Eric Chahi, acclaimed designer of the upcoming XBLA game, From Dust, sat down with Joystiq’s Kyle Orland to give a small glimpse into the process of game development. New screenshots, concept art, and a tech demo from this innovative title debuted at Gamescom earlier this week, but Joystiq’s interview gives gamers an inside peek into the collaborative effort required to produce such a non-mainstream game.

No stranger to thinking outside the box, Chahi is best known for the early ’90s cinematic platformer, Out of This World. This science fiction adventure employed ground-breaking graphical techniques and very little text—everything was accomplished through gesture or diagrams.

Since speaking at GDC in 2005, Chahi has been known to be a critic of the game industry’s lack of support for more creative titles, but he and From Dust producer, Guillaume Bunier, had nothing but positive things to say for their partnership with Ubisoft Montpellier:

Bunier: “…Even if it’s an ambitious, new, creative, risky [game], whatever you want, it’s cool that Ubisoft can still support this project.”
Chahi: “They are very good at supporting us even if it’s difficult.”

For Chahi, resistance and constructive criticism are a natural part of the game development process. He spoke extensively on the importance of flexibility and collaboration when building a game, especially one as unique as From Dust: “It’s not possible, I think, for a creative director to be totally rigid because it’s about all of the people that are on the team that incorporate the vision—it becomes their vision, it must come from within. People on the team must embrace the vision and be able to create from it, to take part in the integration.”

From Dust is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2011 on XBLA, PSN, and PC.

Read the full interview on Joystiq.