives underwater (not a blue dragon), and a big ambulatory palm tree monster.
Dave mentioned multiple weapon classes in his 
Game Watch has a plethora of new screens for 
The latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly features a nice preview of Mistwalker's 
Virgin PLAY sent out a press release today confirming that they will publish AQ Interactive/Mistwalker's 
As if our 
AQ Interactive has just registered a U.S. trademark for the name 
_cg_oct22_kjgfdhd_thumbnail.jpg "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars")
