Jools Watsham gives more info on Atooi's first project, Chicken Wiggle

A portion of a Nintendo Life interview with Jools Watsham of the newly-announced Atooi...

NL: Can you tell us about the Atooi team, and those you'll be working with?

JW: Yes, we're getting the band back together – as it were – in terms of what was Renegade Kid's "2D team". Matthew Gambrell, who handled the programming of Mutant Mudds, Bomb Monkey, Xeodrifter, Treasurenauts and many other titles is the programmer at Atooi. Matthew and I work very well together as a team. We both have a deep respect and much love for the 2D genre and push ourselves to create games worthy of the impressive legacy established in the 16-bit era."

NL: Can you outline the key ideas and features of Chicken Wiggle?

JW: There are three key elements to Chicken Wiggle, which are immediately presented to the player when the game is started: Play, Create, and Share.

Play: This is the main story mode where you learn about the villain, their dastardly deed, and what your goal is. There are over 60 levels in this mode, which introduce you to a vast variety of interactive gadgets, hazards, and enemies. All of which are available to the player in Create mode.

Create: When you're in the mood to create something, this mode provides access to all of the various game elements for you to create your own levels. There are 60 empty level slots for you to fill with your own creations. In addition to placing platforms and utilizing the dozens of unique gameplay elements, you can also choose between various gameplay rules, and art themes for your creations.

Share: Once you're ready to share your creation with the world, the Share mode takes you to the Chicken Wiggle community portal. This is a pretty robust system that enables you browse through all of the custom levels that players have uploaded to the server by filtering through various search criteria, such as popular, latest, official Atooi levels, search tags, and so on. Each level is visually presented in a list that provides a cropped snapshot of the level, the author's name, number of downloads, favorites, etc. Once you see a level that interests you, simply tap the Play button to immediately jump in. If you want to keep that level on your device, you can download it and also edit it yourself.

Uploading your own levels is easy too. The only criteria is: you must be able to complete your own level. Once you have met that criteria, you can publish your game by uploading it to the server for other players to play and enjoy. You can name your level, add a longer description or hint line of text and define the search tags for your level.