Chibi-Robo Developers Were, At One Time, Planning A FPS

Skip is one of the most sanguine video game studios around. This company was behind the pleasant, but unreleased in North America, Giftpia and delightful Chibi-Robo. Sure, Chibi-Robo shoots mecha-spiders with an arm cannon, but it’s still hard to imagine jovial Skip dabbling with the first person shooter genre. What happened to the project?

It became Art Style: Cubello.

In an interview about the Art Style series Hiroaki Ishibashi, Director at Skip, describes how the project evolved from a FPS into a puzzle game. “Originally we were planning to develop a first person shooting game. After so many levels of test to investigate the fun, not only being ‘just shoot ’em all’, we ended up including some elements of puzzle games. Using motives from megalithic cultures of Maya and Incan cultures we expressed a mysterious floating object. Eventually, it turned out to be a game that people without first person shooter experience can enjoy.”

Japanese developed FPS games are uncommon which would have made Skip’s game already standout. Add in Skip’s usual sweetness to the usually violent genre and their project would have been very interesting. Too bad we probably won’t get a chance to look at their lost FPS concept.

Images courtesy of Nintendo.