While Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King may look like just a slightly strange Final Fantasy spinoff, it's actually a huge departure for Square Enix. This game is a pilot for future projects by the company that are not huge. Producer Toshiro Tsuchida and lead programmer Fushiaki Shiraishi spoke at GDC about the bold new effort of making a non-epic game on Nintendo's download service.
On Wii Ware, with limited space, there was no option to use high-quality CG, a Square Enix benchmark. So the game had to be quite different. Shiraishi discussed the small scope of the game: one town, a few villager models, and unseen combat -- all of which are integral now to the game design. The game started from a game design rather than concept art -- another new development for the company. Shiraishi indicated that if concept art had been used, there would have been more of an effort to include everything that was in the art.
The small, multitasking team also made use of middleware instead of completely new code, making use of Nintendo's own package NintendoWare, which was deemed "awesome." In addition, about 70% of My Life as a King was developed using a scripting language called Squirrel. About the combat: there was originally RPG-style combat, but it was cut. Instead, heroes autonomously go fight monsters and bring items back to the king. It's like there's an RPG going on inside your town. The king walks around and builds buildings, then reads adventure reports from the heroes showing their progress.
The cuts and the use of middleware, along with the use of an existing game world (and its assets) allowed Square Enix to make a game with a relatively young, new team, and, most importantly, have it ready for the Wii Ware launch -- thanks to the delayed launch.
