In the beginning, there was a Meerkat…

Hello and welcome to the official Lead the Meerkats blog! My name is Olli, I work as a game designer at Lapland Studio/Inaria Interactive, the developer of the upcoming Nintendo WiiWare title Lead the Meerkats.

Lead the Meerkats is the very first game from Inaria Interactive, a daughter company of Lapland Studio, a media company that has paved its way with projects such as “The Islander” music video for Finnish metal band Nightwish.

Lead the Meerkats blog will be updated with a fresh story from us every week from now until the game’s release and beyond. We hope you find it interesting. In our first entry, we are going to go way back in time and take a look at how Lead the Meerkats originally got started. I am going to have a little interview with our Lead Game Designer Jukka Makkonen, who has led the meerkats since their inception.

Hello Jukka! First of all, could you tell our readers who you are and what you do at Lapland Studio?

Hi, Olli and all readers! I came here to Arctic Circle a year ago but started doing work with the Lapland Studio already a couple years ago while I was studying game development. Currently I work as a Lead Designer and Assistant Producer on our first own game project Lead the Meerkats.

How did Lead the Meerkats get started? What inspired you to design a game about Meerkats?

The original game concept is now over two years old. At the time you and I were coming up with ideas for games that Lapland Studio could start developing in the future.

I have been interested in animals and nature since I was a kid and one of the ideas that I had was to create a game where you could control a pack of animals. You would start from scratch and slowly build a large pack that rules the environment.

I remembered the lively meerkats from the nature documents that I had seen as a kid and they seemed like a perfect species for this game. Without further hesitation I wrote the concept for the game called “Meerkats”.

As the game is now pretty far in the development. Has the design changed much from the original concept?

There has been some changes. Things like the decision to make this a Nintendo WiiWare title, project team size and time schedule have led to some simplifications to the design but most of the original key features are still in the game and I hope it stays that way.

Is there something you want players to pay special attention to when playing Lead the Meerkats?

Well, don’t be surprised, if you find some sci-fi influences from the game.

Is there something you want to say to the eager gamers waiting for Lead the Meerkats?

First of all, I hope that you will enjoy the game when you get to play it later this year. It’s a game for the whole family but at the same time I’m designing it so that I would also like to play it myself. I have been a gamer for twenty years and I hope that also the long time gamers will give the game a go.

And finally, before Lead the Meerkats is released, which Nintendo WiiWare game is your personal favorite?

It has got to be Mega Man 9. It’s not the best Mega Man game ever (Mega Man 3 is my favorite) but it was great to see the return of those classic 8-bit graphics and sounds. Though I have to admit that I’m finding it really hard. Where have those awesome gaming skills vanished! I guess I have been spoilt by relatively easy games that are more like experiences than real tests of your gaming skills.