WiiWare World: How long has Boingz been in development?
Jeremy: About a year.
WW: How did you come up with the idea of Boingz in the first place?
Jeremy: The idea came from a brain storming session about games we could make for the Wii. I sat at my kitchen table doodling a bunch of ideas for mechanics and ‘playing’ with them on paper and in my head. Boingz was one that bubbled to the surface.
WW: Can you give us a brief explanation of the game play in Boingz?
Jeremy: Boingz gives you command of a bunch of stretchy characters. You can directly control one character at a time, using the Nunchuck to walk and jump. The remote is used to bend, stretch, flick, and pin characters. The goal of each level is to put the characters into color coded gates. Of course you only start with one active character, and have to wake up the others before they can join your party.
WW: What about Boingz makes it stand out from other puzzle/platformers out there?
Jeremy: The stretching, flicking, and pinning mechanics are pretty different from other games. Boingz is built around these mechanics, and using them in a natural way. Another primary difference from many other games and Boingz comes in the level design of the game. You never need to worry about screwing up a level and needing to restart.
WW: What controllers are supported in Boingz?
Jeremy: Boingz requires the Wii Remote with the Nunchuk attachment.
WW: What was it like developing a game that makes use of such a unique game controller as the Wii Remote?
Jeremy: It was fun. We wanted to make sure we provided a unique experience for the Wii user, something that made the player feel they were interacting with these little creatures – stretching, bending, and flicking them about. At the same time we didn’t want to make the game all about shaking and waggling the remote about. There are plenty of games that already offer that.
We also didn’t want to make a game that required players to practice extreme precision with the pointer. The pointer on the Wii just isn’t geared for it, and for folks like me who shake a ton, it’s a nightmare to try and deal with anything that requires a high level of pointing precision. To that end we made sure to design the game and its control in a manner that makes it easy to do what you mean to do, without fighting about the specifics of how you do it.
WW: Did you find it challenging to stay within the 40MB WiiWare file size limit?
Joey: I wasn’t ever concerned about staying under 40MB. However, knowing that storage has been a hot button topic for Wii users we did try to keep our download as small as possible. We have some really great internal tools to eliminate duplicate data from our final builds. The most challenging part was figuring out how to partition our data; one large monster package of data takes up too much memory during decompression, too many small packages and we don’t get the highest level of duplicate data reduction.
WW: Is there any downloadable content going to be made available for Boingz?
Jeremy: Many of our games are designed with future expansion in mind. Due to a number of factors Boingz was not. Without this base support it would be very difficult for us to release any additional content. Further expansion of Boingz will have to come from any future games.
WW: Will Boingz have any type of online game play or other wi-fi features?
Jeremy: This version of Boingz does not support networking. A physics based game like this was something new for us, so we chose to focus our resources on the core game mechanics.
WW: What are some advantages/disadvantages to developing for the WiiWare service as opposed to a retail release?
Joey: In my opinion the only real differences boil down to size. With a retail title you can have a lot more data than on a title for WiiWare. Although, as the saying goes ‘sometimes less is more’; with Boingz having such a small data footprint it means that we can load and decompress all of our data into RAM one time during application start up allowing us to load levels rather quickly.
WW: How many Wii Points will Boingz retail for when it's released?
Jeremy: Boingz will set you back a mere 1,000 Wii Points when it hits the Wii Shop Channel.
WW: Any idea when we can expect a Boingz release in the US or Europe?
Jeremy: It should release this Fall.
WW: When can we expect Boingz plushies to hit retail shelves? Can we have some?
Jeremy: If I see any I’ll be sure to send some your way. That is after I get some myself, of course. I wonder if we could get ones that stretched?
WW: What is your own personal favorite WiiWare game to date?
Jeremy: My current favorite is the episodic Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. I love classic adventure games. I love the Homestar Runner cartoons. SBCGFAP is as close as you can get to playing a Homestar cartoon, and it’s in classic adventure game format. Plus I get to answer questions like this with cool words like SBCGFAP.
Joey: I don’t have a ton of experience with WiiWare games but I have enjoyed LostWinds.
WW: Do you guys have any other WiiWare project on the horizon?
