Get the Space Giraffe [PC] Demo off WP (45mb)

Space Giraffe features uniquely beautiful graphics and 100 levels of lovingly hand-crafted shoot-em-up action gameplay from the makers of Llamatron and Tempest 2000. Collect power-ups to activate Bonus Rounds and master the strategies necessary to maximize your score on every level!

To celebrate the one year anniversary Llamasoft has made the soundtrack available for download, put together a walkthrough explaining Level 1-9 in depth so that even demo players can draw the maximum fun from the game, and put together some trailers explaining/revealing gameplay elements & full game enemies.

The PC version of the game is considerably nicer than the Xbox 360 original, in several ways, and adds several key new features to one of the most distinctive and beautiful shooters of recent times.

Some players of the Xbox version found the extravagantly abstract and intense nature of some of the graphics to be distracting, and while in a way that was part of the design of Space Giraffe - learning to extract the necessary audiovisual cues from each level was part of the skill of playing the game - for the PC release we wanted to make the game more accessible to those who might be overwhelmed by the original graphical style.

The Neon engine has also been in continuing development since the time of the Xbox 360 version of the game over a year ago, and in particular we have been developing a new shader library capable of generating much more versatile and nice-looking effects than we've had before (we used the Neon library with the new shaders to provide the background visualisations in the upcoming release of "Space Invaders Extreme" on XBLA).

Accordingly I have undertaken a complete remixing of all 100 levels of the game. Although the fundamental level shapes and scripting are the same as in the Xbox game, the backgrounds and environments in which gameplay takes place have been completely reworked in order to show off the new shaders to good effect. The overall intensity of the effects has been toned down, and there is a lot less deliberate visual distortion of actual gameplay elements than there was in the Xbox version. We hope that this will make the PC version of the game more accessible to gamers not enamoured of the balls-out full-on psychedelia of its predecessor.

This is the version of the game that you will play if you choose "Space Giraffe NUXX" from the options presented when you run the game. We recommend all new players begin with this version (although I am sure people who already played the original version on the 360 will enjoy playing through this; it's very pretty).

Of course, we also do not wish to alienate those who *do* enjoy mad crazy psychedelia, and I thought it'd be a shame to throw away the original levels altogether. Many people might enjoy playing through the chilled remix of the game and then wish to try the full-on original. Of course they could always go and buy the excellent 360 version, but I thought it'd be nice to extend the capability of the PC version to allow users to play either version as they wish.

Thus the PC version also comes with the "Acid Mix", which presents the original 100 levels from the Xbox 360 game in all their balls-out, psychedelic glory.

Adding this capability also allowed us to provide for the possibility of future level packs. If there is sufficient enthusiasm for the PC version of the game then it will be easy for me to provide more level packs for download. These needn't be simply remixes of the original levels - they can be entirely new levels with new level shapes, scripting, and texture literals. We could do themed levels (for Christmas, for example, or to celebrate L. Ron Hubbard's birthday), further level sets for the chilled crowd, further psychedelic challenges for the tripheads, shorter level sets for those who want a game that doesn't take so long to play through in one go - whatever people want, really.

Space Giraffe will be available for digital download next week for $20.