Last week, we talked to Electronic Arts game maker, Louis Castle, known for his work on the Command & Conquer game series, to get more details about the game and Spielberg's vision for BOOM BLOX.
With talk about Steven Spielberg being behind the game, who came up with the idea behind BOOM BLOX?
It's actually Spielberg's concept. He was inspired by his play session with Miyamoto on the Wii and came to us, since we had an agreement to work with him on multiple titles, and said, "I'd really like to make a game that I can play with my kids for the Wii since it's just a fantastic system." So that was the genesis of it all and I was just getting off of sabbatical and Neil [Young] said to me, "Do you want to work with Spielberg on a game?" And I said, "Yeah…sure. Why not?"
What is it like working with Spielberg?
It's a great relationship. He's out at the office usually weekly, the only time he's not around is when he's busy filming Indy, but for the most part we see him every week. He's just one of the team. We sit down, talk about where the project's been and where it's going, how we've implemented some of the things in BOOM BLOX that he commented on the last time, and that's just been the way of it. It's really quick and easy to forget that he's a superstar since he's so easy to work with.
What's changed since we first saw that game at E3 2007?
I think that a lot of things have changed since then. More than anything else, it's the emotional context of the game. There are now over 30 characters in the game that cheer you on and encourage you as you go and that's really changed everything about it. The whole look and feel of the product is just a more family friendly and entertaining experience. It's like having your own cheerleading squad running around with you so it's very, very cute. The other thing that's changed is that it's given us some time to really focus on the activities around what you're doing with different ways to play or experience the game. So it still has all the rich depth you saw hinted at during the E3 meeting but now the game has a lot more charm and character.
What's the target audience of this game?
I'd say that our target market is eight plus but if the child is using the Wii, it's hard to imagine any child who wouldn't enjoy BOOM BLOX because it doesn't require that you have to read and it's very simple to learn. I mean, if they're very young, they would have a difficult time finishing every puzzle in the game because some of them are brain-twisting challenges. They take a bit of thought, especially to get them perfect and get the gold medal, but that wouldn't stop a young child from having a wonderful time with it. In fact, my nephew who is only six, does a wonderful job of painting and putting a bunch of animals out into the world and have them interacting with each other and building stuff that topples over and ends up squealing in delight. It's a very wide range of people who will be entertained by this game.
What's the focus of BOOM BLOX?
Well there are three ways to play the game, actually four ways if you add the Creating side of the game. The two ways to play by yourself, one of them is Explore Mode where you go through each of the different types of materials that you can use, different kinds of blocks that you can in the world. And then you can use those with different tools that we give you—basically you have things you can throw, you have the ability to grab, pick up or stack things like a hand and you also have a blast that you can use. So anything that you could imagine that you could create using those tools we've put into the product in one way or another or one level or another. Timers, color spinners for picking out colors for pulling out blocks and things like that are also part of the ruleset.