WarioWare D.I.Y. Preview
- February 24, 2010 21:40 PM PST
FYI... WarioWare D.I.Y. is loaded with crazy amounts of cross-platform creativity. Learn how you can make and download the most manic Microgames yet on both the Nintendo Wii and DSi.
Nintendo's latest edition of the WarioWare franchise, D.I.Y., takes it's influence from the SNES classic Mario Paint and adds a dash of indie game design. The core premise is simple: create your own WarioWare game. While the sometimes five-second-long WarioWare mini-games of past titles seem like they couldn't possibly take more than half an hour to design, the wealth of tools that D.I.Y. includes in the game should convince gamers within a few minutes that it's not as easy as it looks.
If gamers want to make a WarioWare game from scratch they can head straight to the "Game Makermatic," D.I.Y.'s own game design hub. From here players can alter any graphics they wish to include in the game. During my demo at the Nintendo Summit the Nintendo rep standing by showed me how to create a simple game that involved launching a rocket ship. The game was only simple from an aesthetic standpoint; the steps we took to get the game in working order were much more complicated.
First we designed the game background. Using different pre-designed swatches, we painted the sky and created a little grassy hill. Using the stamp tool we threw in a tree for good measure, and drew the sun in the corner by hand. Though the Nintendo rep was running through the steps almost too fast, it was apparent that the game was designed to make it easy on would-be game designers.
The next step in our rocket launcher game took us to the design of the actual rocket ship. The rep drew one side of the ship and then used a tool that flipped his original design over for matching symmetry. A nearby rep joked that it looked more like a shark, but once we added flames to the tail-end and animated them, I was more convinced. Animating in D.I.Y. is fairly simplistic but works with the look and feel of the game. For the rocket, we simply moved the ship over a few pixels to simulate it shaking while it took off, and for the engine flames we reversed the colors to create the illusion of a dynamic flame. Keep in mind, this was all very cartoony, but it was incredibly fun to see how our changes altered the way our little mini-game operated.
We also went into the music generator of the game to add a quick little tune to our game. Players have the option to create tracks from scratch, composing every instrument from the basic melody to a full-fledged rhythm section, but for the musically challenged there is an in game maestro who will compose a song for you based on your specifications. We ended up going with an extraterrestrial-sounding track that had "spicy" elements. I'm not joking.
The Assembly section of the Makermatic let's players pick the game rules, like what actions will change or affect any object in the game. For the rocket launch, we chose an option that executed the actual launch with a click on the ship. Doing this completed the game, and we were rewarded with the knowledge that we had just created something awesome.
WarioWare D.I.Y. launches simultaneously for WiiWare and DSiWare, wherein players can swap out games on the fly using the Wii's Wi-Fi Connection, on March 28th.
