Broken Rules are behind one of the most interesting upcoming WiiWare titles, And Yet It Moves We had a chance to chat to the team about this upcoming title recently. Find out what they have to say about it here.

And Yet It Moves is a unique game in numerous ways. It has a rather unusual art style and the core game mechanic allows you to twist the world around to help you get to your goal. We had a chance to chat to Jan Hackl, one of the developers behind the game, recently about the game, its history and their company's future.

Ashley: Hello. Could you please explain for our audience who you are, what you do for the company and a little bit about the game please.

Jan: Hello. We are a small team of just three people at the moment working on development of And Yet It Moves. While we each have one of four areas to work on we all help each other out with everything. My area is art design but we also all have an overview of what needs to be done so if someone has spare time then we will help each other. The game itself a platformer but with the extra ability to rotate the world, which opens a lot of possibilities for the levels. In the game you are required to complete puzzles using this ability, such as using gravity to make rocks move or direct the player through a gap and such.

Ashley: The game is very unique, in terms of visuals and gameplay, what were some of your inspirations behind this?

Jan: The gameplay inspiration came to us while working on our student project. The four of us met at university studying practical games design and one of our assignments was to create our own game. We all had to bring in a small concept for a game that we could realise and Felix came up with this idea. I don't know where the idea came from, whether it was something that just sprang to mind or, more probably, something that he has had in the back of his mind for a while. The visual style is very different because we were four guys who didn't really have much experience in creating art styles or modelling. We decided to generate a visual style that we could make ourselves and we chose a collage method, created by ripping out paper and photographing them and getting graphics from this. We saw a small film called Fast Film by Virgil Widrich which had a similar style but we used it as a source of inspiration rather than copy it outright. He used paper to design the film then printed it out frame from frame and then photographed this to put it into motion again. It kind of looks similar to And Yet It Moves because of the paper design but we used our own unique ideas as well.

Ashley: It started out as a PC game which received tremendous response, what were your reasons for bringing it out on the Wii?

Jan: We have long had plans to bring it out onto consoles and when we began thinking about what consoles to bring it out on the Wii was still very new and everyone enjoyed playing with the Wii remote. We decided that it would be fun to experiment with this type of interaction and do a game for the WiiWare service. Back then we were afraid that Nintendo would not allow us to make it so we waited and waited and wanted to have something really close to finish before we presented it to them. But in the meanwhile we showed a version on the Wii at the Independent Game Festival and one guy at Nintendo saw it there and he approached us and said he wanted us to do it. We immediately said we want to do it but as we were close to finishing the PC and Mac version we decided to release them first then focus on the Wii version.

Ashley: Have you had any troubles bringing And Yet It Moves over to the Wii?

Jan: We had a few small problems such as the Wii's performance and how it differs from the PC but one of the biggest issues was the Wii's input concept that we had to experiment about with. As the game was finished we just got bored of not working on the game itself, instead focusing on the programming of the remote. The biggest problem was using 3rd party engines which worked well for the PC and Mac version but for the Wii version. There is a Wii version of this engine as well but as it needs a lot of performance in general, we had to reorganise a few things for our WiiWare version. Scripting made the game very slow on the Wii so we had to re-code a lot in the engine and work our way around these problems. It was not a big problem but we found the memory of the Wii was not as advanced as some of the current PCs we were used to so we had to really dig deep into the engine to find places to manipulate it and such. However, we are making good progress and a lot of things are working now and I'm looking forward to completing it.

Ashley: Are there any plans to introduce any new levels or features in the WiiWare version?

Jan: Not at the moment. The only new feature is the way the Wii allows you to interact with the game by clicking on the screen and rotating the world around using the remote. This is also, I believe, easier to do than clicking buttons if you do it right [editor's note: I wasn't very good at rotating the world at first but got the hang of it eventually, and I believe Jan said this in jest, or if not I laughed anyway]. There will not be any new levels or such. We thought about putting in some new levels but as we are a small team we don't really have enough time to add more stuff to this game.

Ashley: When do you plan on releasing the game and do you know how much it will cost?

Jan: The price will be around 700-1000 Wii points which is about the same as the PC and Mac version which costs $10. The release date is currently not decided but we hope to be finished by the end of the year and have a release during the first quarter of 2010.

Ashley: The WiiWare service allows for independent game developers to get their ideas out there. What has working on that platform been like for you and do you think it could change the shape of the games industry?

Jan: All the different platform services, such as WiIWare, PSN and the Xbox Marketplace, are a big opportunity for independent games, particularly with Nintendo actively trying to get more independent games for their service at the moment. It is also great if you want a new game but don't want to spend a lot of money on one. Similarly the games are also quite short which is convenient as when you grow up you may not have as much time for games, so cheap short games are very convenient. Also developers don't have to worry about packaging and the costs of making manuals, printing everything out, hiring a publisher etc. It is a lot easier to do it over a downloadable platform because you can create the game and everyone can download it, you are not limited by which shops sell it and such.

Ashley: Are you working on any other titles at the moment or do you have any plans to do more after this?

Jan: We definitely want to continue making games but we don't have any specific plans for now. We are thinking about an iPhone game but at the moment we are not sure. The only thing I can saw now is we will continue to work on games based around a core game mechanic. This turned out to be nice for independent developers as by focusing on this one mechanic and building whole games around it is beneficial for independent developers. I am not sure if we are doing it for a console, for the iPhone or PC and Mac. We have obviously made a WiiWare game now so we will definitely consider making more, or at least port games to it. We haven't had much time to think about new concepts and working them out. We've had a few game concept and design sessions in which we have put together game concepts but at the moment they've not worked out.

Ashley: Finally, have you had a chance to play any of the other games here and what do you think of them?

Jan: I haven't played any of those but I'd really like to. Now that its getting quieter here I think I will try and play some. I will definitely play Worms because even though its an old concept it still has great gameplay. I also want to try the new BIT.TRIP.VOID because it is also a great concept and Night Sky. I will also play some of the DSiWare games because I have a DS myself, but no DSi so I will probably have to get one, or our company will have to get one. Now is definitely the opportunity to do so.

Ashley: Well I shall not keep you any longer. Thank you for your time.

Jan: Thank you.

We would like to once again take the opportunity to thank Jan for his time and patience (particularly as I kept getting pulled away for one thing or another). Be sure to stay tuned for impressions of the game soon but in the mean time be sure to check out Broken Rules' website and the official And Yet It Moves blog.