Collin van Ginkel, Creative Director Two Tribes / Lead Designer RUSH talks to Alltern8 about the new Rubik's Puzzle Galaxy game for the Wii

1: The Rubik’s game is world renowned so what made you decide to create a series of games based on this theme and did you do any kind of market research or get feedback from the gaming community!?

We had worked with The Game Factory on previous occasions, they had aqcuired the Rubik’s Cube license and asked us if we could help out with the development. I must admit it took a while before we had the right angle for this license, since we came to the obvious conclusion quickly that just offering a digital rendition of Rubik’s Cube was not the way to go.

We still wanted to include it, but as a bonus, rather than it being the main attraction. For that part we consulted Ron van Bruchem, who is the former European champion speed-cubing. He visited our office and tested the game, as well as solving a Rubik’s cube in roughly 15 seconds, which he thought was pretty lousy ?

As for the main attraction, which is the RUSH mode in this first game of the Rubik’s Puzzle Galaxy series, we had total freedom to come up with a puzzle concept. We did lay down some ground rules, things which we thought made the Rubik’s Cube to compelling, and applied that to the concept.

2: Are there any reasons why you picked the Wii to place this game on and do you also think it would be ideally suited to other formats including handheld!?

RUSH involves a lot of interaction with a 3D level, making it ideal for pointer-based input. So Wii is a natural fit, but the game copncept could also work on iPhone and DS.