The folks over at Silconera have translated parts of PlatinumGames’ 2010 design document from the development of The Wonderful 101, a doc released just this month to celebrate the game’s upcoming, Kickstarter-funded remaster.
The uploaded pages explore some of the motivations behind the game’s power-in-numbers mechanics, and include modern reflections from PlatinumGames’ Hideki Kamiya on how each of those concepts came together.
The Wonderful 101 sees a group of characters physically coming together to morph into useful shapes and objects, and puzzles shown in the design doc range from combining strength to move a boulder to joining together to create a massive key to unlock a larger-than-life lock.
”I originally got the idea of having a group unite together and form one huge thing from the picture books ‘Swimmy’ and ‘Kaibutsu ni Nacchatta’ (I Became a Monster),” writes Kamiya. “I always think up ideas as I create games, but I also often lose my way. In this case, I knew exactly what the core of the game would be right from the start, which is a rare case for me. (LOL)”
The full document as presented by Kamiya can be found on The Wonderful 101’s Kickstarter page, while select translations are readable over on Siliconera.
