How Rain Games built on Teslagrad's fiction to make World to the West

It’s not often that indie developers are able to make sequels to their original game, because as Rain Games lead designer Peter Wingaard Meldahl told us today, it’s hard to build on the gameplay of a standalone title “that doesn’t feel like DLC." But this month, Rain Games released World to the West, a followup to its 2013 title Teslagrad.

Since World to the West features characters and locations that first showed up in Teslagrad, we were curious as to why Rain Games switched from a challenging 2D puzzler to a more open-ended adventure game for its sequel. It turns out, as Meldahl explained to us in today’s stream, the game idea actually came from one of several prototypes that Rain Games was working on in the studio, but once they decided to enter production, they elected to keep building on the world and characters that first showed up in Teslagrad. 

Be sure to watch our full conversation with Meldahl above, especially to learn about why Teslagrad was most successful on the Wii U, and to get some tips on building a game world for your studio to rely on. 

And if this interview proved thought-provoking, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel for more developer interviews, editor roundtables, and gameplay commentary.