How do you make the journey from leap of imagination to slabs of plastic on shelves? That's what the people behind Pollen Sonata are trying to figure out, currently involved in building a Wii game from scratch. Involving flowers, pollen and exclusive Wii controls, you learn more on the official website and watch the trailer on YouTube. For a better understanding of the project, we chatted to Jimmy Marcus Larsen, lead programmer for the Sonata team.

Hello, it's lovely to meet you. Can you give a quick shout out to the readers at N-Europe and explain who you are?

We are an energetic team of unproven game developers out to make a difference. We found each other during our game developer education, which puts talented people from different schools and universities together to make a demo for a month. We created Pollen Sonata, and we are now trying to take the concept one stop further with a release on Nintendo Wii.

What features of the Wii will the game use? How will it use the Wiimote? Will it utilise the online capabilities of the system, or WiiConnect24?

Most of the motion sensing and pointing features of the Wii Remote and Nunchuck will be used. The game will have several different pollen forms, and each of them is controlled in a different way. For example, with the pollen form in our prototype the player will be able to make 1:1 adjustments to its wings by using the Wii Remote and Nuchuck. It is still to early to say anything about online functionality, but we would like to include a special kind of player ranking.

From both a developer and personal perspective how (if at all) has the Wii changed your perception of gaming? was it your main inspiration?

We love everything about the Wii, but it was not really our main inspiration for Pollen Sonata. The Wii just happened to be the perfect match for our concept, so after realizing that, we began shaping the concept to the Wii. Also, with a little extra work, it could work on any other platform - just not in the same immersive way.

You seem to be in the nearly unique position of having a title catching interest before it has even made its way onto the console's hardware. Has this taken you by surprise? And what kind of pressure does it bring?

We were certainly surprised, which is also why it has taken us several weeks to adjust to the situation. Starting up a professional game production is not a trivial thing to do, but we are very close now. As for pressure we don't feel much of that - only peoples' enthusiastic anticipation.

What initially inspired you to go about creating such a brilliantly original concept for a game?

Our game designer wanted to do a game about pollen, and the concept just evolved from there.

Was it due to the current market saturation of sequels and spin-offs? Or perhaps the challenge of creating something unique?

Yes. Our main goal is to create something unique and different from what is on the market today. As for sequels - they aren't that bad are they? Noticeable concept evolution like in Pikmin 2 is a good thing from our point of view. We have plenty of ideas for our own sequel also.

Why did you choose the source engine over other moddable game engines out there?

Actually our education made that choice for us. None of us really likes it that much.

The game is about flying from flower to flower, what gameplay features and hazards are in the game to bring variation to the journey? Will we get attacked by seemingly-giant bees?

We can't reveal much about that now, but insects of different kinds will definitely be there. Imagine a sticky slug trail that the pollen can use to get beneath the petals without flying, or a spider's web that functions as a trampoline. While in the air the wind and weather will be the main hazard - thunderstorms, rain and perhaps little tornadoes will both assist and obstruct the journey to another flower.

What is the overall aim of the game? And what part does the player have in the story, and how is the progress of the world around the pollen shown?

The overall aim is to connect the fates of different people, but even though the pollen is controlled by the player, the story revolves around someone else. We have a very unique way of telling the story, but we would really like to keep it a secret a little while longer.

Are you in talks with any publishers over the titles' release?

Yes, but for now only those who has contacted us by themselves. Before signing anything, we plan to contact those who has not seen us yet.

Will this game see release on shelves or would you consider making it a download title?

Currently we are mostly looking at a release on the shelves. We would have to make some adjustments to the concept for this to work as a download game.

Do you see the lower cost of digital download games as a way to get more independent titles in development? If so do you think these low cost, low budget games have a place alongside their full price counterparts?

We are not sure. If your title is unique enough while still showing some retail market promise, both investors and publishers will be there. On the other hand, long expensive productions can easily destroy any unique aspect of a game - a quick low budget game might end up more true to the original idea.

What's your preferred beverage?

Questions like that will only bring long time wasting discussions to our team :-)

Great thanks to Jimmy for answering our questions. We'll be keeping one of our many eyes (for we are an anamatomically irregular creature) on the development of Pollen Sonata.