[Ed. Note: This interview was written back in July, and since then the XBL space has changed its pricing plans. Please keep this in mind.]

Where'd the idea of a Grappling Buggy come from?

Nathan Fouts: Well I didn’t actually start out by thinking “what if I combine Bionic Commando and Blaster Master?” but people have seen those qualities and like it, so that’s really cool.

I think I was watching one of those dirt bike shows on TV… motocross… they were jumping their bikes off those big ramps and dirt heaps, and when they were about to fall down, they’d tried to spin or something. I was just envisioning a car, just before it falls, able to reach out and grab something and then swing even higher. Then I just started thinking of it in game terms and went from there.

What is the story of the game?

NF: As of the E3 demo, the story is not in there yet, no tutorial either, but that will all be coming.

So as you’re driving, the first sweet thing about the Buggy is it automatically clings to surfaces, so it pulls itself right up stuff. You can drive up walls, you can climb. Story-wise, you’re this prototype exploration vehicle so there are all kinds of things new things about it. You actually command two characters, a woman and an alien, this jellyfish thing, and you’re looking for Vald, which is why you’re on this planet in the first place. Vald is this ‘super fuel’ in the story, it powers everyone’s vehicles, the jellies, and the humans, so everyone, everyone’s government’s, are nuts for it. Not unlike oil for us.

How do you control your Grapple Buggy?

NF: Simple – you use the left stick, A, and X. Tap the A button and you’re in “automatic grapple mode”, if you hold the A button you’re in “manual mode”. Using the A button controls the ‘grapple arm’. If you press the X button, you shoot out the ‘combat arm’. You can pick up rocks and pressing it again will allow you to throw it, and there will be a lot of upgrades along the way. You can also use triggers if that’s easier.

What kind of upgrades can you get, and what how do they affect the game?

NF: You will get new combat arms, new grapples, and you can swap them out but they’re not implemented just yet. There’s also new changes to the buggy you discover later on, new wheels you can mount to it—these will enhance the buggy’s abilities.

Weapon of Choice had multiple endings, but the path to them was quite obvious. Will Grapple Buggy also do this?

NF: During the game you’re going to be able to make decisions which change gameplay as you continue. This will change the story depending on which NPCs you decide to listen to. There will be points where you can see a path before you, but there might be a set of spikes that you cannot cross over, for example there will be Alien NPCs which you can communicate with, and one will talk about “The Great Pass”, and that it requires you to go down in a close by cave to find something to help you across.

If you pause the game you will see the map and multiple exits, similar to Metroid games. There will be 3 major endings to complete, each with different moral slants.

Weapon Of Choice had some quite unique weapons, what’s in store for Grapple Buggy?

NF: There will be different armaments so you will be able to fight without the grapple, stronger things with a missile-like elements, but pretty strange. The combat arm is your primary weapon however, and you will also be getting experience points of a sort with certain pickups in the levels.

For instance, you can find a little Alien antenna that will be added to your Buggy which is from the planet itself and you can awaken certain machines to aid you. As you progress, your Buggy will continue to get decked out with all this cool stuff. Pickups like high gear mode for speedy areas, and the Precursor Spark which will allow you to get across chasms like “The Great Pass” I mentioned.

I like these kinds of gameplay elements--varied, gameplay changing powerups--and love being able to include them in my game!

Are you trying to get in the game onto Xbox Live Arcade?

NF: Yeah, it’s brutal, they’re very finicky. I never know what they think.

You’ve previously said that Weapon of Choice did not meet your sales expectations…

NF: The guy who made RC Air Sim released his download numbers a little while ago – not sales, but downloads, and if you compare those to Weapon of Choice, even though he’s been at the Top of the Top 10 for so many weeks, we are still close on total downloads. So we got a lot of downloads when the service started but dropped off the Top Ten now. His game is in the top, but apparently has similar total downloads. That just speaks to the low volume of visitors to Community Games right now.

It appears to be quite difficult. One of my favourite games on Community Games was Blow – they won for Blazing Birds and not for Blow, it’s fully featured and is really an Xbox Live Arcade title, it really feels like they should have swapped the two. That was the year where Microsoft’s answer was “everyone wins!”

NF: Oh don’t get me started, so Microsoft holds a competition in 2007 and says “so these games are so good we’re going to give them Arcade contracts” and then Microsoft holds a competition in 2008 and says “we’re not going to hand out any contracts this year”, so they have their reasons but what does that say to the consumer? “So the games this year aren’t nearly as good as the ones last year”, and they might not mean to do that but it seems to say that to the consumer.

