Daniel Primed

Aura-Aura Climber is probably the least well known thing I've worked on, but also one of the coolest things. The DSi shop was coming, and we were asked to make something incredibly simple that would be in the $2 section. I was still relatively new, having only been hired full time for around a year, so the idea that something I pitched would be turned into a game for Nintendo was mind blowing. Originally the project was supposed to be a collection of boss battles from the MvDK series. However that was feeling very same-y and lame, so I took out a piece of paper and pitched to my boss a game where you jumped from thing to thing collecting items as you went. It was a crazy high pressure project in the sense that I was the only designer (the whole team was like 7 people) which meant I had to do everything from level design to systems to feel of the character. It was the first time though I really got to cut loose and do more than just puzzle level design which was exciting. However it was also high pressure because every month we had milestone check ins where if the leads from NCL (Main Nintendo branch in Japan) didn't think it was good enough, they would cancel the project. Every month was a sprint to the next milestone, met with a "Hmmmm ok yeah it's not bad...you have another month." I also got to work with some people who taught me a lot. Mr. Abe who was the director on the project had good design sense and was constantly pushing me to do better. He would shoot down my initial levels pushing me to do better, so I blew all my amazing ideas on the first level to get him excited, then when he was satisfied said "now do it 9 more times", which was overwhelming but pushed me to be so much better. Mr. Tanabe gave me one of the most traumatic meetings I ever had that still haunts me to this day, but also taught me about letting go as a designer to focus on fun. The project did ship, and I'm still proud of it to this day. The few reviews that exist were all very positive which was satisfying. It didn't sell many copies (like 80k?) and is a forgotten piece of games history...but I'm still immensely proud of it and how much it shaped me. I don't even know if you can still get it since the 3DS shop shut down, which is a shame. But yeah, one of the things in my career I look back most fondly of. If you ever get a chance to play it somehow, let me know what you think. Have a good weekend everyone, and take it easy :)