Bit Trip: Runner 2 Announced at Indiecade

Full disclosure: One of my shining achievements as a reporter was six hours spent in Santa Cruz, CA chatting it up with Alex Neuse, Mike Roush, and Chris Osborn of Gaijin Games about their little development studio. At that point, Bit.Trip: Void hadn’t come out, but the Wii-focused developers were clearly doing amazing things with the service. Over the years, a lot has happened for the small studio. They have picked up some new employees, lost some others, published all six of their Bit.Trip games, and even released compilations of the saga on the 3DS and Wii.

It’s clearly an exciting time for the company, and at this weekend’s IndieCade, it’s clearly going to get a lot more exciting. Announced during their session, Gaijin Games is bringing their most popular Bit.Trip game, Runner to XBLA and PSN next year. With an appropriatly gangly title, BIT.TRIP Presents: Runner 2, Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, Runner 2 will bring new playable characters in addition to CommanderVideo (and now CommandgirlVideo), costumes, more than 10 new abilities, check points, and difficulty modes. One presumes they will keep the awesome music score, but if the above screenshot indicates, there is going to be a whole new visual aesthetic.

Check out the following video clip for a tongue-in-cheek peek into the development process of the game. More details can be found at runner2.com.