Creat Studios Interview: DSiWare’s Alien Havoc
John Manuelian talks about the upcoming cow steal ‘em up
Nintendo DSi consoles may be flying off store shelves almost as fast as they can be replenished but few would argue that the main draw of the device - the DSiWare service - has thus far lived up to its potential.
While Apple’s iPhone has been blessed with a cornucopia of different games via its densely populated App Store, the DSi has played host to some particularly uninspiring digital downloads - unless of course, you like paying money for clocks and calculators, that is.
However, there are faint glimmers of hope appearing: we’ve already had the excellent Mighty Flip Champs and there are titles such as Pop+ and Dragon Quest Wars to look forward to.
Another highly promising title is Alien Havoc from Creat Studios. Boasting an appealing setting and likable 2D visuals, it looks set to provide DSi owners with plenty of mirth and mayhem.
Desperate to learn more, we abducted John Manuelian, the creator of the game, and beamed him aboard the Pocket Gamer mothership for a spot of light-hearted interrogation.
Pocket Gamer: Where did the idea for Alien Havoc come from? Hollywood B-movies were clearly an influence…John Manuelian: One of my hobbies is collecting and restoring, the best I can, arcade games. The idea for Alien Havoc came from a desire to create a game similar to what you would have seen in an early ‘80s arcade. A space themed game seemed appropriate. I also wanted to create a game with a playable character rather then a generic spaceship.
For whatever reason, aliens often seem taken by Earth cows, so a game about an alien who collects cows seemed to fit my requirements. There was some B-movie influence for some splash screens as well as a little bit of the game’s atmosphere.
When did development on the game start and how long has it taken you to get to the stage you’re at now?
I started working on the game back in October. As I mentioned, I wanted the game to have a classic arcade feel to it.
To do this, I decided to write the game’s prototype version on a popular '80s era console. I then translated the game to DS hardware once I was happy with the game’s basic feel.
All together it took around nine months of on-and-off work to make this game.
Can you describe the gameplay to us?You, the alien, must collect all cows from the current gameboard. There are, however, various types of farmers that try to prevent you from taking their valuable livestock. The player can stun farmers for a few seconds by throwing various items, including cows, at the farmers. Also, a ghost farmer will start chasing the player if the player dilly-dallies in a level for too long.
Every level in the game wraps both vertically and horizontally: i.e. if the player goes off the left side of the screen, then he will reappear on the right side of the screen (same vertically across both DS screens). There will be many levels that use this wrapping mechanic to add confusing maze designs.
The visuals are certainly very distinctive – are we right in detecting a little bit of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past’s influence in the design of Alien Havoc? Did any other titles provide inspiration?Zelda: LttP was one of many SNES games we used as reference when designing the graphics. Other games such as Goof Troop, Tales of Phantasia, and Secret of Mana were referenced as well.
Does the game make use of the stylus in any way?Unfortunately, no. Stylus control would be pretty difficult to add because the game is played across both screens, and I didn’t want to add some forced gimmicky stylus mini game to Alien Havoc.
What part of the game are you most proud of?
From a technical standpoint, the path finding. From a gameplay standpoint, being able to keep as close to the original prototype as I possibly could whilst adding additional features.
What’s it been like to work on DSiWare?I worked on a few DS games previously, so the jump to DSi was minimal. There are additional requirements I needed to handle because the game is downloadable. All in all, in my opinion, DSiWare is a pretty easy medium to create content for.
Do you have a solid release date in mind, and will you be staggering the release of the game in different regions?The game will be released this summer. We would like to release to all regions within a month of each other if possible, but that is still to be determined.
Assuming the game is a success, do you have any plans for a sequel and what kind of features would you hope to include?I don’t know yet. If we do make another Alien Havoc game, then it would probably be a different type of game rather then the same old game with a different skin.
A lot of developers seem to be looking into the possibilities of porting DSiWare and WiiWare games to the iPhone, and vice versa - do you have any plans to branch out into iPhone development?We don’t have plans to bring this title to the iPhone at this point, but you never know what could happen down the line.
DSiWare is still in the early stages of development but many DSi owners have been less than thrilled with the games currently available. Do you think this is a case of people not giving it enough time or is there a solid argument for demanding better games on the service?I think it’s a little bit of both. The service is quite new and of course it will take some time for many games to appear on it. At the same time I think some launch titles like New Super Mario Bros. Mini, 1080 Snowboarding Mini, or some other big name title would have been nice.
After Alien Havoc, what’s next for Creat Studios?I have a few games in mind I personally plan on making… but you will need to wait a bit longer before I spill the beans on them.
We’d like to thank John for his time, congratulate him on his recent wedding and point out that no cows were harmed during the making of this interview.