It's been a year since we were introduced to Juggernaut Games and their fabulous Cutteridge Estate. Since then, Juggernaut has designed and published PS Home's first "design-it-yourself" mini-game for Home, Minibots. Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Juggernaut Games again about their newest release. YPSH : I have with me today Elena, Project Manager for Juggernaut Games. Welcome back to YPSH! I'm excited about your latest effort for PS Home so let's get right to it. Tell us what it is! JG : Hi Karen, nice to speak with you again! Today we are releasing a brand new personal space into Home – The Palace of the Seven Winds. We are also releasing a clubhouse version of the space and an ENORMOUS amount of related content, including clothing, companions, and some really exciting active items! It will be available this Wednesday, Sept. 26th. YPSH : This sounds different than what you've done so far for PS Home. What inspired this? Some of the crew at Juggernaut (l. to r.) Elena, George, Jason and Tony JG: Our idea with Seven Winds was to create something completely different than anything that we had done before. We wanted a space that was both beautiful and fanciful and we wanted to incorporate some exotic influences into the space that were unique to Home. We ultimately decided to embrace an “Arabian Nights” style theme, blending aspects of Middle Eastern, North African and Indian culture and incorporating magical elements such as flight and wish-granting djinns. YPSH : Flight? Did you say flight? JG : Yes! Flight! Your avatar can fly freely throughout the space, landing on any platform. Flight includes 2 modes – hover (slow movement) and soar (fast). In either mode you can perform a spin by pressing F1. You can approach a flight pad to take off or simply jump off any platform. It's an enormously fun addition to the Home experience! And, with the Essence of the Seven Winds active item (6 furniture slots), you can take flight in any personal space you like! YPSH : So this is actually your avatar flying and with the Active Item in ANY space? JG : Yes, your avatar will actually be soaring through the sky. YPSH : Wow. That's sounds so cool. So Seven Winds has platforms? How many? Do they each have a specific purpose? Tell us about that. JG : Once we decided we wanted to add flight to the space, we knew wanted to give people a reason to fly around, so we decided to divide the space into different platforms that can only be reached through flight. Each platform serves a unique function in the space, the feasting pavilion is the obvious choice for dining & entertaining, the garden features waterfalls, tropical plants and a pool, there is also a shop pavilion with a Wind djinn merchant. YPSH : Besides flying, what other interactive features does Palace of the Seven Winds have? JG: There is a genie who appears on whichever platform you are currently on – he can perform various tasks for you such as playing music, summoning a feast in the feasting pavilion or teleporting you back to the main palace platform. You can also change the time of day and the color of certain elements in the space. The pool features two waterfall platforms which will allow you to leap into the pool and then swim. The bathtub also features custom seated poses. YPSH : Swimming, flying, night/day cycle, music... sounds like Seven Winds has it all. Does Seven Winds have any mini-games? JG : Not at this time, we opted to emphasize interactive features over traditional minigames for the initial release. However, we plan to integrate some fun games in a future update. YPSH : Will Seven Winds utilize Juggernaut Coins like we saw in Minibots? JG : Yes. The Merchant in the space features a shop run by Mustafa the Wind Djinn – in the shop you can gift items to friends using Juggernaut Coins. There are over 35 clothing items, furniture items and companions that can be gifted. (There are also over 35 associated items that can be purchased using regular money in the Juggernaut Store) YPSH : Tell us a little about the clothing items. Will there be separates or complete one-piece costumes? JG : Everything is separates! The clothing has a very distinct and exotic look, and I hope the Home users will love it! YPSH : What kind of companions will there be? JG : There are four element-inspired companions which will be available for purchase with Juggernaut coins! They are Arjun the Earth Djinn, Ashti the Fire Djinn, Sirena the Water Djinn, and Gustavo the Wind Djinn. They make use of new updates in companion tech, allowing us to add particles and cooler animations for the owner. YPSH : Will Seven Winds have any active items available for purchase or as a reward? Absolutely - Seven Winds will have some very unique active items for sale! The most amazing is the Essence of the Seven Winds. This active item takes up