Games Distillery’s seaborne adventure Aqua: Naval Warfare was a great attempt at expanding the boundaries of the twin stick-shooter. We sat down with Development Director, Juergen Reusswig, to find out more – Who are Games Distillery? What are their influences? And where do they think downloadable content is heading in the future?

Read on to find out what Juergen had to say:

D+PAD: Firstly, would you like to tell us a little about Games Distillery – who are you, what do you do, and where are you heading?

Juergen Reusswig: Games Distillery was founded in 2008 in Bratislava, Slovakia with the goal to develop cutting-edge Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC games tailor-made for digital distribution. The studio is owned by me, Juergen Reusswig, and Slavo Hazucha. I have joined the international games industry in 1994 and was responsible for more than 20 game productions, including the worldwide million-sellers ANNO 1602 and ANNO 1503. Slavo has worked as Creative Director and Manager in the Eastern European industry for over ten years.

D+PAD: What was the inspiration behind Aqua, and what were you goals when developing it?

Juergen Reusswig: We all like the concept of dual-stick arcade shooters and thought “how can we take this genre to a next evolutionary step?”. We wanted to create a game in a unique environment with a distinctive visual style and deliver action gameplay in a story driven way like in the campaigns of famous RTS games. Based on that, we decided for Naval Warfare as the scenario for our game and a steampunk based world for the creation of impressive architecture and units.

D+PAD: What was the biggest challenge when making the game?

Juergen Reusswig: An XBLA game with the scope of Aqua is not too far from a “small” full game. The difficulties are basically similar to those of any game-development. With the reduced scope for time and budget on the digital distribution, at some point you face the situation that you have a lot more cool ideas and unique concepts for the game than can be realistically implemented – making the right decisions here is key to the success of the development process and the resulting product. In Aqua, a further challenge was to develop a game and a technological platform at the same time.

D+PAD: Aqua blends twin-stick shooter with almost RTS style gameplay – what drew you to the twin-stick set up? Do you think that is a danger that gamers may be getting a little tired of twin-stick shooters?

Juergen Reusswig: We started the development based on the fact that we wanted to use the proven core principles of a twin-stick shooter and add variety and features like the squadrons to it, which have not been combined in this way before. Of course there is a danger that people are getting tired if you deliver exactly the same over and over again. But we think we have added enough variety and new impulses to the genre and also feel that our steampunk based naval warfare theme is very well received.

D+PAD: Are there any plans to make further Aqua games, or to expand the universe further?

Juergen Reusswig: We think that the universe and also the main characters of Aqua have the potential to be further used. There were already a lot of background story and events designed which could not be transported in our twin-stick shooter setup. So yes, we definitely think about it, but it is too early to speak about real plans.

D+PAD: As the market share and revenue for the download sector gets bigger, do you think the tendency to experiment could diminish and end up imitating the tendencies of the traditional retail sector?

Juergen Reusswig: I would say this definitely depends also on the fact if there are people willing and convinced enough in investing into products with some sort of experimental angle. I can say that we as a studio are trying to do this, as we want to deliver interesting and fresh content to the players. On the other hand the opportunities will always also depend on the market figures. So if titles which experiment to some extent are successful, chances are much better that this will be further supported.

D+PAD: Do you think there is a limit in what downloadable titles can achieve?

Juergen Reusswig: In my opinion this is only limited by technological boundaries. If you look at the digital distribution segment, you can see an impressive development in the past two years. Download-size limits have been almost removed, bandwidth has grown significantly and worldwide accessibility has also improved a lot. If this development goes on like this and there is a worldwide infrastructure to access the titles on their respective platform, I can see no limits for downloadable titles.

D+PAD: Do you think that there will always be a space for small, micro-budgeted studios?

Juergen Reusswig: Yes, absolutely. Especially with the opportunity to self-publish downloadable titles on several platforms today, this opens up a lot of opportunities for small studios. The right idea at the right time and nicely executed can always become a success, no matter what budget was behind it.

D+PAD: Do you have any plans to bring Aqua to any other formats?

Juergen Reusswig: Yes, we will definitely also release a PC version of Aqua for Digital Distribution within the next months.

D+PAD: Do you have any interest in exploring Kinect or PlayStation Move?

Juergen Reusswig: We have a few concepts which we believe could work really great when controlled via Kinect or PlayStation Move. Now that we have finished Aqua we will definitely have a deeper look at the opportunities there.

Aqua: Naval Warfare was released on Xbox Live arcade on the 19th Mary 2010. For more on the game, be sure to check out our review.

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