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Space Giraffe in alpha

Minter's loving it.

Jeff Minter loves a good animal romp, especially his project dubbed "Space Giraffe", which has now reached alpha stage.

He's a bit tentative about showing the release to Microsoft today, which effectively gets to give the yes/no to the project, but he's confident the gameplay and the "gorgeous" graphics are enough even for the captain's table.

"I'm really loving playing it," he beamed on his blog. "The last couple of nights we've had full on sessions on the big plasma and it just looks lovely."

Progress seems to be coming along very well, too, following news that the game was almost at testing stage - with 32 levels implemented and ready for action.

"I'm only at level 32 now, plenty of time to make the later levels really hard if I want to, plenty of scope for challenging new enemy types," he added.

"But I want at least these early levels to be a nice fat slice of sweet gaming cake that everyone can sink their teeth into once they get the gist. And I think I've got that. It's really nice."

Space Giraffe is a psychedelic shooter which follows on from popular Atari Jaguar title Tempest 2000. It will cost you about 400 Microsoft points and is expected to launch sometime this year.