Learn all about Coaster Crazy Deluxe on Wii U with our exclusive interview
20/11/2013
Have you ever dreamed of building a roller coaster so exciting it could only be described as "crazy"? Then Coaster Crazy Deluxe, launching on Nintendo eShop on Wii U tomorrow, November 21st, could be just the ticket!
We recently sat down with the game's producer, Adam Woods from Frontier Developments, to talk about this upcoming roller coaster ride on Wii U.
Nintendo of Europe: First of all, thanks for taking the time out to speak to us. Please introduce yourself and your work on Coaster Crazy Deluxe to our readers.
Adam Woods: My name’s Adam Woods, I’m a producer at Frontier Developments, and I’m working on Coaster Crazy for Wii U.
NoE: “Coaster Crazy” is a pretty evocative and fairly straightforward name, but it’s not actually a game about the little things you put under your drinks to stop them marking the table. What can you tell us about the game?
AW: (laughs) Coaster Crazy is a new type of puzzle game, basically. We want you to solve puzzles that we’ve set out with the Crazies, which are the people who ride the rides, and meet objectives in different locations all over the world by creating a coaster that will fulfil the Crazies’ needs. There are various different characters like the granny, who doesn’t like going at high speeds; we have the speed freak who likes lots of speed and air time, and then we have the banker, who just doesn’t want you to spend a lot of money. These kinds of challenges are set out in all the different locations almost to counteract each other, to make the player really think about the best way to meet the objectives.
NoE: So you have to give everyone a little something on the same coaster?
AW: Absolutely, keep everyone happy! And if you achieve 100% success then your coaster will earn you loads of money, ready to buy the next area around the world, as well as new coaster types, new car types, and new scenery pieces too. Plus, all the content you unlock in the campaign mode can be used in the sandbox mode too, which is where your imagination is let loose – you just go for it. In fact I’ve just seen a guy build the craziest coaster – no pun intended! – that I’ve ever seen! And he actually managed to get around it with one person left in the car as well.
NoE: What’s the craziest coaster you’ve ever built?
AW: My craziest coaster was a very simple one. It was at Angel Falls in South America, and you’re in the bowl of the second waterfall, just before it starts to drop down. And I had a nice straight piece of track, and just launched the Crazies off into the distance and said goodbye to them as they soared off into the sunset.
NoE: So you have control over the speed of the cars, inclination of the track and so on?
AW: Yep, everything’s there. I’m a purist coaster creator – I like one chain hill at the beginning, and then I lean on the physics of the coaster to get me all the way around and back to the station. But we also have boosters and brakes, so players can create to their heart’s content.
On top of the intuitive way that you actually build the coaster by just drawing the layout with the stylus and then tweaking the height and banking, we also have various pre-authored special pieces like loops, cobra rolls, helices, and all those other coaster standards.
NoE: Plenty of crowd-pleasers, then.
AW: Absolutely! But obviously it’s called Coaster Crazy, so we haven’t just got those standard pieces, we have crazy pieces too. They really push the engineering of coasters to the maximum so you can inject even more craziness into your creations.
NoE: Those sound good – tell us more!
AW: There are things like lifts, where you drive onto the piece of track and it raises you high up in the air, then turns the track perpendicular to the ground so the guys just free-fall right back down onto the rest of track. Then we’ve got the tumble dryer, where you drive into a cylinder and the track spins around the inside.
NoE: Some of these would never pass health and safety inspections…
AW: Pretty much! But luckily the Crazies love it. Even being ejected from the coaster, which you can do at any point during the track – just eject them all, they go flying and they love it! They land on the ground, roll around, and have a laugh. They’re all safe – no Crazies were injured in the production of this game!
NoE: You mentioned stylus controls earlier – can you tell us more about how you used the Wii U GamePad to create an intuitive experience?
AW: For my way of playing, first I like to use the stylus on the touch screen to draw the basic layout of the coaster. From there I use the stylus to tweak it and add all the special pieces by tapping on the track and using the context-sensitive options that appear, or the control sticks and face buttons.
The game’s also completely playable on the GamePad alone, so you don’t need to have the TV on, and there are other great unique features on Wii U as well. You can ride all your coasters and use various cameras, and in first-person mode if you hold your GamePad up you can look around the environment as you’re going along. You can also shake the GamePad from side-to-side to make your passengers vomit, if you so wish, and you can flick the GamePad up to eject them all too. A little ping and off they go!
NoE: People will obviously want to show off their coasters – how can they do that?
AW: All the plots, including the sandbox, have an online high score table where you can upload your creation and see how it compares with other players’ coasters from across the world. You can also download any other coaster from the leaderboard, ride it, and see what other people have done.
NoE: That’d be perfect if you want to get some tips or pointers.
AW: Absolutely. And if you want to cheat – er, I mean, get some inspiration – in the campaign mode then you can download the number one coaster and see what they’ve done. You can’t edit other players’ coasters, so nobody can mess with your creations, but you can rate coasters out of five stars and also gift in-game money if you think it’s a particularly good coaster.
NoE: And Miiverse would be a good opportunity for players to show off their coasters too, and add screenshots to their posts.
AW: Yep, and we’ll have a Miiverse community at launch, and I’ll try to get in there myself, interact with the players, and see if I can beat their high scores.
And screenshots-wise there are so many good instances where the in-game camera just frames something, and the Crazies have great expressions while they’re riding too. They’re fully reactive to what’s going on in the cars, putting their hands up when they’re excited or they get a bit crazy when they’re too scared, and they obviously throw up as well… I reckon there’ll probably be a lot of vomit posts!
NoE: Lastly is there anything in particular you want Nintendo fans to know about Coaster Crazy Deluxe?
AW: I think just that it’s very easy to pick up and play. You can sit down and start creating great coasters, and the more time you put into them, the more complex and amazing your coasters can be. Some of the guys on the development team have even built real-life coasters using the in-game tool – it looks like a very nice and cartoony kind of game, but the physics behind it are really sophisticated. And to my mind it’s the first puzzle game that you solve using rollercoasters! It’s really ground-breaking in a coaster-puzzle genre. (laughs)
And there is loads of content in there: there are over 50 unique locations, seven different coaster types, each with its own various themed trains, and lots of scenery pieces you can put down in the environment and guide your coaster through them. Each coaster can be totally unique, and that’s really cool.
Coaster Crazy Deluxe will be available to download from Nintendo eShop on Wii U tomorrow.
