We chat with the developers of upcoming WiiWare platformer Furry Legends about controls, graphics, and bad experiences with furry things...

Slated for a release on WiiWare sometime later this year, Furry Legends is shaping up to be a beautiful looking platformer for Nintendo's download service. (Check out the first trailer here if you haven't already).

We thought it was high time we caught up with Gamelion's Lukasz Szczepanski, producer of Furry Legends, for a chat about the title.

N-Europe: Hi there, Lukasz!

Lukasz: Hi everyone!

N-Europe: First off, could you explain the overall story and concept of Furry Legends to us?

Lukasz: Sure. Furry Legends is a platform adventure game. Players will lead the main character through several levels full of platforming and puzzling goodness. The main character (who surprisingly is a Fur/Fuzzball) has managed to avoid being captured by the evil tribe of Cube'y Squaries. Those menacing Squaries hate everything which is not sharp, square and hard. There's a long story covering the reason for all the animosities and hate, and players will discover this through the course of gameplay.

N-Europe: How and why did Gamelion decide to develop for WiiWare?

Lukasz: We were well entrenched in the mobile industry, and we figured out that it's the highest time for a step forward, trying to be more creative and put something of our own out there. WiiWare has attracted us with the low entry barriers and large install base. Not to mention the fact that we were dying to put all those Wii unique controls to some use.

N-Europe: So when did development begin?

Lukasz: The real development of Furry Legends began at the end of 2008. We were fiddling with Wii earlier during 2008 already, but most of it was prototyping, testing and generally fooling around with various mechanics and concepts.

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N-Europe: How did the idea for Furry Legends first come about?

Lukasz: We had some technology for the core mechanics ready, and we decided to put that to good use. We have converted the tech to Wii and started to think what can we do with it next. One of our guys came up with an idea inspired by Furry of the Furries, and we all bought the idea. Thus we created Furry Legends. In the early stages we still had problems with figuring out what we really wanted in the game, what would fit, and what we wanted the game to actually be about. Now, few months into the project we have a pretty clear vision, and we hope that players will find it as fun as we do.

N-Europe: How many levels are there, and how long will it take us to blast through the game?

Lukasz: The game is constantly evolving, changing. Unfortunately I can't provide any solid metrics for this question, but we're aiming for a few solid hours of gameplay with the title. There will be hidden and secret things, so replayability will also be a factor here. Mastering all the levels won't be all that easy ;-)

N-Europe: Could you explain the controls to us?

Lukasz: The controls are pretty simple and intuitive. We've had a lot of prototyping on that stage, trying to figure out the best use for the unique controls of Wii. We had swinging, circling the Wii Remote Controller, and other wacky schemes. However, we have found out that most of these, even though they were 'cool' as concept or in the beginning, would tire the player and make him concentrate on the controls, rather than on the game. Thus we took a step back and simplified stuff to make it very natural for players. Furry Legends is controlled with the Nunchuk, where you roll the ball left and right using the stick. There are also buttons for special powers on the Nunchuk too! In addition you have the Wii Remote Controller, where you jump by pressing A, and attack by holing B and swinging it in the direction of the enemy. The B button and swings have also other uses, but I'll let players to figure that out ;-)

N-Europe: Are you interested in the forthcoming MotionPlus add-on? Have Nintendo communicated anything about using it in future WiiWare development?

Lukasz: MotionPlus is a natural extension of the Wii Remote Controller, mapping the movements 1:1 is a really nifty feature. Since we're under NDA [Non-Disclosure Agreement], I can't really comment on Nintendo's communication with us or other developers. I'm pretty sure that we can find a good use for MotionPlus, provided that it will turn out very popular. currently we're dead set on Furry Legends, in its current and future incarnations, so MotionPlus is somewhat below our radar.

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N-Europe: About what amount of Wii Points do you expect Furry Legends to cost? And do you have a release date you're aiming for?

Lukasz: As with previous question, I cannot comment on any final settings. What I can tell you is that I want Furry Legends to cost the right amount of money for the content we'll be providing. Depending on the amount of content in the game, the price may vary. As for the release date, this is again something that is being set by the big N. Internally, we're aiming to end the development cycle around end of June 2009, which would put game going Live between 3rd and 4th quarter of this year.

N-Europe: What will Furry Legends provide for gamers that other WiiWare titles do not?

Lukasz: Well, fur, duh. But seriously, humor, interesting puzzles, story, awesome graphics, great arcade gameplay and even more fur!

N-Europe: What attracted you to WiiWare rather than the PlayStation Store or the Xbox Live Arcade?

Lukasz: Project budgets are lower on the WiiWare than on PSN or XBLA. Hardware plays a role here, as well as additional software. PSN seems like a great platform, but we just weren't ready for such a commitment back then. XBLA on the other hand is very crowded at the moment, and you really need to put in time and money to get something out that would really attract the players and recoup the costs. Here again, we weren't ready for such a commitment at the time. Don't get me wrong, we're not discarding these platforms, in fact we would very much like to enter these markets, but there's time for everything, and ours isn't now yet ;-)

N-Europe: The backgrounds we've seen from the game look beautiful, how important was designing a great looking game to you?

Lukasz: We have a very, very, very committed art team. They literally work day and night to make the game look good, to get the levels done, models created and animated, textures drawn. We also listen to the community at large. When we have released our first screenshots, all we could read around the net was 'OMGZ, this is Lost Winds ripoff, burn!'. So, yeah, that wasn't a very good signal. We went back to the drawing board to figure out when did this art style sneak up on us. When you work on something for a long time, you often lose the grasp of the big picture, you become committed to your creation, and you just can't step back and say 'oh shi-- guys, zoom out, I've seen that somewhere..'. So that's what happened. But this is a learning project for us, so we scraped some of the design, remodelled some things and changed the mood. I do recognize the fact that we are still being compared to Lost Winds, but currently we're the second 3D-2D platformer on WiiWare, so that's a given. Just like with the player feedback, our art director often comes around, checks what we have done and makes changes to the overall design. Often this means changing quite a few elements just to make everything click together artistically. Last, but not least, let's not forget our coder-mans. They did a really good job with all the lightning and post processing effects, and these make us stand out from the crowd of flat-shaded games ;-)

N-Europe: And finally, what's the worst experience you've ever had with something furry?

Lukasz: So this one time, on a band camp.. someone had Internet access and I learned about furries, yiff and all that stuff. There were things I didn't want to see, and those, unfortunately, cannot be unseen. Furry things are generally nice and fuzzy, but some people just go waaay too far with that, if you catch my drift :P

N-Europe: Many thanks for answering all our questions!

Lukasz: You're welcome! Remember to check our website at furrylegends.com for more 'Furry' info :D