We’re the team behind Shadow Puppeteer, one of Nintendo’s “Nindies” that’s about to launch on Wii U™. AMA!

If you were going to change the words of any popular song to be about Shadow Puppeteer what would it be AND WHY?

Puff the magic dragon, because it is just too sad. And the game does have a theme kind of inspired by being lonely

I'll field this question. The correct answer is Denmark's 2013 Eurovision Winning song: "Only Teardrops" by Emmelie de Forest. The song would be about the day Shadow Puppeteer comes out, and the refrain would be "PUPPETEER DROPS, PUPPETEER DROPS". At that point it writes itself.

You are so right!

Where did the inspiration for Shadow Puppeteer come from?

The game’s concept grew from a fascination with the connection we share with our shadows, as well as what a shadow’s life might be like if it were a sentient being

Shadow Puppeteer actually started as a student entry in the “Dare to be Digital” contest at Abertay University.

What is the Dare to be Digital contest?

It is a international game making contest primarily for students, http://www.daretobedigital.com/ :) You get 10 weeks to make a game.

I really reccomend any student interested in gave development to go for it. It is a great experience.

Do you all have a weekly tradition? Eg. Get Pizza every Friday or something

We have a daily tradition: Morning stretch :) http://shadowpuppeteer.com/morning-stretch-routine/

We bring it everywhere with us. We will even get people to join in during this years Game Developers Conference in SanFran :3

We do also have something we call "friday fun" where we end the day an hour early and sit down to play games in the office livingroom

If you have any suggestions to games we can play during friday fun, let us know. (Pick a scary one, the guys here get so easily scared XD)

Were you paid to say 'Nindies'?

Hehe, nope, but it's kinda cute. We like it.

Fair enough.

I don't buy it for a second. They used it three times in the OP... it's in their contract for sure.

On no! They are onto us. Actually I feel kind of proud calling myself that. I have always been a Nintendo fan :)

Why does the player character have no mouth? Been wondering about this for a while now. :D

Well actually when the Boy was being designed, he was made without a mouth because we were still talking about what kind of style to give the mouth. Then we realised we really liked him without. And as we realised that this would be a "silent" game, it fitted in a cute way. :3

I met some of you guys at SpillExpo last fall (Hi, /u/Vaffeldamen) and I have two questions:

1. When designing Shadow Puppeteer, do you design the 2D or 3D platforming first? or both?

2. Are any of you going to Norwegian Game Awards?

1. Great question. We actually try to design them separately first.

2. Probably :) I heard it will be amazing again this year

What is the go to snack for Sarepta studio?

Super chips, salty

Great! Now I know what to bring next time I find myself in Game Collective ;)

Please do (and bring all the chips)

Thank you guys so much for not releasing last night, I'm sick with a cold at the moment and only barely got myself to school, that never would have happened if it was the 28th.

Now for the question. Will you guys have any time to participate in the global game jam this weekend, or will you be all hands on deck with release?

Aw, get well soon!

Yes there will be a few of us at least:) It is busy now with release, but we'll find time!

You should definitly stay in on thursday and make sure you get better ;) Some of us are actually helping arrange this year, It will be really spectacular with over 200 participants and visitors from Valve, Riot Games, Unity, Tobii and Microsoft. The best thing is that this guy will be on every persons chest (GGJ T-shirts)

http://i.imgur.com/cvBYO57.png

Will you come join us? :)

I love GGJ and have been fortunate enough to help organize it for the last couple of years. It is kind of "the event of the year" for me (not counting game releases of course), so I'll be there as much as possible. Get well soon, and hope to see you at GGJ. Speaking of which: What is your discipline? Art? Code? Sound? Footrubs?

Production/team organisation with a small dose of coding and a smattering of everything else. Sadly I don't think I'll be able to make it for GGJ this year.

Those are good skills to have. I am sorry to hear that you won't be joining us this year. But you know, one of the benefits of an annual event is that you can join in next year:) Hope to see you then!

Absolutely!

We will probably post a lot, and stream :)

Some indie developers work too much and burn themselves out. What countermeasures did you guys have so that would not happen? And how was the average working hours for the team when developing Shadow Puppeteer?

It was rough at times to begin with, but we quickly found out that it's way more effective to just balance it out. I mean, of course it's possible to survive a crunch once in a while. But spreading out the work, and taking breaks is important.

We try to keep the hours at 7,5 hours a day. Sometimes it does go a bit over that, but we try to aim for normal work days:)

I'm very strickt to sending people home at the end of the day. People get more productive when they are not dead tired. There have been some exceptions, but we try hard to keep our health.

Morning stretch, screen breaks and ending fridays early with "friday fun" are some measures. Also we make sure to have fun.

Are we getting exclusive Shadow Puppeteer amiibo or have I to make my own? ;)

We haven't really thought about that. If you make one, we would love to see it!

And please make me one :3

Would it be possible to release Shadow Puppeteer as New 3DS Exclusive? Would work great with the 3D Depth I think :) Something I forgot to as you on our podcast :( haha

I agree that would be great. However we have no plans for the 3DS, sadly. It's all up to budget really.

I've always wanted to learn more about shadows...Clearly, you are experts on shadows...So, here is my question: Different times of day produce different shadows. In addition, shadows are different based on gps coordinates and time of year. Assuming perfect conditions, you are at the equator and it is a sunny day (maybe with only a few clouds), at what time of day would you say the best shadow is cast? Things to think about, obviously are the length and contrast of the shadow (in addition to any others I might be missing).

Probably around 7pm spring

Why did you wait until I got rid of my WiiU to start releasing indie games? I had it for almost 2 years and the market was horrible. Now I have to play recycled STEAM games, not that I dislike STEAM. Was it Nintendo not accepting games on their market because of platform differences?

