Infinity Blade II's crunch time "not worth it"

Chair Entertainment co-founder Donald Mustard won't repeat the "death march" development cycle of Infinity Blade II.

"I think our development cycles are a little too short," Mustard told Gamasutra.

"Not that the games are less polished because of it, but we're way more burnt out because, in order to make [Infinity Blade] II feel the experience it needed to be, required way more crunching than is effective.

"It required for us, for the last two or three months, to just death march kill ourselves. I mean, guys are just working so many hours, doing so much, and that's not really good, I think, for the longevity of our studio."

Mustard said Chair " definitely won't do that again".

"It's not worth the cost. I would rather take an extra two or three months than burn the guys out, or burn even me out. It doesn't allow enough time to sit there and let the game breathe," he said.

"We don't look at that like that's a good thing at all. We only did it because we definitely, passionately wanted to get the game done, and we wanted a little more in there."

The Unreal Engine-powered Infinity Blade II took just six months to develop, and is out now, for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad, iPad 2 and iPod touch (3rd and 4th gen).