And how some people whine that $10 is too much for a game, realistically it’s the cost of a sandwich. [Ed note: As of now the 800MSP price point no longer exists. The prices are now set as 80MSP ($1), 240MSP ($3) and 400MSP ($5)]

NF: I know! People will go into a Gas station and buy a bag of skittles and a bottle of water for $6.

Yeah, I bought a Red Bull this morning at it cost $2.50, that’s a 200MSP title right there.

NF: Yeah, you can get hours of entertainment and you’re whining about five dollars

Same thing with those who won’t buy an iPhone title unless it’s a single dollar.

NF: Yeah, I don’t get it either, it’s a very strange philosophy.

Now despite that I can get free codes for games, I always buy them with my own money.

NF: That would be nice by the way too, for Community Games, if we could have game codes for press sites that we could send to Destructoid or whatever to allow them to review our game, but we can’t.

I noticed that some sites would ask the developers to send then enough money to buy the points to them review your game. “Oh please send us $2.50 so we can review your game!”

NF: We did that with Destructoid and Weapon of Choice, we sent them six dollars to cover the PayPAL transaction and they reviewed the game, but it feels so demeaning to have your own products and not be able to give it to someone to check it out. It’s so silly to have to go “here’s six dollars, please review our games”.

A whole six dollars!

NF: It’s so embarrassing. I mean this technology exists for Xbox Live Arcade titles, and we can’t get something like 30 codes to give to the media and whoever? I mean, I don’t know. It’s all sort of like “gifts from heaven” where we can’t do anything about it and have to be happy with what we get. [Ed note: As of August 11th this will be possible for all Indie games. They will be given 50 "tokens" to send to websites and blogs]

What are your thoughts on the other additions that will be coming to Community Games?

NF: Well we’re finally getting user ratings, speaking of heavenly gifts. Community Games was so crippled when it first started out – no ratings, no way to tell how many games you’ve sold, couldn’t tell anyone what the quality games were. I’m not personally interested in an aquarium or a clock on my 360, I’m looking for weird but fun action games. Not currently announced, but achievements would be great as well.

The problem with that is that someone could just make something called “the achievement box” and then you just open it and it gives you some gamerscore.

NF: But that’s okay, cap it at 50 gamerpoints. The minimum amount a game can be is 200MSP and your average for Xbox Live Arcade title is 800MSP and they get to give out 200 gamerpoints, this way you could continue to maintain your economy. If someone is really paying $2.50 and getting 50 gamerscore the economy still works. I think they should do that.

I’d like to see Leaderboards, I mean I like the score ability of them but right now they’re used to show how many of your friends also own a game. You can’t see that at all in Community Games.

NF: I agree, proper Live Arcade-style Leaderboards would be great. I’m exploring a two player component of Grapple Buggy which is very unique, very strange, and if we were on Xbox Live Arcade we would incorporate that into the games’ Leaderboards. If we did Community Games we would look into it but on Xbox Live Arcade that would definitely be in there. We could have Leaderboards for how many things people had found and discovered, their progression, and that’s how we would rank on our Leaderboards.

Biology Battle has a sort of peer-to-peer kind of system I think, so it essentially shares the data around to all Xbox’s, and they got it working, but fully supported Leaderboards would be great.

But there was a bit of a bug in those, showing 3 times as many players as he thought.

NF: Yeah I feel sorry for that dude, he was hoping for a lot more money.

Do you think changing the name of Community Games to Indie Games will help at all?

NF: I think it could help as the term “Indie” has a certain built-in attractiveness for a lot of gamers that “Community” doesn’t. I think if more people knew about Community Games then it could hurt since you’d be changing the name and confusing them but right now so few know about it I don’t think that’s a huge issue.. though I guess it will still probably confuse the few do know about it. Wow, damned if you, damned if you don’t, hunh?

Anything else you’d like to get off your chest?

NF: Aquapods? We have to market bottled water to children? That makes me sad to see.

Speaking of marketing, download Weapon of Choice. It will make your mommy proud. After that, try out some other developers’ wacky games, such as Angry Barry and Clover, both currently available in Community Games. And down there road there will be Vex and Silence and Duality: ZF.

It might sound like I’m ripping on Microsoft all the time, but I think the XNA team is doing a bang-up job with their limited resources. They do listen to us devs and make changes based on our feedback, that’s very nice. Here’s to more improvements and tons more users!

Thanks for your time.

NF: Thanks for your sweet Young Einstein accent.