Many of the levels have this more surreal look that we haven't really seen in past Sonic games so was one of the desires to surprise the players? Let's put pancakes in there. NWR: You mentioned the level made of candy.
Also, in Desert Ruins 2, which is a forward view, it's kind of a auto-run forward view and uses these hex geometrical patterns to create this very cool type of challenge that you've never seen before in a Sonic game. The camera is moving all around and you are bouncing left and right and upwards. One is their take on more traditional side-view Sonic, which is very dynamic in the ways the camera is moving. You can even see by the name, the two stages don't look like the desert. This time they wanted to surprise players and create a lot more variety visually and in the gameplay sections, so the two stages in Desert Ruins. In previous games you would go to World 1 Stage 1, World 1 Stage 2, and the aesthetics would look similar, maybe a little bit different, but kind of similar and the gameplay you also could expect what you were going to get to a certain degree. Of course there's going to be a lot more geometric shapes and types of levels in the game, but that was kind of their starting point to change things up and give the player more choice.Īnother important point for the philosophy behind the level design and another important goal in development was to have a lot more variety both in the aesthetics and visuals of the stages and also in the gameplay of the stages. Windy Hill is the first stage you can see in the build on the show floor and that is a great representative stage of the game because that's kind of the first geometric shape that they thought of. The idea that the team had to try to address that and give the player more choice is to put Sonic on geometric shapes like a tube. You can go to the left or right, but you can't go too far to the left or right. There's always trade-offs in development and one of the trade-offs in past Sonic games for the 3D forward view sections was there's more of a linear path. One of the important goals of the development team when they were concepting the game early was they wanted to give the player more choice. Could you please explain the level design philosophy and how you are approaching the different levels? NWR: The demo for Wii U on display had three very different types of levels. TI: A broad range of duties from being heavily involved in the early concept phase to basically managing the development and production process of titles going forward. NWR: So as producer what is your role in leading development? Takashi Iizuka (TI): I am producer of Sonic Lost World.