Interview: Nnooo

We at the gamebag recently conducted an interview with Nic Watt, the creative director at Nnooo, asking about their latest entry and what’s more to come.

To begin with, thank you for taking your time to do this interview with me, first, could you tell us a little about your history?

Sure. I personally have worked in the games industry for over 10
years now and prior to starting Nnooo I was a lead designer at EA in
London. When my partner was asked to move to Australia we jumped at
the chance and so I made the tough decision to leave EA and to set up
my own games company.

Our first product Pop was a launch title for WiiWare in North America
and since then has been launched in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and
Japan. We have also launched it on the iPhone and are now very, very
close to releasing Pop+ Solo for DSiWare.

To your recently finished project Pop+ Solo, could you tell us a bit about how it improves from its predecessors?

Pop+ Solo has lots of new content as well as some minor tweaks to
balancing which make it, we think, the best version of Pop yet! We
have added a whole load of new modes and bonus rounds to bring the
total number of modes up to 8 and bonus rounds to 4.

These are: Adventure mode complete with mines, jets, gold fish and
boss battles; Challenge mode where you can practice a particular wave
and/or set yourself a score and time to beat; Timed mode with 1, 2 or
5 minute challenges; and Bonus Mode where you can play your favourite
bonus rounds in 3, 5 or 10 rounds of difficulty.

Why did you choose the boss battles you did?

We wanted the boss battles to reflect the underwater nature of the
game and felt that a Shark, Starfish and Squid best matched that
philosophy. They all use similar mechanics in that you have to pop
bubbles initially to build up your timer and then attack the boss by
tapping on it. Each one however has slightly different attacks and so
forth.

Another reason we added them was to broaden the appeal of the game.
We felt that a lot of people were writing Pop off as just 'that bubble
popping game' without giving it a chance and realising the depth to
the gameplay. By adding bosses we hope that more people will consider
its charms and give it a go!

Moving onto your next project, Pop+ Versus, are you holding off on working further until Pop+ Solo's results come in?

Unfortunately yes. We have a lot of the groundwork done however as a
small developer we need to be careful where we spend our money. If
Pop+ Solo is a success we plan to start Pop+ Versus in the next month
or so.

Will Pop+ Versus be a multiplayer exclusive game, or will it feature single player also?

It will be primarily a multiplayer exclusive game. However anyone who
owns Pop+ Solo will, we hope, be able to make use of all the single
player modes they have unlocked in Pop+ Solo. By this we mean that if
you own both and start Versus then all the multiplayer and single
player modes will be available to you whereas if you only own Versus
then just the multiplayer content will be available.

We are looking at Versus having both WiFi, Local and Download play
however we cannot confirm this yet as we have to investigate both.
Download play would enable you to play against friends who own an
original DS, a DS Lite and/or a DSi!

Onto the just announced myNotebook, what was your inspiration for that concept?

I have an iPhone as well as a DSi and i get really frustrated by the
Notes app on the iPhone as I have to use a keyboard. I decided that
using a stylus to take notes would be so much faster and much more
useful so I thought we'd give it a shot!

If the need arises, will you distribute more notebook colours?

Yes. We have designed the application so that we can easily create
new colour versions as necessary. Although we do not want to flood the
market too quickly and put people off!

Finally, since myNotebook is in the myLifeCollected series you announced, what other DSi functions would you touch upon while developing these applications?

Unfortunately you will have to wait and see! We have some great plans
so watch this space!

Again, thank you for taking your time to do this interview with us, do you have anything else you'd like to say?

Thanks to you interviewing us and we hope your readers find what we
have to say interesting! We also hope you are looking forward to both
Pop+ Solo and myNotebook coming to DSiWare very soon.

-Nic Watt
Creative Director

We'd like to thank Nnooo for taking time out of their busy schedule to interview us at the Gamebag. I'd also like to thank Jorge for getting it up for me! Nic Watt was speaking to Seth.

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