Bruiser & Scratch: What Went Wrong?

April 16th, 2009, 20:21 Posted By: wraggster

Bruiser & Scratch didn't exactly set the world on fire when it was released on WiiWare late last year (IGN gave it a 5.0). It included some smart puzzles but the visuals were lackluster and the presentation didn't justify the $10 price point next to offerings like LostWinds and Tetris Party. Developer Steel Penny has recently updated its official website with news about its current projects and some explanation of what might have gone wrong with B&S. What happened? Apparently a mix of puzzle game fatigue on WiiWare and misconceptions about what the audience is for Nintendo's download service.

"Bruiser & Scratch has been available on WiiWare for a while, and as expected, we haven't been blown away by sales figures," Steel Penny says. "Partly, this is our fault for allowing the game to ship when it wasn't Crash Bandicoot. Oops. I know, I know, we should have made a chintzy 2D version of the game, cut the characters, cut the story, and basically shipped it 6 months earlier. We'd probably have gotten more sales because for some reason, people ignore sh***y art when it's 'retro styled,' but it's flame-on if there's even a whiff of 3D going on. Also, if we'd released earlier there would be less puzzle game exhaustion on the part of the user base. By the time we came out, there were more than enough puzzle games on WiiWare to go around. The initial reviews skewered us, and that's all she wrote."



Bruiser & ScratchA follow-up post goes into a little more detail.

"If we had the runway left to really polish the game (it's very expensive to fund a game--don't try this at home kids!), it would have been prettier and had a better UI and more gameplay modes and better rendering tech. But it is what it is. Nintendo allows re-releases of titles and if there was any spare time to put into it, I'd be tinkering with the game. Maybe someday…

"We were one of the early indie development houses to sign on with Nintendo to do WiiWare, and at the time, nobody knew what kind of crowd would surface to buy games there. It was very exciting, and to know there were 20 million or so Wii units in the world at that time meant that the market had incredible potential. So, we went forward with a design that I thought would appeal to the typical Wii user. In hindsight, to my horror, this was all wrong. The typical Wii user doesn't have any idea that the Wii can connect to the internet. The crowd that gravitates toward WiiWare is actually fairly hardcore, and a very small segment overall. In essence, we're trying to sell lemonade in a biker bar."

Currently, Steel Penny is helping Red Fly with the Wii version of Ghostbusters, as well as doing tech work for another unannounced Red Fly game. It is also building new prototypes and porting a family-friendly Conspiracy game to Wii.

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/973/973135p1.html

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