I wrote a slightly (ok, totally) rantish “open letter” to Dylan Cuthbert last night, bemoaning the difficulty levels in PixelJunk Monsters and Eden. If you have yet to try these games on your PS3 – run, don’t walk. They are wonderfully crafted, tight little experiences of both the Tower Defence and Platforming genres, respectively. There are demos for both.

Anyhow, Mr. Cuthbert had the good graces to respond, and he has confirmed the following:

  • Monsters will be receiving a free patch that allows the player to progress through the game on Easy, Medium, Hard, or a new Expert mode (which I suggested he name simply “Cuthbert”); this will be available for offline play. Online rankings will maintain the existing difficulty level to maintain fairness.
  • Eden will also be receiving a patch to enable some new modes of gameplay. He described the swinging mechanic as “much too fun to waste on just one set of game rules”. I agree. He also implied that Q-Games is looking into “a more namby pamby mode for the ‘lighter’ people out there”.

What a nice guy.

You can read my original letter here, and his actual response here. What’s also kind of amazing is that I wrote it to him at 1:25 am my time, and he responded within 25 minutes. He’s 13 hours ahead of me in timezones. I have received email from the future.