Fat Princess was released on PlayStation Network this past July to mostly positive critical reviews. Though the game had its fair share of flaws--especially when it came to online connection issues--the overall experience proved to be an undeniably charming twist on typical class-based online action games, swapping standard capture-the-flag scenarios for obese princesses who are in constant danger of being kidnapped by cutesy but deceptively brutal warriors, priests, wizards, and so on. Developer Titan Studios has been hard at work coming up with new content and balancing tweaks since the game was released, and we recently had a chance to check out a new map and hear about a few other changes due to roll out soon.

This is not the new map, we just thought you might enjoy a picture of an archer savagely killing a worker. (He probably deserved it.)

On the show floor at PAX 2009, the PlayStation booth is giving the public a look at a new map called New Pork with a few members of the developer on hand to explain some of the big changes. To start, this map is definitely one of the larger ones you’ll find in Fat Princess. It’s based on a medieval city, which sets it apart from the forests, deserts, beaches, and lava pits that made up the general themes of the original game’s maps. It’s a map with lots of wide-open space and few choke points. In the middle is a large plaza with a circle of columns surrounding a capture point. There are plenty of narrow alleyways, but for the most part, this a large map with lots of space to run around.

Some of the paths in this map are blocked by piles of junk lying in the way, much in the same way other maps had big rocks that you had to hack through in order to free up new routes to the enemy base. But another option is to take the multitude of hidden paths and teleports that make up New Pork. Titan was keen to point out that this map contains a ton of teleports, making its relatively large geography fairly easy to navigate if you know all the little secrets. Another interesting trait is that New Pork takes the repairable doors that you’d only find on castle doorways in the original game, and places them in a number of different areas on the map, adding several layers of defenses for each team.

In addition to showing off this new map, we also managed to pick up a few new bits of information about some other tweaks coming to Fat Princess. A new ranking and leaderboard system is on the way, as well as new matchmaking features that are designed to keep teams balanced and prevent players on the losing team from all joining the winning team en masse. As far as class balancing goes, you’ll see that the warrior class has been beefed up quite a bit, while the dark mage has been toned down in terms of his powers.

This isn't the new map either. But look! That chicken thinks he's people!

When we asked about release information for this new content, we didn’t get much in the way of an answer. Titan is still working on other maps, various tweaks to the game, and what we’d venture a guess to be new classes as well. So while we don’t know everything that’s on the way, or when it will be released, we do know that Titan is still out to make sure Fat Princess stays fresh and fun.