Space Giraffe Rides Again

For an Xbox Live Arcade release, Llamasoft's Space Giraffe turned out to be a pretty divisive little piece of work when it was originally released back in the summer of 2007. Some folks saw it as nothing but a Tempest clone set against a visualizer nightmare that made it too hard to figure out what the hell is going on. Others found the psychedelic shooter to be absolutely mesmerizing and fully profound. Still others wrote it off as absolute madness, causing the developers to start calling out reviewers that they felt didn't play the game enough to understand the game. That bit got a little ugly. But the real point is that Space Giraffe probably isn't for everyone. At the time of its release, though, I couldn't get enough of it.

So it shouldn't surprise you that I'm quite excited at the prospect of an upcoming PC release. Not only will it contain the levels and graphics found in the 2007 release, but the developers have gone back and remixed the game to sort of tone down the insanity, which may (may) make it more accessible to more people. As someone who enjoyed the first release (even though I was never particularly amazing at it), I'm interested to see how the new levels pan out.

Additionally, the PC version will feature upgraded graphics with a new shader system, which should allow for more swirly, wild backgrounds. This is, apparently, the same system that will be used in Llamasoft's other in-development project, Gridrunner+++.

Space Giraffe will be available for purchase and digital delivery next week at a price of $20. In case this all still sounds confusing, here's a video of level 13 on the Xbox 360: