We recently spoke with the producer and co-founder of the studio David Sanchez Garcia via email to learn more about the recently formed team and the thinking behind its impressive debut release…
Nintendo Life: First, tell us about Noname/Sin Nombre. How big is the team there and when did you start working on Worldless?
David Sanchez Garcia: Noname Studios is a game studio founded in January 2021 by three industry veterans with the idea of developing Worldless. Our studio is 100% remote from the very beginning, because it was born in the middle of a pandemic. There are currently seven people working full-time at the studio, although we were up to nine people developing Worldless during the peak of the project.
We started working on the development of Worldless immediately after the founding of the studio, but the idea comes much earlier.
What was the genesis of the project?
We tend to say that this was a “10-year project”. Joel, our creative director, had the idea for the game while he was still studying at university, and a few years later he shared the idea with Carlos and me while the three of us were working at the same place. We both loved it and agreed that this would be a game we would like to do. Fast forward a few years and at some point we started developing a demo, which we finished in about six months working on it in our spare time. Up until that point, both Carlos and I were working on it for fun and learning new technologies (I was a developer at the time), but Joel had a very clear idea of the whole game and kept pushing. Over the next few years, Joel pushed the game around, shared things on Twitter, and talked to some publishers until he finally made a deal with Coasink that would allow the development of the entire game. Then the three of us decided to found Noname Studios and gather a team of people to help with what eventually became Worldless.
Does the final product live up to what you thought it would be at the beginning?
That. The game idea was very clear after Joel thought about it for so long and we didn’t deviate much from the initial idea. The scope has changed a bit and we’ve added and removed a few things here and there, but the game is mostly what we had in mind from the beginning.
The narrative of the game is mysterious, very open to interpretation. Were there any specific texts (games or otherwise) that inspired this abstract nature?
The focus of the game was always an interesting and new kind of combat, so the narrative was mostly an excuse for the interesting environment in which the game took place. It was never our intention to create a game where the narrative is the main focus, so we decided to leave it as open to interpretation as possible. There’s a whole story that the team knows (and pretty bulky, I’d say!), but we prefer to leave it up to the players’ interpretation to see what they understand. We want them to tell us their interpretation of the story!
As for inspiration, Joel always says that the idea of a more abstract world came after he was watching [2006 Darren Aronofsky] the movie “Fountain”.
In the last few years, the Metroidvania genre has exploded in popularity, with various examples — and good ones! — issuing on a monthly basis. Was there any trepidation about entering a genre that has become so popular? Have any games influenced your approach to Worldless?
We actually don’t like to talk about Worldless as a Metroidvania because it doesn’t have all the goodies of that genre. When we thought about the idea of Worldless our main focus was on an interesting new type of combat that mixed what we loved about games like Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry, but also had an interesting setting and where players felt like they were growing during the game, that’s why we put a lot of love into platforming and progressing in the world.
We believe we’ve created something that is quite unique and will hopefully resonate with gamers and help us find a place in their gaming libraries.
artistic style [is] a mixture of creativity and limitation. We knew we wanted to make something flashy and well-animated, but that we wouldn’t be able to do it with a small team.
The turn-based combat aspect is definitely a big difference — can you tell us where that idea came from and the challenges of seamlessly integrating it into this style of play?
The combat came from the idea of a way to fight enemies that felt as frenetic, stylish and action-oriented as games like Devil May Cry, but also where you have to think about your actions and strategize to defeat your opponents as seen in many JRPGs. We’re huge fans of Final Fantasy and they were a part of our youth, which definitely influenced us when creating the combat.
Artistically, too, Worldless feels like a game that does its best to set itself apart. Can you talk about the art style and animation, any specific influences and their evolution during development?
As for the art style, it’s a mix of creativity and restraint. We knew we wanted to make something flashy and well-animated, but that we wouldn’t be able to do it with a small team. At first, the characters were full-bodied and animated frame by frame, but it was too much work. So Joel decided to try a current style that allowed him to quickly create cool animations while also being unique enough to grab players’ attention. After that, a minimalist art style was born and thanks to our super talented lead artist, we were able to create a unique Worldless world.
Despite the somewhat minimalist look, there’s still a lot going on. With the Switch entering its eighth year next March, was there anything you had to cut down significantly to get it running on the system?
Fortunately, in the end, not much. The biggest challenge for the Switch was memory management, as there is almost no loading screen and we had to create a system that allowed us to load/unload things from memory as we move around the world (similar to what most open world games do). We also had to lower the resolution a bit for a bunch of textures, but we’re happy with how the game looks and plays on the Switch. Plus we managed to have a stable 60FPS almost everywhere!
The game seems to have gone down well with critics. What’s next for Noname? DLC? No World 2? A completely different genre?
We don’t have much to say, but we are already working on our next game, which will continue our philosophy of “doing things a little differently than other games” and come up with mechanics that we hope will surprise our players.
We thank David and the Noname team. Worldless launches on November 21 for $19.99 / £15.99 / $19.99 and it’s really quite good — let us know below if you’ve already played it.
