Eurogamer Expo Sessions: Yuji Naka presents Ivy the Kiwi?

"Ivy the Kiwi?" is an action game set in a world of picture book. Its main character Ivy, a little female kiwi bird, who accidentally got separated from her mother, cannot do much on her own, apart from keep running. She cannot even climb small gaps by herself, so the player for this game is a god or guardian who helps Ivy to reach her goals by drawing ivy on the picture book, which Ivy can run on.

It is a new type of action game, which involves a quite new game control. The player should enjoy its intuitive feelings of freely drawing ivy on the screen. It's a simple game to control, but is never an easy one to play. You may find yourself struggling a little when you first play it. You will gradually gain control of Ivy when you keep playing. You will be controlling the character in various ways you want, mastering some very delicate moves eventually.

The number of skills players can improve is great. For example, when you start playing the game for the first time you will barely be completing each stage. But once you start building up your skills, you will want to start going for all the red feathers in each stage. When you get even better, you want to try the time attack, then challenge for the medal, and so on. My ideal game is always "simple but deep", and I think I managed to come out with such a game with Ivy the Kiwi?

It was some young staff in the company who came up with the initial idea of Ivy the Kiwi? The game was for a testing purpose only, but I somehow felt a strong potential in this particular game at its very early stage. We then decided to expand the idea, and it eventually became Ivy the Kiwi?

Before making it I always thought that Wii's pointing device was rather stressful for players, and not suitable for delicate game controls. But with Ivy the Kiwi? we managed to allow players to control the character with the device very well. You can see how freely you can move the character when you see the gameplay videos. It was a positive surprise for us.

I didn't necessarily convert any of my experience with Let's Tap onto Ivy the Kiwi?, but my motto for both titles was exactly the same: "a game that anyone can easily learn how to play".

With the touch pen of DS and pointing of Wii it is easy to play Ivy the Kiwi? Its simple control would make you want to join in when you watch your friends playing it. "Let me play that game too!" This is the way I felt when I first saw an action game a long time ago, and the way I want people to feel today when they meet Ivy the Kiwi?

With regard to the unique game control of Ivy the Kiwi?, I did not particularly intend to create a new type of game control. It happened rather naturally, as we tried to make a new, fun game to play. It is a job for game creators after all to always come up with something new and surprise people, and I enjoy doing so. I would like to carry on creating new things.

I assume that it is about Sonic the Hedgehog 4. Yes, I believe that there are many more things that Sonic can do in 2D, so I'm very much looking forward to seeing the new Sonic. I could not help watching kids playing the new Sonic at the recent E3 because I wanted to know if they liked it.

Unfortunately I haven't had much time to play new games recently, apart from some games on mobile phone. It's a while ago, but I played the Professor Layton series quite a lot.

While Nintendo was obviously a big competitor when I was in SEGA, I also wanted to work on their hardware some day, so I didn't feel strange to develop for Nintendo platforms at all. I like trying on new things, so I don't mind working on new platform by any manufacturers. I hope that SEGA will some day come up with a new hardware again.

I do enjoy meeting the gaming public, because I learn a lot from them. I haven't had too many strange requests from my fans before, but I remember one lady asked me to sign her t-shirt she was wearing. It was a little embarrassing.