Nintendo has started a new interview series, ‘Ask the Developer’, which as the name suggests puts developers and their games in the spotlight. For its first issue, the series has focussed on Game Builder Garage’s Kosuke Teshima and Naoki Masuda. The interview was conducted in Japanese and later translated by Nintendo.
Masuda was the director and programmer for Game Builder Garage. He was previously in charge of planning and programming for Nintendo Labo. Teshima was a subdirector, and was in charge of coordinating the “Interactive Lessons” for the game. He too previously worked on Labo.
The developers explained that Game Builder Garage made learning how to build games easier thanks to the “mysterious creatures called Nodon.” The Interactive Lessons have been created so that even someone without any programming knowledge could understand the process in a simple manner.
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“After developing the Nintendo Labo: VR Kit, which was the fourth installment in the series, I wondered if we could draw inspiration from the Toy-Con Garage VR portion of that game to create a separate product,” said Masuda when asked about the motivation behind the design of the software. “In the case of the Nintendo Labo: VR Kit, after the player had a general understanding of creating Toy-Con, they could enjoy making their own VR games with Toy-Con Garage VR. But I thought about making the applications more broad–not just for VR.”
It’s a rather detailed interview which goes into the technical aspects of the game and how it teaches something as complicated as programming to a layman. You can check out the full interview here.
In our review of the game, we said, “Game Builder Garage feels like the perfect place to build a game prototype. You can create a basic idea, see if it works and is fun, and then maybe take that concept into a real game engine development kit – but not much more. It can truly pique the curiosities of kids, and I hope it does, but it’s launched in a world where it has big competition, and the depth and charm of those tutorials which only Nintendo could pull off so well can’t carry the rest of the experience.”
