Earlier this year at GDC, DualShockers had the chance to talk with Inti Creates President and CEO Takuya Aizu and Associate Producer and International Affairs Coordinator Matt Papa about then-upcoming lineup. In the time since then, Inti Creates released Gal*Gun 2 on Nintendo Switch, revealed and launched Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon to great success, and announced Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX.

During E3, we had the chance to sit down with Aizu-san and Matt Papa once again, and discussed how the indie developer's recent titles have performed, what Inti Creates thinks about Nintendo Switch, and got updates on titles currently in development like Dragon: Marked for Death and Gunvolt Chronicles.

Tomas: Inti Creates recently release Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, and it has been very successful. Was the studio surprised by the title's success?

Takuya Aizu (translated by Matt Papa): Obviously, this is all part of Igarashi's big KickStarter campaign, and just looking at the sheer amount of backers that were involved help guide our expectations for what this might be. We had a range of how we thought it might do, and it's definitely right on the top of the high end of what we thought it'd do, right under the "Holy crap, this is blowing us away!" level.

T: Do you think its success is going to raise expectations for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night?

TA: For us, I guess it's kind of hard to speculate what other people will think, but for us, we worked on Ritual of the Night up until the Alpha builds. We helped to create the Alpha build, and then another company started working on the game, but there are some mechanics of the game that look really good, and I definitely think it will be a fun title once it does come out.

We are not directly involved with that game anymore but do think it's looking really good in terms of controls and stuff like that, and that's going to be the biggest thing for people.

T: Inti Creates has released quite a few titles on the Switch. What are your general thoughts on the system and how have your games been performing on it?

TA: The first thing you have to remember is that we're an indie game company and we make indie games, and I think with the Nintendo Switch, both indie games and AAA games have found a good home. For us, it's not a matter of the Switch doing really well right now so we have to make games for the Switch. It's a matter of that we grew up with these kinds of games and love the idea of playing them on Nintendo hardware.

As creators and as people who love the Switch and indie classic-style games, those kinds of titles also feel at home on a Nintendo platform, so a lot of our creators feel really good when they can release our game on a Nintendo system. Even before the Switch, we made a lot of games on the Nintendo 3DS too, and if they come out with a new piece of hardware, I'm sure we'll make games for that too. I guess you could really just say we love making games for Nintendo systems.

T: How has the response been to Gal*Gun 2 on the Nintendo Switch, as that isn't a type of game typically associated with Nintendo hardware?

TA: If you look at the Gal*Gun series as a whole, we did not publish it ourselves until Gal*Gun 2. Both Gal*Gun 1 and Gal*Gun Double Peace were published by a company called Alchemist and they dictated where the games would go, so it wasn't something we had a lot of control over. Alchemist unfortunately no longer exists, so we published Gal*Gun 2 ourselves.

And yeah, you can say that Gal*Gun 2 is not a game you would normally see on a Nintendo platform or Nintendo Switch, but going back to what we said before, we really love the Nintendo Switch and publishing games on Nintendo hardware. Even if it's not the 2D action games we're known for, we still wanted to publish the game on Nintendo Switch anyways despite that.

T: Last month, Inti Creates announced Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX. How is development on that title progressing, and do you have anything new to share about it?

TA: We don't really have any new information at this time. The heads of the project, the Director and Producer, are actually keeping a lot of stuff close to the chest. We're all in the same office, but they're kind of doing their own little secret thing. In terms of how development is going, it is still very much in the early stages.

When we announced it we were just in the initial stages, but especially recently, we are getting a lot more people from other projects onto the Gunvolt Chronicles team, and we have every intention on developing this game at a high-speed manner, so we are going to have a lot of people on the team.

TF: Similarly, Dragon: Marked for Death is another announced game you guys haven't talked about recently, so could you give any updates on that game's development?

TA: With Dragon: Marked for Death, we have gotten to a point where we are right about finishing up a beta build, and then there's a lot of stuff the development team wanted to brush up on, so we have to go back and do a lot of polish work on stuff that was already done.

In terms of any sort of new information, development is going along, so in a couple weeks here in [the Los Angeles Convention Center], we are going to be at Anime Expo, where we actually have a panel. We are going to showcasing stuff from me and Hashimoto-san from the Rune Factory series, so we will have more information to give there.