Warp

UPDATE: An official Steam listing has now popped up. You can pick up the lot for your local equivalent of $20.98 - that's a 70 per cent saving.

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Warp starts with one simple idea and everything cascades organically from there. The idea is summed up by the title: you can warp. This short-range teleport move allows you to spring Zero, an imprisoned alien, from his captivity in an underwater research base. Bypassing walls and doors, it never demands the same radical change in thinking as a Portal gun, but it tugs at the same thread. Traditional navigation must be abandoned as you learn to read the map in a different way.

Zero is a strange sort of hero, a cross between X-Men's Nightcrawler and a jelly baby, speaking only in Mogwai chirps. Don't be fooled by his adorable appearance, however. As well as warping through walls, he can jump into solid objects - including humans. Once inside, jiggling the left stick makes the object explode. Again, including humans. It makes for a tonally jarring experience; the cute, gelatinous critter who turns people into grisly splats of blood and meat.

As you explore the base, guided by another alien entity via psychic messages, you gain additional powers. The first allows you to create a phantom echo, useful for distracting guards and security turrets, but with limited range. The second allows you to swap places with any object the echo touches. The third lets you launch whatever object you've warped into as a projectile. In true Metroidvania style, the more abilities you gain, the more of the map you can access.

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Top-down puzzle adventure Warp launches on PC and PlayStation Network on 13th March, developer Trapdoor has announced.

That's almost a month after the Xbox Live Arcade version, which releases on 15th February as part of the XBLA House Party promotion.

The PC version of the EA-published game will be available on both Origin and Steam, Tradpoor said.

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Microsoft has revealed the release schedule for its impending Xbox Live Arcade House Party season.

First up on 15th February is EA's top-down puzzle adventure Warp, priced at 800 Points.

That's followed on 22nd February by survival horror spin-off Alan Wake's American Nightmare, priced at 1200 Points.

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Update: Digital Spy has updated its article to reflect the fact that while Microsoft's Xbox Live House Party promotion does indeed begin on 15th February, with one title launched per week, the order of those titles it originally suggested has yet to be confirmed.

Original story: Alan Wake's American Nightmare will launch on Xbox Live Arcade on 15th February, Digital Spy reports.

The action-orientated side-story kicks off Microsoft's upcoming 2012 Xbox Live House Party promotion. Three more high-profile downloadable games will follow on consecutive Wednesdays.

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Alan Wake's American Nightmare and I Am Alive headline the Xbox Live Arcade House Party 2012.

EA has announced four new downloadable titles for PC, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, and they come from promising places.

These three arrive in spring 2011: Gatling Gears, Wildlife: Forest Survival and The Fancy Pants Adventure. This one arrives next summer: Warp.

Twin-stick shooter Gatling Gears will be made by Martin de Ronde's new Vanguard Games studio. He co-founded Guerrilla Games and his new team recently made Greed Corps, an 8/10 strategy game. Gatling Gears is set in the same environmentally conscious world where hexagonal pieces of land fall away when they're drained of resource. The blurb on the game is short, but it seems as though GG will take a more action-orientated approach to the world.

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