Aw that is too bad. You can get Shadow Puppeteer on Steam though. I do reccomend playing it with controllers :)

Your artwork resembles that of Tim Burton. I'm curious if his work is an inspiration of yours, or if it just kind of happened to be similar?

The team has changed a bit over the years and so the style has been experimented with. Still, we have always had one guiding sentence for the style and feel, building on the setting and story: “Gloomy, cartoony, with a twist of weird”.

So it is a bit of a coincidence, but then again we have been formed by popular culture and the styles we like :) And we are fans of Tim Burton

How long was Shadow Puppeteer in development for?

On and off for approx 5 years. There has been a lot of breaks and iterations throughout development.

Did you played any other Nindie game while the development of SP?

I can't say I have personally. Can you recommend any? Maybe we could get a few of them for the office:)

I'm playing Runbow right now. It is a great game and is really fun to play with friends and family. Up to 9 players can play and it have many characters from others indies like Mutant Mudds, Steam World Dig, The Fall, Azure Strike Gunvolt (3DS only) and many more. Maybe in the future we can see The Boy in there too or in a new indie collaboration.

I Actually think the Hamar GAme Collective (Game collective we are in) were interested in creating a brawler with all our characters. So: Shadow Puppeteer, Amphora, Among the Sleep, Manual Samuel, Corroded and Klang. :D

What do you think makes Shadow Puppeteer different from other local co-op games?

Well, this is a bit of a difficult question. There are so many great local co-op games out there. We wanted to focus on the balanced play between two characters where both players feel equally important.

I believe we manage to use the play between 2D and 3D to emphasise this. Not only do the characters have different strengths but the players will see things differently. In that way they actually end up with their own individual strengths too :)

It's really about two people having fun though, and experiencing something together. Do you have any good memories of shared gaming experience?

Best interview you have ever done? (There is certainly a correct answer here :P)

Was obviously with me! :P lol

Indeed! THIS WEEK'S favourite was of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNeSyo50SwM Always fun to be on podcasts. A bit more relaxing than having a camera in your face.

(this "playing favourites" thing is a dangerous game, like walking on egg shells)

But we also loved Alex from NintendoLife and his EGX interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myrkz48ny58 It was adorable how he tried SO hard to get my name right. Check out those final seconds^{^}

We will love whoever visits our office first, the most. Must warn you, it is dangerous to go here in winter XD

Why did you decide to launch on the Wii U?

Since Shadow Puppeteer is a co-op game, we have always felt it was better suited for console. And, because Wii U was built for co-op experiences, we really feel like it is the most ideal fit.

Some of us are also old nintendo fans, so I think that helped a bit ;) A lot of us played Mario and Zelda growing up.

How many languages are available in SP?

English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, Neo-Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Portuguese. I think that was all of them!

Which language would be your favorite? Any languages you are missing?

How similar is this release to the one I can buy on Steam?

The game will be similar to the Steam version and there will not be any Wii U-exclusive features.

Do you feel this game is more suited to WiiU than the PC?

I personally think so. The game fits the WiiU platform well in both style and the way it plays. Also, it's made for controllers, and local co-op.

Then again, If you have 2 gamepads for the PC it's pretty much the same there:)

Except that using the Wii U GamePad actually is more comfy, in my opinion ^{_^}

But the game plays a lot better with controllers, in the livingroom with someone close to you :)

Any plans for a 3DS version? Could make a good co-op game :)

Unfortunately no, not at this moment.

SP will have Miiverse support?

No, we will not have Miiverse support.

Are you involved with any of the organizations in the Norwegian games industry?

Some of us are. Like we are part of the Hamar Game Collective, a game collective for developers locally. This is a group of amazing devs and we band together to do stuff like Global Game Jam, and set up tech we can all use.

I am also the board leader of the Norwegian Game Makers Guild. A volunteer organization that focuses on helping the Norwegian game industry.

It's really interesting to be seing what is happening in Norway. I encourage everyone to contact the Guild and the Collective if you are interested in the Norwegian Game dev scene

I saw a vid on Youtube showing lots of slowdown with Shadow Puppeteer. Your response?

We have seen the video.

There are issues when you install the game on an external disk.

It makes it heavier for the Wii U to run it.

We will look into it in a future patch so that you may play the game in any way you want.

Until then we recommend playing it directly on the Wii U, to avoid any slowdowns.

If you were to review your game 1-10, in all seriousness what would you give it?

Ooooh, that is a hard one.

All considering, I would probably say 7.

I am so proud of what we have achieved, but I know that we could make so much more cool stuff for it, given the time and budget!

I'm sorry for putting you on the spot, and I honestly didn't think you'd reply to that, but thank you and I'm sure you're underselling it. You're awesome.

It is really difficult to rate your own work i feel. There is always so much you want to do. That is when it helps to get feedback from others :)

Although we are Norwegians, so we get a bit weird when praised XP

A question for the level designers: what made you want this job? What kind of training did you go through? Are you a fan of littlebigplanet? Other level creating games? And is this what you love and want to do for the rest of your lifes?

As we are a Indie studio, none of us are "just" level designers. We have CEO/Level designer, Art director/level designer and 3D tech/level designer. All of us studied different things, but we went to the same school and had some of the same courses.

A lot of us are fans of Little Big Planet :) Super Mario Maker is also pretty fun.

Being a game dev is pretty heavy work, but this really is what makes the world turn for us. At least, myself I would never be able to do anythig else TBH.

Haha, yeah. The "+ +" behind my title in the picture on our AMA post involves level design as well as other things:p

Hehe, yup. More skills are needed ;) What are you working on?