, creator of the
Mario franchise, reprised his role as a supervisor and producer. ''Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
was developed by Next Level Games, a Canadian developer who had previously worked on Nintendo-published titles Punch-Out!! for the Wii and the Mario Strikers'' series. Bryce Holliday served as the game's overall director and Chad York was the lead composer and audio director. Brian Davis was a lead programmer, primarily
boss battles.
Shigeru Miyamoto was a producer and creator for the original ''Luigi's Mansion
, but for Dark Moon
Miyamoto stayed hands-off and instead supervised the project. He compared his role to that of a shepherd, by which he let Next Level Games take control of most of the project, and rather than telling them what to do, he instead intervened when he felt they were going in the wrong direction. Due to location differences—Miyamoto in Japan and Next Level Games being located in Canada—Yoshihito Ikebata also served as a supervisor, who had previously worked on the Mario vs. Donkey Kong'' series, and transcluded info between both companies frequently. Ikebata would report updates to Miyamoto biweekly and would relay Miyamoto's opinions to Holliday. Ryuichi Nakada served as an assistant supervisor and performed similar tasks. Yoshikami Kuzuki also helped advise. According to Holliday, Miyamoto did a good job supervising and the project never lost focus. Development began in 2009 and was completed in 2012. They nicknamed the concept "dollhouse mode" because the 3D effects added a new layer of depth and made the graphics stand out more. They realized that the Nintendo 3DS featured similar 3D hardware ability to that of their prototype on the GameCube, and they decided to officially develop a sequel with the 3D gameplay in mind. the project was in its
prototype phase and they planned on presenting the prototype in a video conference meeting. At the meeting, however, followed up by "something like a drumroll", Tanabe revealed they would instead be working on
Dark Moon. According to York, everyone on the staff was excited about the change of plans, more so York, who was looking forward to making music for a non
sports game title. Development officially began in 2009 and pre-dated the announcement of the Nintendo 3DS in 2010, meaning they were unaware of the hardware they were making the game for. During the conference, they were informed of the failed attempt to make ''Luigi's Mansion
3D in 2002, so they assumed the new hardware had something to do with 3D and designed a demo after a dollhouse concept, coincidentally similar to that of the one made for Luigi's Mansion''.
Gameplay Luigi's control scheme was built from scratch ten times over. The first few times Ikebata met with Next Level Games, they decided to try a new control set. When showing the new controls to Miyamoto, he would frequently ask to view the inside programming required to make the controls possible and they went back and forth between the two often. Miyamoto stated that the programming was something he was "personally involved with to a fair extent". They focused on making multiplayer a cooperative experience, and the progression would only be possible with the help of another player to continue progress, such as having one Luigi being trapped and the other one needing to save them. When one of the Luigi's is knocked out another can save him, which was incorporated to better emphasize cooperative play and the concept derived from the "Luigi's Ghost Mansion"
minigame for the
Wii U title
Nintendo Land. Miyamoto compared Luigi to a salad, considering that he was a more timid choice in comparison to Mario that helped balance out the horror aspect of the game. He also mentioned that numerous Nintendo employees were fans of Luigi and had been wanting to make a game starring him for a long time. Nintendo emphasized that Luigi should not be able to jump in
Dark Moon, to retain similarities between the two games; the designers were unaware of why Nintendo chose to not let him jump in the first game, and Ikebata assumed it was because the game emphasized adventure and removing a jump feature took attention away from action elements. According to Next Levels games, Nintendo was strict on their
intellectual property and even more so the characters, and Ikebata and Nakada were "gatekeepers" that enforced their rules. They attempted to push the limits of these boundaries but were usually kept from doing so. Luigi, as usual, was voiced by
Charles Martinet; he performed the lines without any context of the game itself, so they used various forms of storyboards and art to show Martinet what situation Luigi was in and what emotion he should be expressing. Sometimes Martinet would act out Luigi physically just for fun and would also sometimes ad-lib. Ikebata assured that the game should reprise Toad from the original. E. Gadd was made to be "as much a tinkerer as he is an inventor", which justified why he repurposed a Nintendo DS into a tool Luigi used in the game. The developers declared this as an instance of Miyamoto "upending the tea table".
Graphics and worldbuilding The game was split up in a level-like format to emphasize the on-the-go portability of the Nintendo 3DS, and each level was built to be about ten to twenty minutes in length and have something "satisfying" happen in each of them. They also used this executive decision to reimagine the same locations with new ideas. The developers knew that the
open-world format would result in tedious backtracking, so they added new ideas or changed others in rooms that the player had already visited. They justified this by making it seem as if the ghosts have visited and messed with a room's interior. Next Level Games was taught the Japanese word "karakuri" from Ikebata, which roughly translates to "surprise and delight", and they used this as a philosophy for designing each location. To encourage exploration, they hid various secrets and other paranormal activities in the rooms. Miyamoto wanted the game to have a lot of value, so multiple area designs were included. This also allowed for near limitless creativity and the concept was exploited to include as many diverse locations as possible, such as a steam clock factory and a museum. The developers also emphasized Miyamoto's design philosophy of "going left", where the player should be rewarded for returning to old parts of the game. Although they were made to be relatively easy to find they made sure it would still be a challenge for those who were trying to fully complete the game; Ikebata himself struggled to find some of the collectibles and needed help from others. To make backtracking less repetitive they introduce the Dark-Light Device. The Dark-Light Device was originally going to be similar to an
alternate reality, where the player could switch between the real world and a "spirit world" and see differences among them. They considered the concept, however, to be overplayed; they switched it to be singular items within the real world instead. Next Level Games received a lot of positive feedback from players who played the
Dark Moon demo at E3, and they found that 3D graphics helped make capturing ghosts easier. To make the 3D graphics a more comfortable experience they used a fixed camera perspective and keep the camera more static during cutscenes. For better ease of experience, the transition between the first and third perspectives was also slowed and important objects were kept within view of the player at all times. The first boss battle was designed to bring out the room's 3D depth. Throughout the development process, they continuously revisited the 3D graphics to understand and utilize them as effectively as possible. == Marketing and release ==