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.

Today is the most glorious day of all for I just took my revenge on Nate!

First you have to know that Nate is kind of a god when it comes to action or sport games. I’m more of a tactical and RPG fan myself so I always ended up feeling like crap after being beaten 142 times in a row at Blades Of Fury.

But finally our developers listened to my prayers and came up with THE ultimate feature to make me feel better: the character customization of Castle of Magic on DSi which will be released on October (for only 500 points).

All you have to do is take a picture of whoever you want (your boss, teacher, mum, ex-boyfriend… annoying co-worker) and put it in place of one of the bosses’ face.

… yeah I know I didn’t REALLY beat Nate… but I still own him at UNO :)

Well truth is there’s a lot of other new features that rocks, like this one where you have to take a picture of something red to turn into a fire wizard, but this one just made my day!