WhootGames CEO talks Castles’ varied inspirations and success on Steam Greenlight

UPDATE: In addition to answers provided by Alberto Pérez Rodríguez, Jonathan Rivas is also credited with contributing to the interview. Original story below.

A week ago, WhootGames confirmed that their upcoming puzzle-strategy game, Castles, will be releasing on September 25 for Wii U, Xbox One, PS4 and PC, a game in which engineers must position blocks of similar patterning to create matching sets. All the action takes place on growing towers, and so wanting to learn more about how the game world supports the project's goals, GameZone took the opportunity to speak with Alberto Pérez Rodríguez, the studio's CEO, for further insights.

From the start, the project had as its core idea the manipulation of cubes to make advancement. From there, the first prototype used tower construction as a framework to give this idea life. But the team still needed to tie everything together in a compelling way. That glue, Rodríguez shared, came from CTO Jonathan Rivas. "[He] came with the idea of this 'King's dream about building the tallest tower ever seen,' that planted the base for the whole story. The lore created from here onwards was a slow imaginative process, based on the concepts from our great artists, that soon led into long discussions mixed with beer that involved the whole team and concluded with all this crazy fantasy land of magic and machinery."

On the matter of machinery, one of the game's bosses shown in early previews is a Steam Spider, a design which Rodríguez says was inspired by the 1999 film Wild Wild West. Moleman is another, and the inspiration for this boss came from an entirely different source: the anime series Gurren Lagann. Evidently, the team at WhootGames pulled from a variety of muses, to the end of crafting design choices with a personal stamp and populating the game's universe with touches that would resonate with specific user groups.

"We’ve been playing games for many years now," said Rodríguez, "so we love to take references from all [our] past experiences. Most of us remember SNES games as a golden age, but we also can mention up-to-date projects that truly influence our games." Rodríguez went on to say how the aesthetic of Rime and the charm bred through ilomilo's characters and ambience helped guide the direction they wanted to take with Castles on an intrinsic level. It's these varied inspirations that help layer Castles' structural makeup.

The team has been able to demo Castles at several shows and expos, and with each showing comes honest feedback they can assess for the future of the game. On the home front, WhootGames has done plenty of their own testing and tweaking since they began prototyping the concept, which included the addition of "bigger grids, more players, different mechanics and items." But this special phase of public testing is something they see as invaluable. "The feedback received on the different expos and conferences is priceless for us," Rodríguez said gratefully. "It lets us test the latest content, detect bugs and earn confidence with the project. We also take good note of all the ideas that players give us, and many of them are implemented in the next builds, adding or changing the game experience." One such idea was to add a competitive versus mode to the game, which was in such strong demand that the team agreed to implement it into the final product.

Last month, Castles was submitted to Steam Greenlight and found success with the support of the community in a little over a week. With a boost of confidence, Rodríguez said the team is "very happy with the result," but added the caveat that they wished for more detailed feedback with which to measure their reach. "The statistics provided by Steam seemed very vague and there is no way to know when your game will be granted [entry]."

WhootGames will soon have a slew of new data to track and dissect when Castles launches at an undetermined price point. While decisions regarding price remain under discussion, Rodríguez told GameZone that it will probably cost "around 15€." They just need to consult with King Harold some more.

Come September, players will see if Castles' elements come together for a feat of gameplay engineering within the match-three genre.