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Recent crowd-funded game Two Brothers is not in the traditional vein of indie games– that is, platformers and arcade shooters with some sort of interesting mechanic like time travel or physics puzzles. The game, set to be released on PC, Mac OS X, Xbox 360 and –later– the Wii U eShop, follows in the footsteps of a Game Boy RPG with its four-colour graphics and low resolution style. Players control Roy Guarder, a young inventor who begins to obsess with the idea of finding a new colour on Earth, and the game adds to the growing number of independent titles on the system, an area in which Nintendo has tried– and, some would say, failed– to break through with platforms like Wii/DSiWare in recent years.
But what’s interesting about its appearance on Wii U eShop is that Nintendo itself head-hunted the game after the developers expressed their interest in appearing on a Nintendo console. Speaking to Not Enough Shaders, AckkStudios said:
“We would love to be on the Wii U eShop or the 3DS Eshop. We have received over a hundred emails asking us to bring our game to a Nintendo console. As our game is so inspired by the Nintendo generation, I think it would be an ideal fit.”
After the article ran, Nintendo got in touch with the AckkStudios, and two and a half weeks later the team were confirmed as Wii U developers– a far cry from the “slow action” that programmer Brian Allanson claimed Nintendo were taking to embrace the importance of independent games. Of course, this may have something to do with the nature of the game harking back to a bygone era (and one that Nintendo would do well to capitalise on to help recapture their core audience).
However, the game isn’t an exact copy of ye olde Game Boy games. In addition to HD graphics and the addition of colours as a central gameplay element, the developers have also raised enough money on their Kickstarter page to hire an orchestra to record the game’s final track. It’s quite wonderful to see developers so wholeheartedly embracing their nostalgia while simultaneously trying to move the things they loved forward to the modern age– and more importantly, it’s great to see Nintendo taking such an active role in recruiting developers for its online platforms.
We’re quite excited about Two Brothers here at Nintendojo– the initial trailer from AckkStudio’s Kickstarter page is below– and we really hope it delivers on its retro-inspired promises.
So what do you think of Two Brothers? Will you be buying it when it gets released, and on what platform? As always, let us know in the comments!
I am interested in Two Brothers but as I hold no nostalgia to gameboy/monochromatic games uying it will depend on its pricing and whether or not its actually a decent game.
That will be key to its success I think. However, I too don’t hold much nostalgia to Game Boy games (the GBA was out when I started gaming) and think the graphical style at least looks charming.