It looks like fans of the wacky Ittle Dew series can now get a fun peek into the series’ development history, and what’s coming next for Ittle and Tippsie on Nintendo Switch!

In a recent interview with 1Print Games, Ittle Dew series developer Ludosity shared new insights on how the series came to be. In particular, they reminisced about the first game’s birth as a mere school project at first, and how its unique artstyle came about:

1Print Games: First, please share with us how Ittle Dew started out as the game we know today, and how you decided to make it the game’s title and protagonist.

Daniel: It started as a small school project in 2008, which we used as a prototype for the real game. The title originates from the joke that the prototype was “not Zelda, but it’ll do” and it had the subtitle “Barely passable adventures”. The full game was supposed to take place in a single huge castle, but we felt it would be too short so we added the extra dungeons and the overworld as we went along.

1Print Games: Many gamers and Ludosity fans have praised Ittle Dew for its hand-drawn artwork and animations. What did it take to achieve this in the final version of the game?

Daniel: A lot of work, basically. Anton and Nils animated the characters and enemies while I added in-between frames for Ittle in order to double her frame rate.

Anton: We were originally aiming for a pixel style but it didn’t pan out, and in the end we somehow decided to just draw it. The “wobbly lines” is just a flaw we decided to embrace, because it made animating so much easier!

The 3-man team also shared about how they wrote the cheeky humor of the series:

1Print Games: The various characters that live in the island in Ittle Dew often make puns and jokes. Who came up with these funny ideas?

Daniel: Like most things in our games, the humor and silly ideas were a collaborative effort.

Anton: We joke around a lot during development, and if something is funny we just put it in the game.

Nils: We have a very jokey casual way at the office, joking about things that could happen in the games is very common during production. What usually happens is that something suggested as a joke is liked so much that it ends up becoming a part of the game in the end. Another big factor is the whiteboard in our office: It’s there to be drawn on casually and with no expectations on what will end up there. It’s usually where a lot of in-jokes are born. But from that steady flow of random nonsense drawing, a lot of characters and ideas for games are born. If a character is featured on the whiteboard enough times, it’s likely we enjoy it enough for it to end up in one of our games.

This was eventually followed up by a discussion about the possible future of the Ittle Dew series. While they had nothing concrete to announce about a possible “Ittle Dew 3“, the folks at Ludosity shared their hopes for such a sequel:

1Print Games: Do you have any plans to work on Ittle Dew 3, and if so, what kind of ideas and/or changes will you make to stand out from the last 2 titles?

Daniel: Personally I’d like to make a smaller, puzzle-focused game again. The overworld in Ittle Dew 2 was unnecessarily large, and making the game more linear would make it easier to design the puzzles and difficulty progression.

Anton: I would love to make Ittle Dew 3. That series is so attuned with us now, it’s easy to work with. For art, I’d probably keep the style of ID2 (because hand drawn is so time consuming) but upgrade it as best I could. I want to design lots of new jennies and turnips.

Nils: We have a lot of ideas and concepts collected. Whenever an idea that would fit in that universe, or mechanics that could be expanded around comes up they are written down. We like trying different types of games in different genres though, and we have many game ideas that interest us. So there might be other games from us before we have the solid vision down for making a third Ittle Dew.