Companies hosting their own digital showcases is all the rage nowadays, and long-time Australian developer Halbrick has just hosted their very own called the Halfbrick Beyond Showcase. It was a short one at just a hair over 10 minutes long, but it was packed with some very cool announcements. The areas where Halfbrick operates are mobile games (obviously), VR games, and animation. On the VR front they announced Fruit Ninja VR 2 and Thrill of the Fight 2, on the animation front they announced a new Jetpack Joyride animated series and the continuation of the Dan the Man animated series, and on the mobile gaming front they announced the return of two beloved classic games as well as a highly-requested sequel. That sequel is none other than Dan the Man 2, and you can see the teaser trailer below.

As for the two returning games, the first is one of the big hits that put Halfbrick on the map and it’s also the original adventure of Barry Steakfries, who has gone on to be basically the Halfbrick mascot and star in a number of other titles. I’m of course talking about Age of Zombies. Next is Fish Out of Water, a fish-flinging high score game in the vein of all those popular launch-as-far-as-possible games but with some added depth and loads more personality. I don’t recall exactly when either of these titles fell into disrepair enough to be pulled from the App Store, but Halfbrick mentions they are each rebuilt in brand new engines so they should be up and running smoothly when they re-arrive sometime this year. Probably very similar to how they relaunched Monster Dash back in 2020.

I’m a particularly huge Age of Zombies fan so I’m very stoked about that, and I’m also excited to re-experience Fish Out of Water after not playing it for probably close to a decade. Both those rereleases are set for a nebulous 2023 release, while Dan the Man 2 has a slightly more specific Summer 2023 release window.