For some time now there have been fierce Tank Battles tournaments occurring in our studios. Guided by my courage alone I decided to brave the fearsome mass of excited developers to ask one of them some questions about this game.

Sara: Why did you decide to make Tank Battles?

Developer: Here at Gameloft, we wanted to revisit an older but very popular gameplay style for consumers.

Sara: And what is Tank Battles exactly?

Developer: Tank Battles features World War II tanks that face off against each other in hopes to blow the other to smithereens. You can play against the AI or co-op with a friend in Campaign Mode to overcome 50 maze and paint ball-like levels. There’s also a fun multi-player option also allows two to four people to challenge each other in Death Match modes or Capture the Flag mode.

Sara: Seems like a lot of fun :)

Developer: Nothing beats blasting through walls with rockets, scorching enemies with flame throwers and carefully calculating the trajectory of bullets to win battles.  The controls are simple: the left stick moves your tank and the L2 and R2 buttons are used for firing. The aiming guide is highlighted when you hold down the L1 button and comes in extremely handy when you’re trying to stealthily eliminate enemies on the field. To reduce the waiting time when a player dies, we added a new feature: Gun Turrets! When you’ve lost all your lives, you still can play and help your partner win the game.

Sara: What an enthusiasm, are you a fan?

Developer: Totally! As soon as an early version of Tank Battles was installed on our PS3 test kit, it quickly became the most popular attraction in the Gameloft Studio. Everyone who passed by was drawn to the game’s colorful graphics and intuitive gameplay. During a recent office gathering, Tank Battles was main party attraction. Crowds gathered and stood in line to watch folks challenge each other and have the chance to play themselves.

Sara: And when will we have the opportunity to try it ourselves?

Developer:  It’s already available on PSN at $9.99. You’ll like it, Tank Battles captures all the youthful fun you can imagine.

Sara: Can you tell us more about Tank Battles development?

Developer: We initially started off by drafting a few futuristic concept styles (human vs. alien invasion).

We considered using a 2D background, but quickly found that it did not provide the effect we wanted, so we added a real terrain.

We tried a lot of different ideas like creating a child-like environment that featured tanks made from cardboard, rivers and lakes made from pipes and obstacles from toys left behind.

But truth is none of those styles matched what we wanted to create for audiences. So we decided to take a different approach and create a semi-realistic graphical style with cartoonish tanks.

We then fined tuned it even more and decided to remove the cartoony aspects to provide more realism with the graphics.

We finally liked the look and feel of the terrain but were still uncertain about tanks. We thought that realistic tanks inspired from the WWII era would be a nicer touch. So we began drafting a few concepts.

Ultimately, all the graphic aspects tied in well together and gave us a foundation for what we wanted to bring to the PS3.

The time when you could only guess what iPhone games were coming out from Gameloft is coming to an end! Now you can be among the first to see much-anticipated previews of the most exciting games! From now on, every month, our beloved Josh will present you with sneak peeks at all the upcoming games with exclusive videos, trailers, walkthroughs, features, interviews and more!

The first episode is now available with all our November iPhone games! You can watch this video podcast on the blog by clicking on the Podcast button and on iTunes, where you’ll be able to subscribe to our channel to be informed every time a new episode is released :)

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It was a week before this one, we were all hard at work, when from an unknown place, a strange sound arose…

I was the first to notice this strange tweeting sound, and asked everyone around if they’d put an alert on one of the phone.

You have to understand that all of our desks are literally submerged with phones, every kind of phone available on the market, plus a whole bunch of iPhones and hand-held consoles.

I started checking every one of them, and was really beginning to think I was having a nervous breakdown from too much Twitter when I realized the sound wasn’t coming from our desks… but from the ceiling.

Seems like some bird decided to visit our office, probably looking for an exclusive preview on Earthworm Jim (some birds are really into worms you know), and got trapped in our ventilation.

Mustering all my courage I built an improbable tower of boxes on my chair to reach the ventilation trapdoor and free the poor thing. Yeah we’re like this at Gameloft, we don’t care putting our life at risk to save endangered species (what? Pigeons are not an endangered species?).

All is well that ends well, the bird got away, and is probably doing just fine by now… Though there are a lot of cats in the area so I would’nt bet on it.

Comic strip by Dara