This week marks the release of Eduardo the Samurai Toaster on Nintendo WiiWare. For my Wii site, I was able to score an interview with one of the developers. Thought you all might be interested.

The Eduardo: The Samurai Toaster trailer was released just a couple of days ago, and I've been enthralled since. I'm not quite sure what it is that has me so intrigued. Perhaps it's that my favorite foods in the world (Pop-Tarts, and Eggo's Waffles) are made in a toaster. Or if it's the idea of using a toaster to pull off samurai moves that has me anxious. Whatever the reason, color me excited.

I then began to do some research for the game, visiting Semnat Studio's site. Which lead to me contacting Semnat's co-founder, and artist Daniel Coleman to try and learn some more about the game. He was kind enough to take some time and answer questions about the game, and give us a look behind the creation of it.

First, the name of your development company is Semnat Studios. How did you come up with that name? I've googled it, and wikipedia'd it and so far I've come up with nothing.

Semnat is just an old nonsense word I used to use. Apparently a lot of stuff I thought up around the time I invented Eduardo was pretty random. A friend suggested the Studios part, which is funny since there's only three of us. I guess each person is a studio.

Ha, well I guess it's always good to sound professional. If anything you can make people like me look up Semnat in Wikipedia. Back to the game, the trailer has been out for a couple of days now, have you received a lot of feedback from anxious gamers? If so, what are they saying?

I try to avoid reading comments about the game. Keyword being try. I get a bit nervous. I mean we've been working on this thing for so long and the whole time it's been a private project with little exposure to the outside world. You get used to living in a vacuum! But from what I've read people seem to dig it. I honestly expected more hate. I mean it's the internet, right? The only comments that have bugged me a bit are the ones accusing us of making shovelware. I knew that when we started making a Wii game that some people would assume we were making crap for a quick buck, but it's still kind of annoying to read. I can't stress how important the quality of Eduardo is for us. This is very much a passion project. We've worked insane hours since the start of development because we care so much about making a good game.

Yes, once you're exposed you can expect people coming from under their rocks to criticize. Going back to the trailer, one thing I was really curious about is what weapon is Eduardo using? Is it toast? Or what kind of projectile is Eduardo packing?

Eduardo and the other toasters shoot out the same pastry enemies that are attacking you.

What are the names of the other toasters that can be used in multiplayer, if you can divulge that information?

We never officially named them, but we refer to them by which movie characters they're based on. I don't know if I'd be copyright infring..ing if I said who they're supposed to be. But maybe that can be a fun guessing game for players.

That's probably a good call, I think for it to be infringement it has to be more than 20% comparable to the original. But I'm not a lawyer so don't go by that. Anyhow, just a couple of more questions. I was reading on your website/blog about how you decided on how to stylize the grass in your game. Without having to spill too many beans or having to speak tech jargon, can you maybe take us from how art that you create goes from the canvas or paper, into the actual game?

Yeah it's pretty simple, really. For the assets which I used traditional media for, I would create them on gessoed paper or mylar, etc., and either took a picture of them or, as in most cases, scanned them in. Then I'd use something like photoshop to cut them up however I needed to. Some of the textures, like the grass for level one which I detailed in my blog, was a mix between old textures I created in dog waffle and two different textures done with acrylic inks. I would cut them up on the computer, blend them until I was satisfied with the right combination, and then get them to repeat well. The repeating textures are the most difficult assets to create. They have to look appealing but subtle enough where you don't easily notice that they're repeating all over the place. I won't bore you with further details, but for those that are interesting in hearing more about these processes I'll detail everything in my blog.

One aspect of indie games I find intriguing is the music, and sound. It's so much of a separate skill set than the art, and graphics. How many different tracks are in the game, and how was the experience of creating the music, and sound?

Yeah that's a good point. None of us at Semnat have any music skills, or rather, we couldn't have music comprised entirely of humming and my rad kazoo ballads, so we had to seek help from elsewhere. Luckily we found someone at the University of Advancing Technology in Arizona. Ian graduated from that school and asked around to see if any students there would be interested in providing music for us. Raymond Gramke got in contact with us and was able to get school credit for it as well. We've been working with him for quite a while now. So we have about nine tracks in the final game, all that we could fit. For sound effects we went to places like gamecues and sound rangers. If any game designers out there are looking for a musician, I highly recommend getting in touch with Ray.

Well, glad to see someone is getting some school credit out of this. My final question; I've been reading on your site and through other interviews about the development process, and the time it took to create this game. Its been five years from beginning of the idea to the end, if I'm not mistaken. What have been the hardest parts of seeing a game through for that long period of time? And what would your advice be to other aspiring game developers just getting into it?

Yeah a few years working on prototypes of Eduardo, just over one year for the Wii game. It's been a real learning experience this whole time, every little detail about game design. We made many prototypes because we learned so much and would realize that we could do something much better if we started over with a new engine and revised gameplay mechanics. We went through that process a number of times. The challenge keeps it from being boring, and that time gave me a chance to learn how create better art. The hardest part has definitely been issues with resources. Not being able to work on the game as our only job but still having to put full-time hours into it. It's a difficult thing to sustain for such a long period of time.

We won't find out until Eduardo is released if this method worked out for us so I don't know if my advice will be of any help to aspiring designers. But perhaps I could say learn from your mistakes, let people outside of your development team take a look at your work and encourage honest feedback. Be critical of your work and make sure you're doing something you're passionate about. I can't imagine working on this if we didn't love the game we were making, or earlier on, the game we were trying to make. And Learn to embrace criticism, that's very important. If someone takes the time out to play your game and offers criticism, appreciate that and don't allow your ego to get bruised. Unless you're a game design genius you're going to make mistakes and plenty of them, but you can always learn from them and improve your skills.

Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions about the game. I'm really anticipating its release, and can't wait to review Eduardo when it comes out. Good luck with its release.

Thanks man, I appreciate the support.