only 6 furniture slots and lets you fly in any personal space. We also have the Decorative Lounger active item, a rug which lets you lounge in 5 different poses and take pictures and only takes up 3 furniture slots. You can also choose to hide the rug and thus effectively turn any bed or flat furniture item into an active lounger! There are also some exotic active item rewards, but we'll let you guys discover those for yourselves YPSH : WOW! It really DOES sound like Seven Winds has it all! This sounds like a really feature laden space! How long has it been in development? JG : We started working on the basic space and the flight animations at the very end of last year, but we ended up putting it hold to work on the MiniBots Training Facility. We came back to it this March and finished it off in about 2 months. YPSH : What would you say was your biggest challenge in developing Seven Winds? JG : Honestly our biggest challenge with Seven Winds (and in general) seems to be reigning ourselves in! We come up with tons of ideas and then we try to implement everything, then we inevitably come to a point where we have to reduce or remove some features. Whenever possible, we try to schedule these cut features as updates to a space – Seven Winds will definitely have an update or two in it's future YPSH : Are there any differences between the clubhouse version vs. the personal space? JG : No they are exactly the same! The only change is the addition of the clubhouse billboard, and some minor tweaks to the interactive features to support multiple users. YPSH : Can you tell us the pricing and will it be available in all regions? JG : Both the Clubhouse and the Personal Space will be $6.99. They will be available in both SCEA and SCEE. YPSH : Will there be any bundles available? JG : Yes! We think adding bundles that give a great discount to the customer is essential. We have clothing bundles for the Male and Female outfits ($2.99 for 5 pieces), a furniture bundle with 25 pieces of furniture (including the active lounger) for $9.99. If you are just interested in the spaces you can get the Seven Winds Bundle: Caliph – which is just $8.99 and contains both the personal space and the clubhouse! If you want to get the best value, then the Seven Winds Bundle: Sultan is the way to go! For $17.99 it contains the personal space, the clubhouse, the 25 furniture items from the furniture bundle & both the male and the female outfits. NOTE: To see a complete set of all items available for gifting and purchasing, see the slide shows in our Juggernaut Games developers thread HERE . YPSH : Before you go, can you give us a glimpse into the future? More personal spaces? Public spaces? JG : We will definitely continue to release personal spaces and virtual clothing and items! We are hoping to break into public spaces at some point in the near future as well. YPSH : Congratulations to all at Juggernaut for bringing this great new space to us. It really sounds like this is going to be a great addition to PS Home! Thanks for coming by and telling us all about it! JG : No problem! Thanks for having me and thanks to you (and all of YPSH) for everything you do to support Home and the devs. It was a pleasure as always! Be sure to stop by the Palace of the Seven Winds Open House on Wednesday to check it out!
Whoa, that looks great. Seems like Juggernaut are pulling all the stops with interactivity, the loungers are great too. I like that you can hide them and they are a little more friendlier to the furniture count than the GZ counterparts.
Yep's the bed's will be very nice to hide of top of normal sit down only beds, or on the sand in a personal space and that. I'm personally looking forward to the flying part the most.
So what part is everyone looking forward to the most? The space? Flying active item? The bed active item you can hide, so can lay down anywhere?
This is amazingly cool! Flying will help me through my DCUO Withdrawals! I really miss flying fast when I'm in Home.
Pretty amazing update. Can't wait to try this on Wednesday. Really nice they are having an open house. Awesome interview Karen.
As far as the sultan bundle, it says it includes the costumes, and 25 furniture items. Will that include the essence of the 7 winds? and as far as the costumes does it include the red one? I really want the red one u.u.
Im not fully sure on the bundle holds, my understanding is the main bundle gives you everthing, but ill check up on it later for you
LOL! GAME ON, ADMIN! Have to warn you, I have hundreds of hours of flightime logged by now. well... okay, maybe that's not so impressive when you consider how many buildings I've hit head on at superspeed.....
Flying, swimming, time of day changing and a very beautiful space to boot, and on top of that a bunch of awesome looking furniture, actives and clothing :d2o:
