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WiiU

Ittle Dew Interview with Ludosity's Joel Nyström

by Billy Berghammer and Aaron R. Brown - March 31, 2014, 7:00 am EDT
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Joel talks speedrunning, jokes, and features in this Ittle Dew focused interview.

We had the privilege to interview Joel Nyström, founder of Ludosity, on his upcoming Wii U game Ittle Dew. It's a humorous, puzzle-and-secret-packed adventure with an endearing art style. The game has already been released on numerous platforms, but the best version yet is coming to Wii U.

Nintendo World Report (NWR): First off, for those who aren't familiar with it, what is Ittle Dew?

Joel Nyström (JN): Ittle Dew is a light-hearted adventure game with a lot of puzzling and secrets to find. It's a very dense game with much more content crammed in there than first meets the eye, and you can play through without even seeing half of it. We also geared the game towards speed-running, which is something we all love here at Ludosity.

NWR: This game has been released on various other platforms. What's your personal favorite version to play and why?

JN: My favorite version is actually the Wii U version. Being the last and final version of the game, it has a little more love and polish than the other versions, plus it has some nice features the others don't have.

NWR: Now, the GamePad will display the map and support Off-TV play. Are there other features you're utilizing on the GamePad?

JN: We didn't want to go bonkers with the GamePad though, so it's pretty much what you'd expect - a map that is revealed as you go in real time, and the ability to play off-screen.

NWR: And aside from the GamePad, will it support other controllers?

JN: There's also support for both the Pro and the Classic controller.

NWR: In an earlier interview with us, you mentioned that it was created with speedrunners heavily in mind. With that said, do you think the Wii U version will provide an advantage or disadvantage of some kind when speedrunning compared to other platforms?

JN: When it comes to speedrunning, the Wii U version will be balanced identical to the PC version, so we expect times to be very similar.

NWR: You also told us that this game was made to be broken, due to being created mostly for speedrunning. So far in the game's life, have you witnessed people "breaking" the game outside its intended design?

JN: We have seen some interesting exploits used in speedrunning, the biggest one being the "reset room" exploit where you can open a door through a puzzle, and then instead of running there you reset the room to get closer to the entrance. When I first saw this, my first immediate gut reaction was to patch it immediately--before I realized two seconds later that this was exactly what we were after all along =) So it's still in.

NWR: Will the Wii U version be getting leaderboards?

JN: Unfortunately, we don't have online leaderboards on the Wii U, since it would mean we'd have to set up our own servers, etc. That's a whole other ballpark that's outside of our reach as a small indie studio. We do still have locally saved best times, of course.

NWR: Ittle Dew is chock-full of jokes and other entertaining bits poking fun at old school games. Are there any jokes you've since thought of that you wish you could have put in?

JN: Haha, well, no not really. Having seen these jokes hundreds of times I'm a bit tired of them myself so sometimes I'd rather wish we'd have less of them. But many seem to like them so it's all good.

NWR: When can we expect to see Ittle and Tippsie on the Wii U eShop?

JN: The game is finally in submission now, so it shouldn't be long now. But we've said that for a long time, and for various reasons out of our control it has been delayed many times, so I'll hold off on promising a set date this time.

NWR: If you could work on any Nintendo franchise, what would it be and why?

JN:Oh boy, that's a good question. I think I'd pee my pants if we got to do a sequel to Super Metroid. A really good one, preferably on a console and not handheld. Fusion was good, but it had pretty bad controls due to the GBA's lack of buttons and uncomfortable ergonomics. Yeah, New Super Metroid on the Wii U - I'd like to do that =)

A big thank you to Joel Nyström for the interview!

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