[Interview] The Return of IronFall Invasion! VD-Dev on New 3DS, campaign, multiplayer, and more

We’ve been keeping close track of IronFall Invasion since its reveal last year. The game finally resurfaced during this month’s Nintendo Direct, and VD-Dev confirmed that its debut 3DS eShop project will be launching soon.

Since IronFall Invasion is just on the horizon, we thought we’d catch up with the studio’s Fernando Velez one final time. Velez shed more light on the game’s campaign, multiplayer, and much more.

Check out our full interview below!

How did IronFall Invasion ended up being featured in the latest Nintendo Direct? Did Nintendo reach out to you about including the game in its presentation?

Yes, it was Nintendo who offered to unveil the game during Nintendo Direct.

We’ve heard that IronFall Invasion will take advantage of the New 3DS’ C stick. Will any features that are exclusive to the new system be offered?

When the game runs on New Nintendo 3DS, it has special settings in order to take advantage of the new C Stick and the new shoulder buttons. For example, when you play on an older 3DS model with the Circle Pad Pro, shooting will be assigned to the ZR button. But on the New 3DS, shooting will be automatically assigned to R as the button is more comfortable to use on this model. Also, loading on New 3DS will be faster thanks to the hardware.

How long is the campaign? Is it straightforward, or will there be mini-objectives? What role does the female character play in the game?

The campaign consists of 11 levels; some of them are pretty long. Players will also have to face different mini-games while playing the campaign. The female character you saw in the trailer is Samantha; she is Jim’s main sidekick in the story and she has her own playable levels during the campaign. Samantha is only equipped with a single gun and limited ammo, so you have to take care of your bullets and be more careful how you approach enemies. You also need her skills and knowledge to succeed in some of the mini-games.

What sort of locations and enemies can players expect to see in the campaign?

Players will visit many different locations, all around the world. You’ll have to fight against 10 different types of enemies in the campaign. They have different A.I. behaviors. All those enemies are from the Dyxides army which is trying to invade the Earth.

In our interview last year, you mentioned that online multiplayer wouldn’t be included in the game – at least not at launch. What changed since then?

Well, the number one reason is that our fans were all asking for an online multiplayer mode. It was a lot of work, but it was a fun challenge to implement the online multiplayer and to make our fans happy.

Can you talk about the multiplayer in IronFall Invasion? How will it work? Will there be different modes and options for players to choose from?

You’ll have up to 6 players for online and local multiplayer with different modes such as “free for all” and “team match”. We’ll give more details on the multiplayer features soon.

How did you settle on 6 players for IronFall Invasion’s multiplayer?

We already had a fast graphics engine so drawing different players in the arenas was not a problem. Looking back, we could have maybe aimed for more players. But at the time we settled for 6 players, as we had no prior experience with online on 3DS and we wanted to make sure we could keep 60 frames per second for multiplayer. 6 players also allowed us to design more focused arenas, in the style of Quake or GoldenEye. We spent a lot of time on the online library to improve the connection between all players. After a lot of effort, we think we found the right balance for both the size of the arenas and the respawn points. And we succeeded to keep “60 fps” intact!

Will local multiplayer operate similarly to the online mode?

Yes, all game modes from online multiplayer will be available on local multiplayer. We’ll explain the multiplayer mode more in detail very soon.

You previously stated that IronFall Invasion will have StreetPass support of some sort. Is this still in the plans?

Yes, of course we also added StreetPass support! We’ll also communicate on the StreetPass features very soon.

Have you determined a final release date/price for IronFall Invasion?

This information will be also revealed a bit later. Please be patient, the wait is over soon 😉

Some of our readers are interested to know why 3DS – and only 3DS – was chosen for IronFall Invasion. If it’s successful, would you consider something like a Wii U version?

We have been working on Nintendo handheld consoles for 20 years now and we have always had a lot of fun learning how to get the best of their hardware. The 3DS is currently taking all our time, so it will be hard for us to do a Wii U version.

Given that IronFall Invasion is nearly finished, what does VD-Dev have in store for the future?

We have been working on the game night and days for more than 3 years, so first, we’ll take some holidays 😉 But we’ll keep an eye on what our fans think of the game and we’ll see later what we would like to do.

Nintendo Everything would like to thank Fernando Velez for taking the time to answer our questions. Look for IronFall Invasion on the 3DS eShop soon!