Seite 2: Interview mit Impressionware zur DSiWare Vempire und mehr

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We had the opportunity to speak with Luigi Fumero about the PSP Mini Vempire. He is CEO and founder of Impressionware (Military History: Commander Europe at War). In addition he told us his view of the future of digital distribution.

PlaystationPortable.de: Can you introduce yourself and tell us more about the development team behind Vempire. What have you done before?

Luigi Fumero: I am Luigi Fumero, the managing director and founder of Impressionware. The company started in 2003 and for the first 3-4 years we concentrated on mobile gaming. We have released more than 40 mobile games for some of the best publishers and base on some very high quality brands. One of the latest one we made was Medieval Total War which was very helpful for us to strike a deal with Slitherine who has been the first publisher to believe in us when we moved into handheld consoles. We have released a PSP and DS title (Military History: Commander Europe at War) and right now we have 5 DS titles in various stages of development without counting Vempire.

PlaystationPortable.de: Can you tell us more about the gameplay of Vempire?

Luigi Fumero: The game asks the player to rotate blocks to form rows or columns of 4 or more blocks of the same type. These gets destroyed and will give the player points, mana or gold. The player needs to destroy enough blocks before the time runs out. Mana is important because it allows the player to summon minions. It is a very casual game so the summoning will happen automatically. The player only needs to collect the mana in the right order. If the mana sequence is correct the minions gets summoned. Minions are bought in the shop between the levels. So the player will only start with one type of minions, 5 more can be bought later in the game.

Minions give advantages to the player, like slowing down time, destroying blocks etc. Each of the 10 game worlds has a boss monster. This monster will pop up every once in a while and will cast his nasty spell and make life harder on the player. Luckily every 3 levels there will be an optional one the player can try to beat to win an artifact. There are 9 artifact the player can win, but he can only equip 4 at once. Obviously the game has different block types that react differently to the rotations.



PlaystationPortable.de: How is the work with Sony?

Luigi Fumero: We have worked very well with Sony. Their support guys are super and the whole developer relations are well handled. We have been lucky to have the chance to develop a Minis title for the release of the channel and the PSP go and they are being very supportive.

PlaystationPortable.de: What are the general restriction and quality regulation differences between PSP minis and DSiWare?

Luigi Fumero: I don’t know how much is already know or can be said about Sony’s and Nintendo processes and regulations. Rest assured the games still need to pass all the verifications such as TRC and Lot Check as the physical games.

PlaystationPortable.de: What is Planet Basket about? - And why do you develop the game exactly for DS?

Luigi Fumero: Planet Basket is a realistic basketball game we are doing with Idoru under the new Double Jungle initiative (it’s a third company we started together). We have not announced much about the game but I can tell you it’s going to come out for PC, Wii and DS and it will have licensed players and teams for some countries and that it will be a cool game :) We decided to do a DS version as currently there are no realistic basketball games for that platform and the market needs one.



PlaystationPortable.de: For which system is programing the simplest and why? (Regarding programing code and distribution matters)

Luigi Fumero: They are two different machines but I would not say that one is harder than the other. On PSP (especially on big games) people tend to expect more from a game so you need to work hard on it while the DS being a less powerful machine makes it tough for the programmers to fit in all the game features. So I would say they both requires the team to work well. Distribution wise it is too early to say.

PlaystationPortable.de: What are the benefits of DSiWare and PSP minis in comparison to the Apple App Store. Will quality out rule the mass?

Luigi Fumero: We have not released an iPhone game yet so I cannot comment on the Apple App store. As a user it is fantastic, as a developer I fear it is too crowded and your product tends to disappear quickly. Minis and DSiWare have a higher entry level so they should not be as crowded and as filled with silly games and app as the App Store.



PlaystationPortable.de: What are your future prognosis in regards of digital distribution, what can we expect?

Luigi Fumero: Digital distribution is the latest trend. Everybody loves it and everybody wants a piece of the pie. As all the bubbles it will burst and only a handful of company (the ones who have worked well and created good foundations) will have made some real good money. At the moment it is very interesting for smaller developers such as ourselves as it allows us to come out with our own ideas and smaller game, but we keep ourselves on the safe side by doing a lot of work for hire games too for real physical distribution.

PlaystationPortable.de: Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?

Luigi Fumero: Thanks for reading this and stay tuned for more news about our forthcoming games. Ciao!

The interview was held by Jakob Koch for PlaystationPortable.de

Thanks to Luigi Fumero for his kind support.