Fresh off the release of Aqua, we were granted an interview opportunity with Juergen Reusswig, Owner and Development Director for Games Distillery.

Games Distillery, founded in 2008, is an independent game development studio based in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Juergen has 14 years experience in the international games industry and was responsible for more than 20 game productions, including the worldwide million-seller ANNO 1602 and ANNO 1503 – Germany’s best selling PC game series.

What drove you to branch off and create your own indie studio?  And what sort of  hardships did you face in doing so?

Beginning of 2008, we looked at the market and saw that there is a good opportunity to start and successfully position an indie studio in the segment of download games, especially with a focus on consoles. As we had very experienced resources at hand who were willing to join us in our new venture, we took this step to start the Games Distillery. We fortunately managed to get our first two titles funded very soon and also signed Aqua to be released by Microsoft on XBLA.  2009 was a hard year for almost everybody I guess, with the economic crisis causing a lot of trouble. For us the biggest hardships were to sustain the funding for the development of our titles and the planned further growth of our studio.

How much time did you spend, from concept to finished product, on developing the title?

We basically started our company Games Distillery with AQUA about two years ago, but at the time we were only 6 people. We grew our studio step by step and also developed our own engine technology for AQUA.

How large was the team behind the development of this title?

The core team was fairly small, but during different stages of production, over 20 people contributed to the development.

What inspired you to create a naval-based top down shooter?

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.

Why is there no online multiplayer in the game?

We of course had a limited budget to develop the title and we decided to focus on the single player experience first as well as an entertaining multiplayer support on one console for co-op and competitive gameplay. Co-op over Xbox LIVE in the quality we would have imagined unfortunately has not been possible within our time and budget constraints for AQUA.

The ending of the game leaves open the possibility for a sequel. Is that in the works as we speak? If so, could this be the company’s main focus; continuing with the adventures of Captain Grey?

You are right, we intentionally left the opportunity to continue the story or use the main characters and background for another product. As of today we have several ideas with regards to that, but we are not actively working on a sequel. The titles which we are working on right now will be new franchises based in totally different settings.

Do you see this game developing into a full fledged store bought title? Maybe something similar to “Blood Wake” but more polished?

We currently have no plans for that. We would rather do a sequel or maybe another title based on the Aqua universe for digital distribution first before targeting a retail title.