A few days back, I wrote about my experiences with what was probably one of the most in-depth demos I'd ever had the opportunity to play on DS: Ninjatown.

With the full game shipping today, SouthPeak gave us the opportunity to ask a few questions of Ninjatown's creator, Shawn Smith, as well as the president of developer Venan and producer Jeremy Pope. I asked about the genesis of Ninjatown, how the game came about, and more...

Tell us about where the Ninjatown characters and universe originally came from, before the game was conceived.
Shawn Smith, Ninjatown creator:Impossible to tell what originally planted the ideas for the Ninjatown in my brain, but I think videogames were a big influence. The bright primary colors and the "friendly" vibe were certainly influenced by classic games, like NES stuff.

I've always been an artist, doodling characters, but for some reason there was a cohesion that began to form around these ninjas. I like the simplicity... I hope I don't sound pompous, but I like characters that are iconic, and the original Wee Ninja feels that way to me. If I happened to show it to people, they immediately responded to it, so it was refined and eventually became our first Ninjatown plush toy. The world began expanding from there.

How did the game come about?
Smith:I feel really lucky because the original motivation to bring Ninjatown to a game came from the producer, Jeremy Pope. I mean, I've always dreamed of it, and I had discussed some general ideas with my friends at Pickle King Productions, but it never had focus until they introduced me to Jeremy. From our first discussion, it has been a real whirlwind. I mean, the game was signed in August 2007 and here we are in October 2008 with a game days from hitting shelves!

Jeremy is a freelance producer and years ago produced two of the GTA games on PS2, and Max Payne 2, among other huge titles. He immediately outlined what he thought was the perfect game for the Ninjatown universe, and I immediately had that "eureka!" moment. He brought in Venan, who he has worked with in the past, and it took us a couple weeks to craft a sort mini design doc. Then we pitched the game to SouthPeak—they signed it on the spot. The rest is history.

     

I love the style and the theme most of all—the characters, the pixel art, the animations, the between-level scripts... who's all responsible for that?
Smith:That was mostly myself. I'd obviously been working with most of the Ninjatown cast since I created them back in 2005. But we went back and forth with Venan a bunch on the story and found some ways to introduce new characters to Ninjatown. That was a lot of fun to be able to create new characters for the game. For the record, these include Mayor Ninja and the Builder Ninjas, among others.

As far as how it looks in the game, credit has to go to Venan there since they were the ones that programmed it all. They did an awesome job staying true to the artistic style of Ninjatown. In the end I think it came out looking very unique when up against other DS titles, and even though it seemingly has a simple, straightforward look, there is a lot of depth to everything that will keep gamers entertained.