PixelJunk Monsters in Jan

Q-Games has said PixelJunk Monsters will be out worldwide on the PlayStation Network in January.

Developer boss Dylan Cuthbert spilled the news all over the US PlayStation blog, before revealing his target audience was the Japanese. The cheek!

This is because traditional real-time strategy is unappealing over in those reaches of the world, apparently, so he has come up with a new style and twist to revitalise it.

Rather than control a cursor to order things around, you are a cute little "defender-of-the-forests" monster who collects money and builds towers. You can only make these near trees, though, making map layout a decisive factor over the 20 or so scenarios stuffed in.

More strategy is piled on top of this when you kill monsters and collect their gems, as they can upgrade your towers to offer better bits and pieces. Or you can do a rain dance-like manoeuvre in front of them and improve them that way - the longer you wiggle the better it gets.

Sounds interesting, and it can all be played on your own, cooperatively or against your friends, with leaderboards there to add a necessary splash of competitiveness.

Plus it's all wrapped up in a hand-drawn 2D art style nodding back to the olden days, but with some flashy futuristic graphical flourishes to avoid it looking rubbish.

Pop over to our PixelJunk Monsters gallery for a look at how it is shaping up.