After I gave you the news about what's next for Arkedo yesterday with their Wii follow-up to Big Bang Mini—complete with a dangerously untested, cruelty-free recipe for banana bread—I finally managed to steal some precious time from Arkedo's Camille Guermonprez's busy Monday—yes, that guy—and get a glimpse of what the new Big Bang Mini is all about.
"Well, we are learning the Wii right now, after years and years on the DS," Camille told me. DS played off previous experience on GBA and in homebrew; but they'd never done Wii or GameCube before, with their console experience limited to PlayStation 1 and 2, as well as PC. "In terms of design, as we always do, we start from the hardware, and the user interface. Then we look at who plays it, and how they do it. It's very different from the DS.
"We are not talking to one person alone, with all his or her attention as we did on our previous projects. We can't fool him or her with pretty graphics and trippy music alone anymore," he says, smiling. "On the Wii... you get distracted. It's part of the package. People interrupt. A discussion starts. So we are basically talking to very short-attention-span audience. The good part of this is that you must be really incisive about your game. You also have to keep it simple (and hopefully not stupid, unless intentionally). Also, we want to keep on talking to kids, even more than what we did [with] BBM, and the Wii audience is cool for that."
The new project is Big Bang Mini extended and redesigned for Wii and its audience, as Arkedo sees it. It's just getting off the ground and as such you can expect it to be in flux, but right now the plan includes a solo Arcade mode based on the original game that will revisit five of the worlds from the DS original (though of course in higher resolution and "with the additive blending technology of absolute win," as Camille puts it) and a lot of new multiplayer modes.
"We will try some hopefully clever tricks, even for the solo mode, on how the game can adapt to things actually happening in the living room where you play," he explains, giving use a glimpse of one idea: "Say you are a father, playing by yourself a nice level of the solo Arcade mode. Your 4-year-old daughter comes in and wants to join. What's her mood today? Does she want to help you fight the baddies, or does she want to have fun tickling them so they can get crazy and annoy you more?"
I've been pondering his words for a few hours now, and I am really looking forward to this new direction. I thought of sharing BBM my own daughter, remembering how much fun it was to play Super Mario Galaxy together with her on Star Bit collection duty. She's also just starting to get into her own with games and likes to be very competitive, even if she can't really back her swagger up yet; so I asked if they could throw in handicapping to any competitive modes for her sake. "Yup, it's planned," he replied, smiling as usual.
Of course, I also tried to gently pry a few other bits of information out, like any good amateur newsman should. My question of "how does it control?" was met with a sly "I have good news for everyone. It controls very well." I did manage to get "horizontal shooter" out of him when inquiring about the format of the revisited worlds, which sounds good to me. Any more details will have to wait for now, but understandably so, as it's still very early on.
Camille is humble about the game's potential this early on, but I think Arkedo has earned my faith. I love how they're not just content to make "a multiplayer game" but are thinking hard about what possibilities it offers. It's something I've really come to appreciate in the short span of time since I first laid hands on Nervous Brickdown; you can say they are making "a Breakout clone" or "a shmup" but it is never really just that; they have a knack for exploring ground you think might be well-trodden and tired in new and delightful ways. I think they've got what it takes to take this one on, too.
For now, I will personally have to try to put this one on the mental back burner, as its planned 2010 release date is still quite a way off. But I would like to wish the team good luck in the meantime. I'm rooting for them.
"We are not talking to one person alone, with all his or her attention as we did on our previous projects. We can't fool him or her with pretty graphics and trippy music alone anymore," he says, smiling. "On the Wii... you get distracted. It's part of the package. People interrupt. A discussion starts. So we are basically talking to very short-attention-span audience. The good part of this is that you must be really incisive about your game. You also have to keep it simple (and hopefully not stupid, unless intentionally). Also, we want to keep on talking to kids, even more than what we did [with] BBM, and the Wii audience is cool for that."
The new project is Big Bang Mini extended and redesigned for Wii and its audience, as Arkedo sees it. It's just getting off the ground and as such you can expect it to be in flux, but right now the plan includes a solo Arcade mode based on the original game that will revisit five of the worlds from the DS original (though of course in higher resolution and "with the additive blending technology of absolute win," as Camille puts it) and a lot of new multiplayer modes.
"We will try some hopefully clever tricks, even for the solo mode, on how the game can adapt to things actually happening in the living room where you play," he explains, giving use a glimpse of one idea: "Say you are a father, playing by yourself a nice level of the solo Arcade mode. Your 4-year-old daughter comes in and wants to join. What's her mood today? Does she want to help you fight the baddies, or does she want to have fun tickling them so they can get crazy and annoy you more?"
Of course, I also tried to gently pry a few other bits of information out, like any good amateur newsman should. My question of "how does it control?" was met with a sly "I have good news for everyone. It controls very well." I did manage to get "horizontal shooter" out of him when inquiring about the format of the revisited worlds, which sounds good to me. Any more details will have to wait for now, but understandably so, as it's still very early on.
Camille is humble about the game's potential this early on, but I think Arkedo has earned my faith. I love how they're not just content to make "a multiplayer game" but are thinking hard about what possibilities it offers. It's something I've really come to appreciate in the short span of time since I first laid hands on Nervous Brickdown; you can say they are making "a Breakout clone" or "a shmup" but it is never really just that; they have a knack for exploring ground you think might be well-trodden and tired in new and delightful ways. I think they've got what it takes to take this one on, too.
For now, I will personally have to try to put this one on the mental back burner, as its planned 2010 release date is still quite a way off. But I would like to wish the team good luck in the meantime. I'm rooting for them.