Former Rare employees, Chris Seavor and Shawn Pile, working for developer Gory Detail recently spoke with Nintendo Life about their new project called The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup.  The game is due to hit both the Wii U and 3DS eShop but The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup is still a ways off yet and according to Seavor, “looking at about a year and half turnaround.”

There was not much information divulged about The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup during Gory Detail’s conversation with Nintendo Life but there was some talk about the story and gameplay mechanics.

The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup

“It’s all very much about the story,” says Seavor. “It’s a very sad tale. It’s not dark as in ‘mature’ — it’s not got swearing in it, or anything like that. It’s quite a serious and adult story, but still a fun and hopefully playable game with lots going on. There will be moments of dark humour, but nothing gory.”

“The character is becoming the important thing,” Seavor explains. “You’re caring about this character. There are added elements which make it quite like a virtual pet game, a nurture game — you’ve got this character you want to keep alive. Rather than you’re controlling him to get from A to B, you’re controlling everything else to make sure that he doesn’t die. Within that framework, you’ve got your traditional kind of gameplay — platforms that move, monsters that get out of the way, monsters which don’t — but Rusty always has a relationship with you. You’re the narrator. So in that way, it’s like a God game — it’s not strictly a God game, but it’s got narration and this mysterious figure — which is you. I’m going to do some little twists and turns with the logic of the story, so there’s a reason for the character to be there. It’s not like Angry Birds or Jetpack Joyride — there’s a reason this character is here. He just doesn’t seem to know why.”

“It’s a 2D platformer, but a with depth to it,” Seavor explains. “You physically move in and out of the screen. It’s also got hints of Lemmings in there. The game has a core gameplay mechanic — and when I say mechanic I mean something you do which will effect something else in the gameworld — which we can’t say because it will give so much away! The main reason I’m being secretive is because we don’t know whether it works or not yet and until we’ve tried it properly, we won’t know. It will change. You put a mechanic in and even the simplest mechanic will throw out a thousand different problems.”