Interviews

Talking about the strange breeds of Nokia's Creebies (part 1)

How the team behind Creatures created Creebies

Talking about the strange breeds of Nokia's Creebies (part 1)
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| Creebies

Every console needs an animal nurturing game these days, so it's no surprise Nokia wanted to get in on the act with the just-released N-Gage. Still, the look and feel of Creebies – which is being developed by Cambridge-based Gamelabs, the outfit behind the long-running Creatures series of artificial life games – isn't what most people would have expected.

We caught up with lead designer Lisa de Araujo to get the lowdown on the game that's shaping up to be a cross between Tamagotchi and Neopets.

Pocket Gamer: What was the initial inspiration for Creebies?

Lisa de Araujo: Nokia came to us with a high concept for an N-Gage title. It was aimed directly at young (ten- to 15-year-old) girls and was pretty much your standard anime-style virtual pet.

How has the concept developed since that original design?

Early on we realised that even though the point of the concept was to attract female gamers to N-Gage, a title weighted exclusively to such a young female audience wouldn't sell well on high-end gaming devices like N-Gage. We wanted to expand it somewhat. We changed the look and feel to appeal a bit more to some boys and added the mini-game features which we thought would bring it beyond pure nurturing. We also decided to give the Creebies a range of personality types that might broaden the appeal as well, so you'll find physical sporty Creebies, intelligent geeky Creebies, cute girly Creebies and a strangely normal species.

And, of course, the title is no longer on the old N-Gage device. It's now been ported to Nokia's wider gaming platform, which should help.

What's the target audience and have you done any formal focus testing?

The target audience now is 13-18 year old boys and girls, but we're hoping that older females will enjoy it as well. While it's still quite a young age range, we're anticipating that the platform will have become more mainstream by the time the game has launched and that there will be a hand-me-down aspect to the devices or even that parents will buy it for their own phones and hand it off to their kids in the car or whatever. Something I do frequently.

Nokia has done extensive focus testing both in the UK and Finland, as well as Asia and India. We gained some excellent insight into control and help systems from that testing. We also learned that we were pretty much on the money with our target audience. Girls unanimously loved it and a smaller percentage of boys enjoyed it as well.

We learned the mini-games were really popular so we added additional ones. There are some really great games hidden in there, including some fun Bluetooth and hotseat games. You mentioned the Hurdles game in your preview, and that's definitely my personal favourite, but buy a TV for your mobile home and then have a look for the 'TV Games' in the shops (you will have to unlock the first island however). They're very cool and a lot of fun.

How have games such as Pokémon, Animal Crossing and Tamagotchi influenced your design?

Animal Crossing and Tamagotchi were, of course, big influences, but actually, it was Neopets and Creatures that were the most influential. With Neopets, we realised even the simplest mini-game could be a lot of fun, highly addictive and provide a powerful currency driver to a pet-based game.

What about Gameware's history with the Creatures franchise?

Creatures, of course, provided us with the behaviour and breeding aspects to the design. We had done some work on a 3D version of Creatures that was never released and it provided us with a head start on some interesting animation and 3D morphology techniques.

The art design of the game doesn't – to our eyes, at least – have a typical cute theme, but does have some sort of Ren & Stimpy vibe. Was that a conscience decision?

Well spotted! Yes, we didn't really want to go too cute as we didn't want to totally alienate any potential male audience and we didn't want to go too dark because that might go the other way altogether. Believe it or not, there were some very, very dark themes proposed. My brief to the art team was, 'Retro, '70s, acid-trip colouring'. Characters are weirdy freaks, but their environment is 'Telly Tubbies on LSD', a little bit Jetsons, a little bit Barbarella with trippy topiary."

Our thanks to Lisa for her time. And don't forget to check out part two of the interview, which covers breeding, community and the in-game currency.
Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.