Little Big Adventure: Twinsen's Quest creator explains how they've improved the Magic Ball

If you were a gaming fan in the mid-90s, you might remember a title called Little Big Adventure. It became quite popular and soon spawned a few follow-ups, but never managed to develop the legs required to survive the test of time like a few other classics of the era.

However, the folk over at developer Studio 2.21 are currently in the process of remaking the title in a project called Little Big Adventure: Twinsen's Quest. While there is currently no release date attached to this remake, during my time at Gamescom, I had the chance to sit down and chat with CEO Ben Limare to learn a bit more about the game.

In the interview, Limare told me about how the team is approaching adapting the Magic Ball mechanic for this remake:

"Then the core of the gameplay is the magic ball. And we realised, okay, there's no other game where your main weapon is a magic ball. It's kind of a goofy weapon, but actually it's super fun to use. So we said, okay, let's make it super fun on the magic ball. Let's keep everything and let's try to make it like our dream." Limare continued a little later on, "I think it's something super cool. We made it more easy to use and more powerful in a way."

But while the Magic Ball undoubtedly posed a few challenges, the biggest was turning a game made in the mid-90s into an experience suited for the modern day.

Limare adds, "But one of our biggest challenges, and it's going to be hard to explain to other players, but in the original game, every exterior were divided in scenes, like in cubes. And you had four borders, like black borders, and it was like a mini scene. And for the new game, we merged all these scenes to make it one island, like an open world. And this is a big difference. It was our biggest challenge, I think."

You can see the full interview below to hear about the choice of art style, the release plans, and which Little Big Adventure title was Limare's favourite.