Graphical Upgrades for Chubbins
Chubbins for Wii U™ is moving closer to submission to Nintendo! The lastest hurdle, an unexpected revisiting of graphics, is behind us now.
If you haven't been watching our blog in the short time it's been around, we had initially planned on leaving Chubbins' simplistic graphics more or less as they appeared on iOS. That decision was at first met with much disapproval from people around the web, but when we asked for and got more specific feedback as to what we might improve, a number of very supportive people also appeared to help offset all the criticism. Thanks to everyone out there, positive and negative alike, we were able to find a better balance for what we wanted to change.
Rather than force adjustments just to satisfy everyone, we chose to view it as an opportunity to make a good game even better. It became rather a fun challenge, actually, finding ways to add polish here and there and expand on things without straying from the intended style or detracting from the gameplay.
The game's backgrounds were the target of 90% of the negativity, and thus account for 99% of the changes. Here's a look at World 2 as it appeared on iOS and as it will appear on Wii U.
What we've done is found subtle ways to give a little more life and detail to the background structures, in this case taking the plain blue and turning it into a more crystalline, reflective look. Simple yes, but it looks very shiny in motion. Also, to provide greater diversity, you can see that instead of one type of structure persisting throughout an entire world, we've added two new ones. Not only does this help break up potential monotony, but we've also arranged them so as to strengthen the player's sensation of progression. And finally, though it's difficult to appreciate in still screenshots, we've added a degree of animation to the backdrops so that even when the background structures don't move, there's always some motion to provide a little life.
Even though much of it's subtle, we're pretty excited about the changes. It feels like the game has been given a fresh coat of wax, and we hope everyone will find the new shine more befitting a Wii U title. Incidentally, we will not be applying these graphical upgrades to the iOS version, which makes the Wii U Chubbins all the more a definitive version.
We intend to upload a new trailer once we have a release date nailed down, and we hope you'll look forward to seeing the new Chubbins in motion! For now we have an updated set of screenshots on the game's page!