Jeremy: I’m afraid that’s a question I’m not allowed to answer without bad things happening to my family. I like my family, please don’t make me endanger them...
We want to take a moment to thank Jeremy and Joey for taking time out of their busy schedules to do the exclusive interview with WiiWare World. They were also kind enough to send us over a short game play video of Boingz in action for all to check out below.
Comments 24
Wooo first comment... could be fun even though technically it's another puzzle game. Video reminds of MvDK2 in some ways, but your characters are a bit more flexible and stretchy!
"Endanger your faimily"? Is that a cheap way of keeping your next WiiWare game private? Or...
(You would call me schizophrenic if I told you my other guess.)
By the way, those plushies exist?
Hmmm could be fun. I'll wait 4 a longer video and a review
The plushies question was a joke. Since so many game creatures get a plush, we thought we'd at least ask.
One thing I do like about most of these devs for WiiWare games, is that they seem very down to earth and don't seem robotic or repeating the same information. For that I respect them.
"A mere 1000 points." Umm...a thousand points really isn't that cheap for a downloadable game, but that does all depend on how fun the game turns out.
"You never need to worry about screwing up." That worries me, because if the game is too easy I might not want to play the game again because of lack of challenge.
We still have a bit to wait yet so I will see how the game turns out. Hopefully the physics engine is fun to mess with!
This game's got me interested. It kind of reminded me of a few games such as MVSDK2 and Toki Tori. Hmm...
I like this kind of puzzle games, and it seems this one is kind of original, the mechanics look great, but, as beastman93, I'm worried about it being too easy. Lets wait for the final product.
My theory is that the "not getting stuck" part is because you can just fling your character out of where he is to backtrack.
I think a lot will depend on the difficulty level. It could be fun in the way Toki Tori was fun, figuring out your way through the level, but I don't want to breeze through it.
Kudos to WiiWare World for getting an interview the day after the game was announced!
We're relentless when it comes to interviews. No one can hide from us!
@Corbie Great Job at the interview so fast! The gameplay video has made me want to keep an eye on this. Could a very good semi-Toki Tori-ish game. Anyway, I'm suitably impressed!
Now that I've seen the game in action and know that it's been in development for over a year I'm feeling a bit more confident about the quality of the game.
Oh, and good work as usual with all of your interviews, WWW. I also would like a plush - I've still got Yoshi, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro cuddlies somewhere
Only plush stuff I have are some red Pikmin... they're nice heh...
I've got a bunch of game plushies. Banjo Kazooie, White Pikmin, Pink Yoshi, and a huge Sonic the Hedgehog. They're not really mine, you understand. I'm just holding them for a friend.
@corbie
im not
This gameplay made me less interested =/
@ Corbie
Oh yeah, I forgot about those. If you could please mail them back to me now, I'd be much obliged. You see, I don't have any video game plushies at the moment, only a Fox Bobblehead from the worst (IMO) Starfox game yet, Starfox Adventures.
Looks A LOT like Toki Tori...
Re: Merchandise
I want some stress balls of those blobby blighters from LostWinds. I wouldn't mind some cuddly Eledees either.
Looks pretty good and funny. =P
Never tried Toki, but everyone here seems to love it, should I have tried it? Are the forums on here ever going to work? seems like a great bunch here, a lot more mature than the 1up boards, I'd love to chat more about the great stuff being released. On topic, this game looks fun, and I too like to hear from these less pompous smaller devs.
@Ren you should definitely pick up Toki Tori. It's pretty damn sweet!
Lets not talk about the forums for now!! lol
Alright! Toki Tori was awesome, so hopefully this game is too.
@Ren: We are a great bunch. Especially Corbie (I'm saying that so he doesn't change my avatar to the freakin' Ice Climbers again... fingers crossed). And by not buying Toki Tori, you're branding yourself a fool.
Also, are you ever going to change your piccy, breaderer? It's been that GBC box for as long as I remember.
@Wiiloveitonline. Don't be hatin' on the Ice Climbers!
@Dazza. Those forums are never gonna come, are they? Why don't you guys just get rid of that tag, since all the WW talk is on VC-Forums?
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