Again, as promised, U360 is delivering!  I recently sat down with NinjaBee’s own John Nielson, lead designer of Cloning Clyde.  Thanks to Wahoo Studios president, Steve Taylor, for making this possible!

Take a seat and enjoy a bit of ‘Cloning Clyde Inside’.

For the few who don’t know, can you take a moment and tell us how Cloning Clyde came to be. What was the inspiration behind this title?

When we learned about the Xbox 360 Live Arcade before the Xbox 360 even came out, it sounded like an amazing opportunity. Plus, with Microsoft’s arcade team being so great to work with, even as Ninjabee’s contract for Outpost Kaloki X was being worked out, we didn’t hesitate in getting the design in Cloning Clyde going. With a much smaller and mostly separate team, we started working on a prototype of Cloning Clyde. In deciding to make a cartoon look, we looked at some of our most favorite cartoons over the years including Simpson’s, Flinstones, Ren and Stimpy, The Angy Beavers, etc. As far as game play The Lost Vikings, Oddworld’s games and Lemmings, were among our top inspirations.

Humor seems to be a recurring theme with NinjaBee and Wahoo Studios. Is that intentional because of what the audience would like or are you just really a group of fun guys and girls?

Well, the humor in this game was very intentional. Like I said, a different team than Outpost Kaloki X’s worked on Cloning Clyde, and I think you’ll see that the humor has a little different of a flavor. Ninjabee is FULL of super creative, fun, dedicated and funny people and I think that will show in all of the games that are developed here. I wouldn’t say we’re necessarily dedicated to making all of our games SUPER ‘Humorous’, but we ARE dedicated to making all of our games unique, creative, fresh and most of all fun.

Which was more difficult to design and complete? Outpost or Cloning Clyde?

Design on Cloning Clyde came REALLY easy and naturally. As far as development, both certainly had their challenges. Steve Taylor went through all of the initial effort of figuring out a lot of the basics of the Xbox 360 system, and that helped a LOT with Cloning Clyde. On Clyde, we had to go through the process of multiplayer both local split-screen and on-line. That ended up being QUITE the challenge. Clyde, of course, took longer to finish, but is a completely original game and not a PC port. Overall, I couldn’t really make a real comparison though. It’s like apples and oranges.

How much did the success of Outpost Kaloki X play into developing Cloning Clyde? Would it have been made given a subpar showing for Kaloki X?

We started on Clyde about the same time we started on Xbox development for Outpost Kaloki X, so it’s hard to say how much of a difference it would have made as far as Cloning Clyde getting made. However, it sure was GREAT for the team’s morale to see Outpost Kaloki X getting such great success and feedback.

Can you walk everyone through the multiplayer experience? What can a person playing this title on Xbox Live expect?

Sure, there are two modes of multiplayer. Two local players or four on-line players can get together and either play cooperatively or duke it out in vs. mode. In both modes, each player controls a Clyde-clone and can interact with the other players throwing them around, kicking them, etc. Each player can switch between the other Clyde Clones that are throughout all of the levels. There is a lot of action and fun little puzzles along the way and the players can stay close and accomplish the objectives together, or split up and take on different sections of the levels separately. We are pleased how both modes turned out. Multiplayer turned out to be a REALLY fun feature in this game.

Have any of the additional features like 40 cooperative levels or 6 versus arenas been changed?

There were slight changes along the way. For instance, 10 of the 40 cooperative/single player levels were originally intended to be additional content released after the game. We ended up not having time to implement everything that went into this, so instead we just included these 10 levels for free in the full game.

Now that’s something fans will love to hear. How challenging did you aim to make the Achievements?

We wanted (and were directed) to give all of the Achievements a good range a difficulty. Some are quite easy and come fast (one even in the trial version.) and some are quite challenging.

What’s the decision process like when it comes to choosing the types of Achievements?

Well, I can’t speak for ALL developers, but for us, we try to consider the game itself. We ask ourselves, what are the most fun, challenging or interesting parts? And where can we give Achievements so that they’re spread pretty evenly throughout the game. That way the player can keep feeling a sense of accomplishment as they progress.

Sounds like a fail-proof plan. How long is the gameplay from start to finish?

It’s a pretty full experience. Of course the time it takes for a player to finish the game will depend on the skill levels of the players and how many people are playing simultaneously, but with all of the modes supporting multiplayer and around 50 levels in the game including the vs. levels, we packed a LOT of game play into an arcade title.

Are there plans to release any content across the Marketplace like Gamerpics or Themes?

Yes! Gamerpics!

I’ll be representin’ a Clyde Gamerpic then! Is there another team who works on the additional content or does that also get handled by the development team who made the game?

So far, it’s all been the same team. With Cloning Clyde, we didn’t get the chance to make any downloadable, playable content, but we have plans of doing a LOT of this in future games.

When users fire up the Xbox Live Arcade and see Cloning Clyde, what are you hoping will sell them on the game?

Kicking Chickens! Well, that and I think that people will appreciate that we did something totally original and will value our efforts in pushing the limits of what can be delivered on the arcade in every way we could. Our team was SUPER dedicated and we all worked REALLY hard to make this game as appealing and as solid as we could as far as gameplay, graphics, sound, and everything! Even though our budget was a fraction of what a regular retail game would be, we are extremely proud of what we were able to pull off.

Well my personal first impressions are that you’ve succeeded. How excited is the team to get this title out?

I can assure you we are all very anxious to see how people react to the game!

Thanks John and Steve for giving fans a bit more ‘inside’ Cloning Clyde and thanks for being on Unscripted 360!