Nintendo's downloadable game services have attracted an eclectic group of independent developers from all over the world, thanks to the wide appeal and unique control schemes of their systems. Sabarasa is one of them.

A development house that operates in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Mexico, Sabarasa is about to release Save the Turtles, a unique DSiWare puzzle game in which players must guide baby turtles as they make the journey back to the sea. We sat down with Javier Otaegui about how the game came to be, and the challenges of being an independent Latin American development.

Nintendo World Report (NWR): Tell us about the history of your company and development team.

Javier Otaegui (JO): Sabarasa was founded in 1996, and after a long and rich history of PC and console game outsourcing, we are finally focusing on developing console games for both retail and digital distribution platforms. We currently staff over 80 professionals in two studios located in Buenos Aires and Mexico City and we develop three retail games and four digital distribution projects.

Our first game for a Nintendo platform was Mazes of Fate for GBA, followed by a DS version, and ever since then we have embraced all Nintendo platforms including Wii, DSiWare and WiiWare.

NWR: How does this game take advantage of the DSi hardware?

JO: While the DSi does have very cool features like the cameras or the microphone, we felt it was better to stick to the things that made sense for a puzzle game like this. That's why Save the Turtles makes extensive use of the touch screen, digging and cracking eggs with the stylus and dragging the little turtles through the sand. Adding features just because they are available leads to cumbersome experiences.

NWR: How tough was it to design a puzzle game around the concept of a turtle's life from birth to their journey back to the sea?

JO: The setting actually provided a very rich background to draw from, since turtles do face a very epic battle right at birth and the environments themselves are packed with things that are very natural and easy to understand. Once the concept art started flowing, the elements fell in place quite nicely.

The toughest part was to balance the different elements and fine tune the level progression so that it was accessible but challenging at the same time.

NWR: What inspired the team to create Save the Turtles as their first DSiWare game?

JO: At the time we were working on a retail game for Wii and we just came out of doing Mazes of Fate for the DS. With both projects being so large, we wanted to tackle something smaller and faster. Apparently we are not very good at keeping things small, since we ended up using every available byte. We could have released the game months ago with half the game modes, content or polish, but instead we chose to make the gameplay tighter and the package more robust. As you said, it is our first game and we wanted to have a good start since we plan to support DSiWare extensively.

NWR: With the concept of the game being about saving turtles, is there educational value waiting to be found?

JO: The game certainly has enough elements about real turtles (like the different species, the beaches where they nest, and the threats they face) to lead curious players to learn more about these amazing animals, but we did not want to overdo it. It's one thing to bring some issues to light and quite another to try to shove them down players' throats.

Our aim was to build a fun and compelling experience while raising awareness on the perils these reptiles face, and I think we achieved that. You learn a bit more about sea turtles as the game progresses, but it never feels like a lesson; it's always a fun challenge.

NWR: Is it possible to play a "perfect" level in Save the Turtles? As in, not lose any of the too-cute-to-die baby turtles?

JO: Yes, if your skills are supreme you could save absolutely all the turtles in all the levels and we rewards players for doing just that. Having said that, it requires some really amazing turtle-saving skills to achieve that in the later levels. I have a hard time just saving enough turtles to finish some of those levels!

NWR: Your website has a section that's basically a help F.A.Q. for getting the Nintendo DSi online. Do you think that some of your potential customers will never have gone online before?

JO: The DS, and by extension the DSi, is such an insanely successful platform that not all users have the same level of expertise regarding the medium. In between all the players upgrading from past DS models and all the new players (that may not even be "gamers" in the traditional sense), we felt that some people could get a bit lost in all the features the system has, and may not even understand where to actually get our game.

It's not unreasonable to expect users to buy a DSi and enjoy it constantly without ever having to go online (or use the cameras, for that matter), there are so many good games for it! The DS has come a long way from its first iteration and we wanted to help players dive into one of the cooler features it currently supports.

NWR: How is the game development scene in Latin America different from other regions?

JO: The industry here is maturing at a very healthy rate, but we still have a long way to go to catch up with the main game producing countries in the world. We are culturally quite similar to the rest of the western world, but with some interesting twists. That allows us an easier integration to the mainstream market without losing our unique Latin identity.

NWR: Did the development team have any support or help from other colleagues in your region?

JO: Oh yes, definitely. Even though most of us are competitors, the game developing scene here is quite tightly knitted. We are founding members of ADVA (the Argentinean Game Developers Asociation) and all members support each other and since we have so few companies, we all shared a lot of people through the years. We also have very good relations with other studios throught the continent (big shout out to our peeps at Inmersion Games!), and we are always sharing feedback and information between each other.

NWR: Is a WiiWare version of Save the Turtles a possibility?

JO: We toyed [with] the idea, frankly, since we also develop games for WiiWare. But ultimately Save the Turtles may not make a whole lot of sense without the touch controls. If we played around with the control scheme a bit, maybe it could work, but we prefer to keep bringing new experiences to both WiiWare and DSiWare instead of just reusing the same ideas. There's always a chance to revisit Save the Turtles in the future, but not anytime soon.

NWR:What kinds of future projects can we expect from Sabarasa if Save the Turtles is successful?

JO: I'm sure you meant "after Save the Turtles is successful"! Independently from the performance of Save the Turtles, we are already working on more DSiWare games and WiiWare games. We are deeply committed to digital distribution, particularly on Nintendo platforms, since they allow us to reach a huge audience with a freedom that's not available in other formats.

We will give all the details on both Protocol and Horizon, our next WiiWare titles, very soon.

NWR: A lot of independent game developers have been vocal about the obstacles they have to face with services like DSiWare, things like the lack of promotion and poor sales. As an independent developer what are your thoughts on this situation?

JO: It is true that DSiWare has a lot of room for improvement, but that could also be said about any digital distribution platform. Some are a bit more successful than others, but no platform holder is being really aggressive when it comes to pushing their digital distribution games on consoles.

Nintendo at least is being more flexible than its competitors, since they are the only ones that allow developers from all over the world to participate on their platforms. You would be amazed, but other platform holders currently have legal restrictions that impede companies from developing countries to publish their own labels. In that regard, we are very happy with Nintendo, even if they need to support their digital presence more.

NWR: What strengths do you find with being a company that has studios in Mexico City and Buenos Aires? How do you think this make you different from your typical video game company?

JO: Both our Mexico City and Buenos Aires studios benefit from the almost untapped passion that we all share for gaming. Developed nations may have more experience, but their businesses are so large that you could argue that most projects are born out of some marketing team and not from actual designers. Or scope may be smaller, but our creative freedom is exponentially larger.

NWR: What challenges do you feel you have to overcome when releasing a game that won't be seen on store shelves, but only downloaded?

JO: As a confessed lover of digital distribution, I have to say that it brings a lot more opportunities than challenges. If you compare it to retail distribution, it's so much [more] efficient and creatively fertile. We don't have to deal with replication, distribution, shelf space or stock. Look at the releases of DSiWare and WiiWare and compare it to retail outings, where do you find more sequels and licensed games and where do you find more original intellectual properties? These new distribution platforms are a hotbed of really cool independent games and they will keep getting better in time.

We worked on a very deep RPG called Mazes of Fate DS and I can assure you it would have been much more successful if it had been released on a digital platform, since the retail space is very hostile to small companies and new IPs.

If pressed, I would say the biggest challenge is explaining to my mother that the game we make is not a physical object you can buy at some store and it just magically appears on your console wirelessly!

NWR: What sort of research did you do when working on the game? Did you get to count any sand-castle building expeditions as business trips?

JO: At first we did a lot of internet research, obviously, but we also did some travelling. Our very charming Alejandro Luna, lead designer on the game, visited a turtle sanctuary in Mexico and judging from the tan he sported when he came back, he must have done some seriously intensive research on those nesting beaches.

We would like to thank Javier Otaegui for taking time out from his busy schedule to chat with us. Watch for Save the Turtles, coming soon to DSiWare!