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WayForward on bringing Mighty Switch Force to Wii U, loving Nintendo, working with licenses and more
The following comments and info come from WayForward's Austin Ivansmith...
On whether WayForward is indie or not and working on licensed games...
"I don't think many people think of us as an 'indie' developer, because we do so much work for hire. We put everything we have into our games, and we make games that we think rival really big productions for the consoles they're on. They end up being very ambitious, and not art house, smaller projects that you might see out of Thatgamecompany or other places. We typically get reviews that say, 'I was expecting a pile of crap, and this was actually pretty fun.
It's because our approach isn't, 'I hate my life; I wish I was working on a cool game, so I'm gonna quit and start my own company.' [Instead], we get handed a license and we say, 'What's something neat about this license?' Or, 'What's a game from the past that we can emulate?'"
On working with the Adventure Time license...
"Obviously, that's an awesome license, but we do things like Barbie — we brought classic Castlevania mechanics to that. We genuinely care about our projects, no matter what the license is — we put a lot of care and effort into them, and don't just look at them as, 'I can't believe I have to do this crappy game.' To us, every license is an opportunity.'"
On bringing Mighty Switch Force to Wii U...
"The engine we used for the 3DS was pretty powerful, so instead of doing a tile-based game we opted to take our tiles and have full rastered images spanning the size of the playfield."
- this resulted in Wii U images that were some 8,000 pixels wid
- other levels have images that span more than 30,000 pixels
- Wii U version includes alternate, more difficult "Hyper" versions of each of the game's original 21 levels
On making the original game easier...
"We spent days going over the final stage alone, and cut a decent number of block arrangements and spikes to make the game easier. As a level designer, it was hard to 'kill my darlings' the first time around. If you're going to be a completionist and beat every single level that's in this game, you're going to be a very talented Switch Force player. I no longer have to run this game past our owner; if he can't beat the level, I feel like I've done my job."
- Hyper levels also feature a remixed soundtrack
On WayForward's love of Nintendo...
"We really like Nintendo — there's just something about our vibe and the games we make that just gels with the Nintendo fanbase and the community. There are a lot of games that people are making now where they throw on a couple of pixel shaders and a chiptunes soundtrack and call it retro. Our games are more than the sum of their parts; our bread and butter is side-scrolling platformers, and I think we have a great foundation for how to make a strong side-scrolling platformers with really accurate controls and collision."
On working with platformers...
"We know a few tricks about how to make jumping, and attacking while jumping and a few other things mesh together seamlessly so that it becomes second nature. Without thinking about it, it feels retro — it feels like something that just works. I call it the salt in the ice cream — you don't notice it's there, but if it wasn't it would taste weird and you wouldn't know why.
Creativity crosses disciplines. I love listening to an album front-to-back, and you always want a good flow of songs. I think a good game will do that, too — how it eases you in and out, and changes things up. I try to do that with whatever we do, and I'd like to think I did that with the original MSF.
Some of the levels actually began as individual puzzle sections, with no real connection from puzzle to puzzle. Sometimes there was too much ground to cover between them, and sometimes the puzzles were so close they felt like they were part of the same section of the level. What we ultimately did was try to find a harmony and cadence, where rooms would share a similar size to each other, and the length of time a player had to run to reach something never felt artificially elongated."
Link
Check out more screens in the interview above or here
On whether WayForward is indie or not and working on licensed games...
"I don't think many people think of us as an 'indie' developer, because we do so much work for hire. We put everything we have into our games, and we make games that we think rival really big productions for the consoles they're on. They end up being very ambitious, and not art house, smaller projects that you might see out of Thatgamecompany or other places. We typically get reviews that say, 'I was expecting a pile of crap, and this was actually pretty fun.
It's because our approach isn't, 'I hate my life; I wish I was working on a cool game, so I'm gonna quit and start my own company.' [Instead], we get handed a license and we say, 'What's something neat about this license?' Or, 'What's a game from the past that we can emulate?'"
On working with the Adventure Time license...
"Obviously, that's an awesome license, but we do things like Barbie — we brought classic Castlevania mechanics to that. We genuinely care about our projects, no matter what the license is — we put a lot of care and effort into them, and don't just look at them as, 'I can't believe I have to do this crappy game.' To us, every license is an opportunity.'"
On bringing Mighty Switch Force to Wii U...
"The engine we used for the 3DS was pretty powerful, so instead of doing a tile-based game we opted to take our tiles and have full rastered images spanning the size of the playfield."
- this resulted in Wii U images that were some 8,000 pixels wid
- other levels have images that span more than 30,000 pixels
- Wii U version includes alternate, more difficult "Hyper" versions of each of the game's original 21 levels
On making the original game easier...
"We spent days going over the final stage alone, and cut a decent number of block arrangements and spikes to make the game easier. As a level designer, it was hard to 'kill my darlings' the first time around. If you're going to be a completionist and beat every single level that's in this game, you're going to be a very talented Switch Force player. I no longer have to run this game past our owner; if he can't beat the level, I feel like I've done my job."
- Hyper levels also feature a remixed soundtrack
On WayForward's love of Nintendo...
"We really like Nintendo — there's just something about our vibe and the games we make that just gels with the Nintendo fanbase and the community. There are a lot of games that people are making now where they throw on a couple of pixel shaders and a chiptunes soundtrack and call it retro. Our games are more than the sum of their parts; our bread and butter is side-scrolling platformers, and I think we have a great foundation for how to make a strong side-scrolling platformers with really accurate controls and collision."
On working with platformers...
"We know a few tricks about how to make jumping, and attacking while jumping and a few other things mesh together seamlessly so that it becomes second nature. Without thinking about it, it feels retro — it feels like something that just works. I call it the salt in the ice cream — you don't notice it's there, but if it wasn't it would taste weird and you wouldn't know why.
Creativity crosses disciplines. I love listening to an album front-to-back, and you always want a good flow of songs. I think a good game will do that, too — how it eases you in and out, and changes things up. I try to do that with whatever we do, and I'd like to think I did that with the original MSF.
Some of the levels actually began as individual puzzle sections, with no real connection from puzzle to puzzle. Sometimes there was too much ground to cover between them, and sometimes the puzzles were so close they felt like they were part of the same section of the level. What we ultimately did was try to find a harmony and cadence, where rooms would share a similar size to each other, and the length of time a player had to run to reach something never felt artificially elongated."
Link
