I SPY Castle Nintendo DS Game (rated E)
Meet Sam, a producer of I SPY Castle Nintendo DS game, as he answers our questions about making this brand new game! Sam will give you a sneak peek at some exciting and unique features of this game, as well as a glimpse into the creativity behind bringing your favorite series to life on the DS screen.
Q: One unique feature of I SPY Castle is the castle environment. How did you come up with the ideas for the setting?
Sam: The setting for any I SPY game has to be immediately interesting. And it has to have cool rooms with lots of stuff in them so that you have places to hide things. A castle obviously has both of these things. Of course, creating a new setting meant that we didn’t have the I SPY book pages to give us direction, which was both a tremendous opportunity and a challenge.
Q: How did you come up with the ideas for the game narrative and story?
Sam: We started with the question, "What do kids want to do in a castle?" We imagined kids on vacation at a castle with their parents in modern times. What do they wish would happen? They want to find hidden rooms and ancient secrets. We thought about finding a lost treasure, but that felt too much like our I SPY Treasure Hunt game. We finally settled on a story about dragons where kids get to do something very, very cool at the end.
Q: Where did you get the inspiration for what the castle and each of the rooms would look like?
Sam: We looked at lots of web sites about castles, lots of floor plans, lots of castle books, and made a list of all the places that a kid would like to visit: an armory, a throne room, a princess’s bedroom, a dungeon, the top of the tower, the moat. Once we had the list, our lead designer created a floor plan.
Q: What was the most challenging part of working on I SPY Castle?
Sam: The art is almost always the most challenging part of an I SPY game because the books set such a high standard, and this is what sets I SPY games apart from other hidden object games. I’m proud of all the various, beautiful, clever scenes that the art team created.
Q: What makes I SPY Castle different from the other I SPY DS games?
Sam: I SPY Castle is the most story-intensive I SPY game that we’ve done. Most of the castle is closed at the beginning and you have to figure out how to open doors to hidden places, so the world of the game keeps getting bigger. There are really two storylines. You have a quest that you’re trying to complete in the present, and at the same time you’re finding out what happened in the castle a thousand years in the past.
Q: Do you have a favorite part of the I SPY Castle?
Sam: My favorite part is the mini-games that are hidden in every scene. You get to do things like shoot an arrow, train a falcon, mix a potion, and lots more.
--Amabel, Scholastic Media
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