The World Ends With You: Solo Remix was one of Square Enix’s surprises last year. The Square Enix mobile team and h.a.n.d. adapted the Nintendo DS game for iOS devices and made new music for the game. Since The World Ends With You used both of the DS’ screens the game was remade only Neku on the screen and gesture commands for partner characters. The graphics were also upgraded and the game uses Twitter in a neat way by integrating tweets into the Underground.
"The development period, including time for inspection, was a little less than a year, but I must say it was a very jam-packed year. The original game was intended for two screens, and so it was a struggle to meld it into the single screen on the iOS without losing the uniqueness of the game and its controls. We had regarded this as a complete game, and so to add changes to an already complete system required lots of time to make adjustments," the TWEWY team said to Siliconera when we asked them about the game’s development.
The development team added, "In terms of battles, what used to be separated onto two screens is now all on one screen, where Neku and his partner now fight together. I feel that by doing this, a new visual effect was brought about and made for a very visually impactful battle. Something else that was equally tough was that we revamped all of the graphics. To maximize the use of the Retina Display, we upped the resolution on not only the backgrounds, but for all of the character animations as well"
"In addition to that, in order for more people to enjoy this game, we made adjustments to the balance during battle to make it easier to play. We didn’t want to stop it at just being a port, and so for this title to be something that doesn’t suffer in comparison in its current state, we needed to do a lot of fine-tuning. As a result, the entire development staff feels confident that this is a game finished to our satisfaction; this is one game that we’ve put our all time into and can recommend to anyone."
The World Ends With You: Solo Remix is available for iPhone and iPad devices, but each game is a separate purchase. Since other Square Enix titles are universally compatible, we asked the team why players can’t play Solo Remix on both devices. "Depending on the device, some games may or may not be universally compatible. Moving forward, we plan to do our best to accommodate games that are universally compatible."
Collecting all of the secret reports unlocks a teaser with a new character standing in front of the 104 building which says "New 7 Days." We asked the team if they can give us any hints about The World Ends With You: Solo Remix’s secret ending.
"I don’t believe that talking a lot about it is necessarily a good thing. I think what is important is the feeling that the players got when they saw that ending. Joshua, who has watched Neku grow up first hand, may have discovered the hope of the possibility of Shibuya changing. There are hints about the story scattered throughout the game, and so I’m sure it would be fun if you connect those pieces and think about them," the team replied.
Published: Jan 18, 2013 05:21 pm