Interview with NinjaBee (2): Developing for Xbox Live Arcade

NinjaBee: Overall, awesome! A little rough at the start, and a little intense at the end, but we are extremely happy about having had this opportunity, and we’re thrilled with how it’s turning out.

We’re obviously confident enough in the system to be diving into our second game for Xbox 360 Live Arcade.

NinjaBee: First, the game was designed to be the right scale for Live Arcade. The game has to be small enough to be easily downloaded and stored, but at the same time we wanted to cram a ton of content in, so this was a bit of a balancing act.

After that, we put a lot of time into the achievements and leaderboards, as mentioned below. We also worked hard on integrating the game with other system elements (such as the dashboard and Xbox Guide).

Finally, we’ll be releasing over time an interesting set of extra downloadable content, including new game levels and more.

NinjaBee: Achievements are awesome. As you play any game, you can accomplish certain things and be rewarded with a certain number of achievements – each of these has a “Gamerscore” associated with it, so the more games you play and the more achievements you earn, the higher your personal Gamerscore becomes.

You can compare Gamerscore with other players, show them the achievements you’ve earned, compare progress on certain games, and more. Outpost Kaloki’s achievements are primarily based on passing certain sets of levels in the various stories, but there are several achievements that are earned by beating single scenarios and making certain decisions as you play.