Super Lucky's Tale from Playful Corp. looks to tug at 3D platforming fans' nostalgia-loving heartstrings. With a cutesy protagonist that you just can't help but root for, colorful worlds, and all of the charm of a Nintendo 64 platformer, the game is definitely reminiscent of the genre's glory days.

Dan Hurd, director of Super Lucky's Tale, shared some insight on the dev team's biggest inspirations, what players can expect when the game launches, and how an old-school genre can thrive in 2017.

Utilizing Nostalgia to Fuel Creativity

Super Lucky's Tale is meant to bring back the feelings that Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64 evoked in players. “Everyone on the team has a platform game that left an impression on them at some point in their lives, and these formative experiences help us to distill what emotional beats we’d like to encounter in Super Lucky’s Tale,” said Hurd. “Delight and empowerment through character control. A feeling of exploring a fantastic world ripe with secrets. Lighthearted and funny characters. We have set these pillars for ourselves to further pursue those qualities that mean the most to us.”

Aside from the emotions that Playful Corp. hopes to stir up with Super Lucky's Tale, the developers also looked at their favorite titles to help build a cohesive platforming adventure. By taking what's worked in certain games and looking at what needed improvements, the team is hoping to create an experience that's both nostalgic and new. There needs to be a refined sense of control and exploration, which is something that we see a lot these days, but that was sometimes missing in even some of the best 3D platformers of past generations.

“To explore a more open, organic-feeling map and to delve into the successes and limitations of them up to now we turned to classics like Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy, Banjo Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot, and even obscure games like Jumping Flash,” said Hurd. “For more precise platforming and varied mechanics, we looked at games like Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario 3D World, Klonoa, Rocket Knight, and Sonic. It’s an important process for us to try to reconcile that feeling we got when we played them in our youth with our expectations as players today.”

If there's one company that knows about reinvention, it's Nintendo. Over the years, Nintendo has managed to take its most beloved series and put a crazy spin on them that leaves fans delighted and excited to see what's next. Super Lucky's Tale is rooted in a similar philosophy: to take what people love and offer something new and exciting. “We look up to Nintendo,” said Hurd. “They reinvent themselves while still finding the core of what makes an experience great — Breath of the Wild is a stellar example of that. Mario Odyssey looks nuts in the best possible way.

“What Super Lucky’s Tale adds (to the platformer genre) is a renewed focus on simplicity of control while still allowing for deep gameplay. We’re focusing on a lush, explorable environment, memorable characters, and with Lucky’s new burrow mechanic, we’re looking at what it means to be what we call a ‘playground platformer.' There are times where you’ll run to your goal, and those are balanced with times that reward more methodical exploration. It’s fun to control Lucky, and we’re building spaces that reward that joy of movement.”

From VR to Console

Creating Super Lucky's Tale for Xbox One has been a dream project for Playful Corp. “This is the ultimate opportunity, right?” said Hurd. “The amazing, passionate team we work with at Microsoft sees this opportunity the same way we do and shares our immense enthusiasm to build up this genre on Xbox One. And now coming out of the debut at E3, we’ve seen the Xbox community embrace Lucky with the same enthusiasm. It feels like being at the right place at the right time, but now it’s up to us to exceed expectations and delight players!”

The original Lucky's Tale was a VR experience that at first seemed like a one-off. According to Hurd, it was always the developer's goal to create a series, a world, from this first installment. Now, that goal can be realized, and it's possible that we'll see more of Lucky in the future.

“When we created Lucky’s Tale, we weren’t just making a game — we were breathing life into this charming, delightful fox named Lucky. We spent a lot of time iterating on and laboring over his creation, because it was always our intention to do more with Lucky and tell more of his tales. When the opportunity presented itself to work with Microsoft and bring Lucky to Xbox One, we were beyond thrilled. Since then we’ve been ecstatic to see how supportive and excited Microsoft has been in sharing our vision of having the world fall in love with Lucky, too.”

Because the first game was a VR-only experience, Playful Corp. has had a lot of work to do in order to create Super Lucky's Tale for a home console. “It’s been interesting and at times challenging,” said Hurd. “Camera control is an obvious difference between the two formats, but also field of view, scale, and a feeling of connectedness to Lucky and to the world are big challenges we’re working to solve. But the most interesting thing has been how much building Lucky’s Tale for virtual reality actually helped prepare us to make Super Lucky’s Tale shine on the flatscreen.”

“In Lucky’s Tale, you don’t have to think about the camera — your head is the camera. We had to figure out how to design levels where, despite the fact that you’re mostly facing north, there’s still plenty of room for exploration and an open-feeling world. While making that game, we had a flatscreen version running in tandem. One of the things that was apparent to us even then was how all the constraints and tricks we used to make the first game work in VR would actually become assets in making an accessible 3D platforming experience on a flatscreen.”

Playful Corp. isn't moving away from VR, though. “We announced Star Child this year at E3, which we are developing as both a (console) and PlayStation VR game. That team has exceptionally talented people working on a very compelling vision, and we can’t wait to share more about it. Additionally, we’ve done room-scale, social, single player, and many other prototypes in VR, and I don’t think that creative drive will be lost anytime soon. VR is already astounding, it will only get better, and we hope to be there every step of the way.”

A Playground Platformer

Playful Corp. has a specific goal in mind with Super Lucky's Tale: to create a platformer that's fun for players. But the team also wants to be able to have fun making the game, which is why there's room for experimentation in the development process. “One of the superpowers of the platforming genre is its ability to draw from lots of different genres and mix them together,” said Hurd.

“Our hope is that players will jump into Lucky’s fantastical world to explore, test their skills, meet interesting characters, find secrets, solve puzzles, and have fun simply running, jumping, and burrowing around. To that end, we’re adding a diverse spread of content that changes play style, challenge types, and difficulty, and I think there’s going to be something in here for all sorts of players. We can’t wait to see the world’s reaction to the game!”

For more on Super Lucky's Tale, check out GameCrate's impressions from E3. To get updates straight from the source, keep up with Super Lucky's Tale on Twitter and Facebook.