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The original Chibi-Robo! on Gamecube was directed by two members of Skip Ltd., Kenichi Nishi and Hiroshi Moriyama. Nishi founded Skip, but left the company to start a new studio named Route 24 a few years later.
Meanwhile, Moriyama (right) stayed on at Skip and worked on the next two Chibi-Robo titles as well, Chibi-Robo! Park Patrol and Okaeri! Chibi-Robo!, both for the Nintendo DS. The latter was only released in Japan.
Sometime after completing Okaeri! Chibi-Robo!, Moriyama, too, parted ways with Skip to join his current employer, Asobism, where he works as a director. While Asobism have primarily been working on mobile phone apps and Flash games, Moriyama submitted a prototype build to Nintendo for a DS game. This was an early version of Freakyforms, a “game” now available on the Nintendo eShop.
In its final state, Freakyforms is more of an interactive picture book that you can create yourself. You create a character using the tools within the game, and release it into the game’s world to explore. As it explores, it meets other characters, and the world expands, until finally, you get the ability to add features to it yourself.
The game also allows you to download other players’ creations using QR Codes or via the 3DS StreetPass feature. An augmented reality mode exists, too.
Early on, Nintendo took an interest in the project, but at first, company president Iwata wouldn’t give the green light to have Freakyforms released as a product. Instead, he asked that the involved developers — both at Asobism and Nintendo — continue to experiment with it until it turned into something that wouldn’t get boring after a short while.
Following a long period of development, the game ultimately moved from DS to 3DS and turned into the company’s first eShop release. You can hear more about its development in an Iwata Asks interview, viewable in English here.
