Another Castle (eShop)

[Wii]

Retro Platformer Another Castle Is Coming To The Wii U eShop

 

Indie support on Wii U continues to grow

 

The Wii U eShop is quickly becoming the go-to place for indie developers — recently we've seen the likes of The 90's Arcade Racer, Armillo, Dusty Raging Fist and Scram Kitty and his Buddy on Rails all confirmed for release on the download service, and today we can exclusively reveal that another promising-looking title has joined their ranks.

Another Castle is the work of just one man — David Byers — who goes under the development moniker of Uncade. Byers has previously developed for iOS and Android, and has released titles such as Kid Vector, Love Me Not, Blast Soccer, and Haunted Hallway.

 

The game fuses 2D platforming with a unique twist — the levels in which you play are randomly-generated, and the item you're looking for always remains elusive (it's always in "Another Castle" — sound familiar?). Once you beat the game, the item becomes unlocked on the next playthrough, adding to the game's longevity.

 

 

Interestingly, Byers posted information about Another Castle on a thread on NeoGAF, which resulted in him being put in touch with representatives at Nintendo and ultimately led to approval to develop for the Wii U eShop.

 

We managed to catch up with Byers and quiz him on his background and Another Castle's development:

 

Uncade right now is basically just me. I’m based in Richmond, Virginia. Part of the reason I named my company Uncade, as in “unlike an arcade”, is that we are in a period of great disruption in the game industry right now. Everything from motion controls, digital distribution, smart phones, fantastic middleware, and the rise of indie development are shaking up what’s possible, even for just a solo developer such as myself.

 

I’m really excited to be working on the Wii U, and am especially looking forward to coming up with some funky uses for the tablet controller.

 

With the development for Another Castle I decided to switch things up. Instead of making a small mobile focused title, I decided to work on a larger game where I would release as early as I can for free, and iteratively improve the game, eventually getting to a saleable alpha and then full release.

 

Emily Rogers ended up playing the prototype and got in touch, asking if I would like to get the game on the eShop. I of course said yes, because I think Another Castle on the eShop should be a slam dunk, it’s something I think Nintendo fans in particular will really enjoy. I spent some time improving the prototype, and Emily then got me in touch with Dan [Adelman] at Nintendo, and I was just approved as a Wii U developer yesterday. The eShop seems pretty indie friendly from what I’ve seen so far, the most important thing for me being the ability to add post release content updates.

 

 

Another Castle is up on Kickstarter now, with a modest goal of just $12,000. As well as coming to the Wii U, the game will be available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and OUYA, and the release is scheduled for some time in 2014. A prototype of the game has been made available online, which you can check out here.

 

 

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/02/retro_platformer_another_castle_is_coming_to_the_wii_u_eshop

Edited February 27, 2013 by Wii

[Fused King]

Oh man, I sure hope NINTENDO will create some sort of service regarding Indie games and call it:

 

Nintindie

[Andyliini]

So, Nintendo got in touch with this guy, and asked him to do Wii U developing?

 

It seems like Nintendo is reaching out to 3rd party -developers, but it seems like the big guys in the market are only interested in raw power, which Nintendo does not seem to want to support as strongly. Quite a few of Indie-developers on the other hand have agreed on doing gamed for eShop. It's cool, but hardly a system-seller.

 

As for the game, looks like a Mega Drive game, hopefully the final product will be a bit more polished than these shots (and it will be). Might be something to keep an eye out on.