Get some Kinect and PS4 Camera insight. Commander Cherry is a game developed by Grande Games, made for the Kinect and PS4 Camera.

1. What inspired you to create Commander Cherry?

We were experimenting with different prototypes where you could build objects with your body silhouette. But we weren’t satisfied with the resulting gameplay. Some day we were looking at the structures those object created and thought how cool it’d be to have a character to jump around on them to traverse the level space.

This was the initial spark that led to the game as it is right now. In that process we re-designed the game two times (you can watch an old version of the game on our YouTube Channel).

2. What essentially is Commander Cherry?

Simply put, make a “selfie” of your body with the Kinect or the PS4 Camera you can walk on with your character.

3. What influenced the art style of the game?

Actually we hadn’t that much of inspiration for our art style. Georg always wanted to find a style our future customers might like. But being a small two man team working half time doesn’t really leave much time for creating AAA game art style. So, end of story: after the next creative dead-end we found the formula for creating our style. Just do what you like and can do best, no matter what the standards are. So Georg always liked the triangle style design and we just experimented with it and came very fast to our unique style we love.

4. What part of 2015 are you aiming to release in?

If everything runs as planned, Commander Cherry will land on your PS4 and Xbox One in the first half of 2015.

5. How long has the game been in production for?

The game in it’s current form is in development since October 2013.

6. Does the game feature anything that is possible on the Kinect but not on the PS4 Camera or vice versa?

We put a lot of technical effort and design work into the game to ensure that Commander Cherry’s Puzzled Journey feels and plays equal on both systems. So from a gameplay perspective, it makes no difference what platform you’re playing on.

7. Can the controller be used in Commander Cherry and if so, what for?

Commander Cherry’s Puzzled Journey is a hybrid-motion control game. This means you play the game using a camera and a gamepad simultaneously. The game flow offers a hypnotizing cycle of tension and relaxation. Build Platforms with your body. Enjoy precise platformer action using your gamepad.

You can also play the game coop. This means one player is chilling on the couch controlling Commander Cherry with the gamepad and the other player is striking the poses in front of the camera. So one player is the Commander, and the other player is the cadet. Playing coop is so much fun. Watching another person doing energetic space yoga poses never gets old. This will also be great to watch on the PS4 and Xbox One streams on twitch etc.

8. Might be hard to answer – but what is easier to develop for, the Kinect or the PS4 Camera?

This is really hard to answer, because: it depends. Working with Unity ensures us as developers most of the time very easy SDK access. So working with both Kinect and PS4 camera is awesome and easy. As our game is based on the user’s silhouette we have on both technologies the same data. Only on PS4 we had to make some own adjustments to improve the silhouette for our usage.

(This was a fairly short interview, but we may have a follow-up in store when the game gets closer to launch. Stay tuned.)