Thorium Wars : interview

PN: How long did it take to develop the game? Is it actually easy to develop a DSiWare title, compared to a regular DS game? How many people were involved in the project?

Matt Heinzen: Total development time was about 18 months for the North American version, with an additional 2 months needed for European localization. The delays in bringing Thorium Wars to Europe had more to do with work needed for other projects. The main development team for Thorium Wars consisted of one programmer, two artists, and one musician.

PN: Vehicles are quite great: how happy are you with the rendering of your vehicles in the game compared to what you had in mind?

Matt Heinzen: We are quite happy with the game's vehicles, especially those for the human player which strike a good balance between realism and unique appearances. The enemy vehicles and robots were a bit more limiting because we could not afford to do quite as much animation as we would have like due to hardware limitations, but overall the result is close to our original vision.

Ajani Boganey: I think the vehicles came out the way we wanted, they all worked within the context of the game.

Vehicles in the game are quite amazing

PN: War against human creations (I Robot, Terminator, Battlestar Galactica...) are not new, where did you get your inspiration from?

Matt Heinzen: The basic concept for Thorium Wars in humans battling an army of machines for control of earth had been floating around in my head since I was a little kid. I grew up playing with Transformers and Star Wars toys, and have always enjoyed stories with futuristic, thinking war machines. Seeing the Terminator movies a few years later definitely gave inspiration to the limited post-apoctalyptic themes of the game.

Florian Jungwirth: For the visual design and look and feel of the game I found my inspiration in many sci-fi books, illustrations (I am a huge fan of Syd Mead by the way) and movies. But we also tried a couple of new things (I.E. the "Streets of Munich" level was quite challenging and fun to create).

Ajani Boganey: I was always a fan of the sci-fi genre.I've watched many movies by Ridley Scott, and James Cameron. I think the common themes in their sci-fi movies helped influence the concept of the game.

PN: What is the reception of the day now that it is released almost everywhere?

Ken Patterson: Overall we are pleased with the reception and following the game has garnered. We have many fans as evidenced by the numerous downloadeds of the "Thorium Wars" paper toys off on our website.

PN: What other titles are now in the pipeline? A sequel? New levels? Any interest for 3DSWare or even WiiWare yet? What can you tell us :)?

Ken Patterson: In North America we have released "Mouse House" WiiWare and "Fantasy Slots" WiiWare. We will be releasing a fun hidden object game for DsiWare called "SpotIt Challenge" very soon. "Fantasy Slots" DSiWare is also very close to being released. Early next year we have an exciting music creation game for WiiWare called "Jam Party".

Now that we have learned how to bring our games over to Nintendo of Europe you can expect to see us offer more of our games in Europe.

We are committed to supporting all of Nintendo's digital download services so yes we will be creating 3DSWare games in the near future.

We think the 3DS is the perfect platform for a Thorium Wars sequel.