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Alex Rushdy

It’s been a long time coming, but Runbow Pocket has a release date – and it’s due out very soon. The game is heading to 3DS on June 20. In North America, Runbow Pocket will be sold at retail and digitally while in Europe it will be an eShop-only title.

Here’s a trailer:

As for why Runbow Pocket took so long, 13AM Games’ Alex Rushdy explained:

At E3 last month, NintenDaan was able to interview a couple of folks from 13AM Games: Dave Proctor and Alex Rushdy. You can watch the full discussion below as the two talk about Runbow Pocket, tease when we’ll hear about future announcements, and more.

13AM Games formally announced today that Runbow is coming to 3DS – more specifically, New 3DS. While it may seem like a tough task bringing the frantic action from the television to the small screen, adjustments were made to ensure that nothing would be lost in the transition.

13AM Games’ Alex Rushdy told Nintendo Life:

While the game is still in development and we still want to test a few more options out with the visuals, we already have completely redesigned all of our user interface and menu navigation. This not only makes it clearer to see on the small screen, but it also allows you to navigate menus with the touch screen if you wish!

We’ve also de-cluttered a lot of the HUD from the top screen and moved it to the bottom screen during play, giving players more space to see their character and environments.

Luckily Runbow’s art style is so high contrast and uses strong defined shapes, so a lot of the levels actually read just fine on the small screen!

Another announcement made today is the upcoming inclusion of Shantae in the game. Regarding the collaboration with WayForward, Rushdy said:

To be honest, she almost made it into the previous DLC pack but we just had some timing issues we had to work through. We’ve been working with Matt Bozon for a while to get her in so we’re really happy to see her in the game. She was the most highly requested character, and in a game featuring a huge cast of Nintendo indies, she feels right at home!

As for future characters, I think Shantae will be a nice send off for Runbow and Runbow Pocket. That will bring our (DLC included) character count to 23, which is pretty big! And that’s not including all the costumes and colors for Hue and Val!

Maybe we’ll see more characters show up in a future Runbow title. For now, I think Shantae is the perfect final addition.

Source

13AM Games has further discussed the cameo appearances of characters in Runbow.

For those who are unaware, the game features guest stars including Shovel Knight and Rusty from SteamWorld Dig. There are several other familiar faces as well.

Interestingly, it sounds like Nintendo assisted 13AM Games in getting these cameos into Runbow. Creative director and designer Alex Rushdy spoke with Nintendo Life about how the Big N ended up getting involved, as well as the partnerships with the other indies in general:

We owe some of that gratitude to Nintendo. We came up with a wishlist of developers that we love and admire, and Nintendo helped facilitate conversations with about 90% of the list. From the get go we wanted Runbow, our first game, to be a celebration of games we love and the spirit of community that local multiplayer games inspire. We’re pretty lucky to be here in Toronto where the indie scene is so supportive of one another. It was the kind of atmosphere and attitude we wanted to bring back to the industry when we got started, so we just started asking people if they wanted to join the run. The really humbling thing is when that 90% of the list started responding and saying they’d like to work with us. We feel incredibly lucky.

Source

Engadget put up a new interview with a couple of folks from 13AM Games. The site spoke with Dave Proctor and Alex Rushdy, who are developing Runbow for Wii U.

You can read up on what Proctor and Rushdy said below with topics including talk of releasing Runbow on Wii U and the term “indie”. Check out Engadget’s original piece here.

The Wii U GamePad is a perfectly fine controller, but it’d be tough to argue that developers have tapped into its potential. Even Nintendo has not yet produced a string of titles that truly show what it’s capable of. For the most part, titles we’ve seen thus far use the GamePad for off-TV play or as a map.

NintendoWorldReport reached out to four indie developers as part of a new article that touches on the lack of proper GamePad usage. You can find a collection of their comments below.

Renegade Kid’s Jools Watsham

“Nintendo helps promote…as much as the game helps to promote the innovative qualities of the Wii U.”

“If you’re going to dedicate your time and effort to taking advantage of the unique features of the Wii U, you need for it to pay off in sales if you’re going to be able to continue making games for a living.”

“The GamePad is clearly not the revolution that the Wii Remote was. There, I said it.”

“The Wii U never lived up to its own potential, even from its creators. You have to lead [by] example, and Nintendo are the kings of doing this, but they failed to deliver with the Wii U in terms of utilizing their own platform, which has resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“It’s not like the Wii U has failed gamers in a general sense, but in regards to how well the GamePad has been utilized, overall [it] has unfortunately been somewhat of a failure. And that is Nintendo’s burden to bear.”


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