This interview was actually done by Nealybealy, but he asked me to post it for him. The developer wishes to remain anonymous. Some of it has been revealed before, but there’s some pretty cool new info in here as well, check it out!
Nealybealy: What other worlds were in the works, besides the known Castle world and Fire Temple?
Developer: Castle was the newest zone being made. There were plans for a future world based on LEGO’s new animal set.
Nealybealy: Originally, what prize would the faction that won the Nexus Force Championships get?
Developer: I’m not sure what the prize for the championship was going to be.
Nealybealy: Earth Gauntlet, one of the Ninjago dungeons, what was it? Were there plans for opening it?
Developer: In Ninjago each element was originally going to be its own world, but we didn’t have the staff to produce that amount of content, so we combined the elements into a larger single world.
Nealybealy: PvP has been around since the earliest game designs, what was it like?
Developer: PvP was interesting but never balanced for. There were mini games being worked on, so you could form teams and do tower defense stuff, that would’ve been in the castle world.
Nealybealy: In general, do you know any early world designs or information on them? Ever play on them (Such as Youreeka)?
Developer: There were early versions of Nimbus Station (originally called Nimbus Park) that were pretty boring, had the player do stuff like destroy some maelstrom infected robots whose job it was to keep the park cleaned up, then once you fixed the robots by rebuilding them you’d move to the next zone. The concert scene was the only part that was kept. Youreeka was shaped like Nimbus Station end up (circular), the idea was that the town was occasionally overrun with skunks that had to be cleaned off and shooed out of the town or tamed as a pet. The town would be covered in the stink and have to be cleaned up through various methods like building broom bots (like the one in Nexus Tower), or wrapping the player in a soap bubble and then they would roll around town in a bubble, or with a spray gun (which was kept and still worked on skunks in the final game).
There were concepts that never made it past drawing and design, like the Tarranno forest, which was covered in tar, and was supposedly connected to the Gnarled Forest, and Brick Mesa which was a large plateau like you’d see at the Grand Canyon.
Nealybealy: Wow, the Tower Defense in the castle world sounds pretty cool. Looks like there would have been quite a bit more to do. Tarbucks was actually in the files, or was that not actually at Tarranno forest?
Developer: Tarbucks was going to be part of Youreeka. The tower defense would have been large teams building parts for a castle and them positioning them to defend against the other attacking team. We had catapults and mounts working, mounts would’ve come out with the castle world.
Nealybealy: Was it just a horse mount? Or was there more?
Developer: The horse was standard, but we had large mechs and hoverboards and stuff like that working.
Nealybealy: Oh, large mechs? Like actually robots you could sit in and all? Were any of them weaponized?
Developer: Yea you’d sit pretty high off the ground, and could smash smashables by walking over them. We didn’t have weapons on them, yet.
Nealybealy: Oh wow, sounds pretty awesome! I’m just picturing those being used in AG survival..
Developer: Yea I’m not sure where they would allow them to be used. They caused quite a few bugs so I think they were going to be limited to certain areas.
Nealybealy: Oh, I see. Yeah, I could see them being used to farm in some places. Was that like how jetpacks were going to be in certain areas?
Developer: Yea, mechs would’ve been placed in an area and given limited fuel.
Nealybealy: Oh. I was thinking they were items. Were they planned for any particular world, because mechs wouldn’t really fit in knights?
Developer: I’m not sure where they planned to put the mechs, I think they would’ve been in instanced battles or open areas.
Nealybealy: Ah, that’d make sense. Would be cool if it were a Crux themed battlefield. Oh, was there going to be a Mythran/First Builder kind of expansion to Crux?
Developer: The most focus was going to be on castle zone, it was going to be as large in size as the other worlds combined, but with some more sparse and open areas, which would be good for mounts as well. There were also improvements to properties on the way. Being able to go to your properties from anywhere rather than a launcher, being able to build anywhere on your property, not just inside a boundary. Building in the air without supporting bricks. A more lax moderation process. Revamping how property ratings worked to stop people from pushing certain properties to the top of the list.
Nealybealy: So you could build like anywhere on the terrain of a property?
Developer: Yea, or in the air off the sides of the property, to the distant border that was used to teleport people back if they were standing on a moving model that went out too far.
Nealybealy: Oh wow, that would have opened up so many possibilities for building.. Also, what was the new racing type all about? Shival posted a video about it one time. Looked interesting.
Developer: I’m not sure what he posted, maybe it was prototype stuff that wasn’t released. Racing wasn’t very popular, the only plans for it were to make it so you could join a race from anywhere instead of a launcher, so you didn’t have to travel all over to try different tracks.
Nealybealy: What was the portal in the Paradox area of Nexus Tower that was broken/closed?
Developer: I think the broken portal was going to lead to the castle zone.
Nealybealy: Oh wow, was actually not expecting that. A friend of mine just wants to know what happened with the Imagimeter that they used to find Crux and then ended up getting rebuild in NT later, and if it was related to the Mythran presence in Rivendark.
Developer: I’m not sure, I know some there was some story about what would happen with the rebuilt Imagimeter, I just forget what it was. The Garmadon boss battle was in the Fire Temple. We were going to have another Ninjago world as well to coincide with the year of the snake stuff LEGO was doing.
“LEGO’s new animal set”? Was LU going to have Legends of Chima…? There’s nothing else it could be. Interesting to hear they were planning on having more Ninjago content themed around the Serpentine as well.