New Games 919

The Heavy Iron team also made sure the pair’s relationship came through whenever possible: “The characters need each other,” says Wiklem, “not just in the physical challenges, but emotionally as well. They have a ton of bantering back and forth in the game, some of it just in the nature of their personalities, with other bits in the same tone but disguised as hints and tips for players.”

Top of a Tepui. Russell and Carl negotiate vertiginous territory.

Tools of the Trade

Carl and Russell’s backgrounds also enabled Wiklem’s team to introduce tasks and challenges geared specifically toward the characters: Carl smashes spiders and collects his late wife’s mementos, which fell out of the house as it descended from the sky, while Russell catches rare bugs and completes the tasks that earn him more Wilderness Explorer badges. As both characters accomplish their goals, you’ll unlock cheat codes, bonus content, and video clips.

Our heroes’ possessions also play vital roles: Carl’s cane serves as a weapon and a tool, and he can use his hearing aid to stun enemies, while Russell’s mirror blinds opponents. In addition, they rely on other objects found along the way, including a magnifying glass and a pick axe, with Dug and Kevin providing specialized support at opportune moments. “Dug and Kevin appear just when players think they cannot go further, or a challenge seems impossible,” Wiklem says.

Biplane Battle. Take to the skies and engage in aerial duels against friends.

Capturing the Top of a Tepui

The tepuis fill the game’s primary underlying function, as they do in the movie, Wiklem explains: “After we saw the first cut of ‘UP,’ one of the aspects continually hammered on by the film team was how high up a tepui is. The film team thought we captured that sense of height and vertigo perfectly.”

He concludes: “Our goal was to make the player feel they were not only part of the Pixar ‘UP’ movie world, but that they could really be in a South American jungle. The joy of Pixar’s films is that they create these worlds so full of color and life that the audience is taken in and wants to be part of that world, even for just a short period of time. It’s a formula that has consistently worked, and we’re proud to have been part of the ‘UP’ process.”