Interview With David Braben (Lost Winds: Winter of the Melodias)

LostWinds was a launch title for the WiiWare service. It was met with a great reception and is still on many gamers favorite WiiWare games lists. David Braben, Founder of Frontier Developments, has joined us for a few minutes to talk about the upcoming sequel LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias. I'd like to thank David for his time and for joining us today.

First of all, what can you tell us about the story of Lost Winds: Winter of the Melodias?

I’d like to avoid spoilers, but in general:

Little time has passed since the events which unfolded between Toku, Enril, Deo and Magmok in “LostWinds”.


Notéa's sudden return from an expedition brings with it saddening news. Whilst searching for the ruins of the Melodia City Toku's mother, Magdi, has mysteriously disappeared. The only clues to her whereabouts lie within the tattered remains of her treasured journal.

As repayment for saving his life, the ancient Guardian Magmok pledges his assistance to Toku and Enril as they head up into the mountains in search of Magdi. Toku and Enril arrive at Summerfalls Village, a picturesque location that has been beset by an eternal winter. Even more worryingly, its people now live in fear of ferocious monsters that hide in the snow. Fearing the worst, and with the chilling cold taking its toll, Toku and Enril seek the help of Sonté the Spirit of Seasons. Sonté's season changing powers will provide the key to unravelling the plight of Summerfalls, and unearth an ancient curse that haunts the Melodia City.

As events continue to take unexpected turns, Toku and Enril venture onward. Wielding their new powers with care and in the face of potentially fatal dilemmas, Toku and Enril are plunged into a race against time to save not only the life of Toku's mother but also the future of Mistralis.

We think players will be much more engaged in this story and its twists and turns in a way that wasn’t possible in the first game.

One of the biggest complaints was that the original Lost Winds was too short. How has this affected the development of Winter of the Melodias and can you tell us how long you expect this game to last? We know WiiWare games have a fairly small size limit. What types of things can you tell us that you're doing to help put as much content in the games as you can with that small limit?

You have to remember we are fitting an environment-based game into a strict file-size limit, which is always a challenge. We are aware of people’s perceptions of the play time of the first game, and have been able to learn a lot from our experience of developing it, and so have been able to cram even more into the space. There are significant optimizations which have really helped us to save space, and therefore add more content, and new and different types of gameplay. I don’t have a hard figure for you, as it depends on the player, but we’re confident that Winter of the Melodias will be significantly longer than the first game for any given player.

Lost Winds was a launch title for WiiWare. What were some of the things you learned by being one of the first games on the service? How have you seen things change since that time?

Other than the things mentioned above, the big thing we have benefitted from is seeing how the pricing has settled down on the service. For the first game we were entirely blind, this time there is a history.

Toku and Enril's first adventure was pretty innovative for platformers. How has motion control changed the way you think about things when you're developing a game? What types of motion will we see in Winter?

Thanks – we’ve tried very hard to make this game as innovative as the first one; not rest on our laurels and just churn out more levels, but really take the game forward with some novel new gameplay elements, different and better environments, NPCs being more involved in the game and so on. We now have swimming, control of water – freezing, melting, making clouds, rain - there are many exciting new things you can do.

Will we still have all the powers that we had in the first game and how are you adding more without overwhelming the player with control options?

The game starts with the player having all the powers they obtained by the end of the first game, and gradually new powers are added (and hardly ever taken away ;-) ). A clear control system is one of LostWinds’ strengths, and a lot of thought and testing has gone into all the new features that have been added to make sure they all feel as intuitive as in the first game. Most of the new abilities are based on context, so need no new controls (like swimming, changing the seasons), and the main new ability that does need a control, cyclone, is used widely in many different ways so you will get used to it very quickly.

I know one of the biggest issues I had with Lost Winds was getting lost because I didn't have any sort of map to follow. Will that be added to help guide players during Toku's next adventure?

Again that’s something we are aware of from the first game. LostWinds generally for us is an explorative experience and we certainly don’t want to remove this. But yes we’ve thought very hard about how we can give more general guidance and context to the player with a high level map that doesn’t reveal too much, but avoids getting lost. We’ve used a variety of techniques and are very happy with the balance we’ve struck.

Seasons have played a part in games before and Winter of the Melodias has had a season element added. Is that going to be something that Toku or Enril will have some control over or will there be a new character introduced?

Again trying to avoid spoilers, Toku and Enril earn the help of Sonté the Spirit of Seasons, allowing them to use her amazing power to switch between Summer and Winter at will in order to help them on their journey. So the player has to use the different characteristics of each season to help them during gameplay.

What are your feelings on the sales of the first game and how do you expect this sequel to compare? Have you ever thought that LostWinds might benefit from a full retail release or has this been something that has always been thought of as a WiiWare franchise? Do you have any ideas for the franchise past this game?

Obviously we wouldn’t be doing a second WiiWare game if we didn’t think we’d be happy with the sales  There is nothing limiting LostWinds to WiiWare, and yes we have a TON of ideas going forward – its such a strong concept and world, and we have a huge enthusiasm for more.


Lastly, when can we expect to see Winter of the Melodias available for download and how many Wii Points will it cost?

Sorry, can’t reveal this yet.

I want to thank you very much for your time and we're looking forward to more information on this game as it becomes available.

It’s a pleasure, thanks for your interest!

Stay tuned to Nintendo Okie for more information on LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias when it becomes available.