Clumsy Ninja’s 10-year journey to make it to Apple’s iPhone 5 launch stage (video interview)

Torsten Reil, the chief executive of mobile game publisher Natural Motion, had a chance to demo a cute character named Clumsy Ninja on the iPhone 5 stage yesterday. The “interactive toy” is a character who has natural biological movements as well as artificial intelligence to respond in a human-like way to an iPhone 5 user.

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Reil said it took a decade to bring the character to its current state. It is based on Euphoria, a physics, graphics, and artificial-intelligence game development engine that Natural Motion developed. The San Francisco company has used that engine to great success in games like Backbreaker and in licensed titles such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Natural Motion published the Munky Fun title, My Horse, in 2011 and saw huge revenues from it. Reil said that each new title is giving the company more knowledge about how to handle monetization and gameplay loops. The company recently raised $11 million from Benchmark Capital in a second round of funding so that it can try to become the No. 1 iOS game company, said Reil. Competition includes Electronic Arts, Zynga, Epic Games, Gameloft, Glu Mobile, and many others.

Showing off Clumsy Ninja on stage was a coup for Natural Motion, which has had big hits such as CSR Racing, which is generating $12 million in revenue a month — a big sum for an iPhone game. We interviewed Reil about making Clumsy Ninja in the video below. And check out the onstage demo of Clumsy Ninja at the bottom.

Natural Motion’s Torsten Reil describes Clumsy Ninja on the iPhone 5 from Venturebeat on Vimeo.

Natural Motion’s Clumsy Ninja demo at Apple’s iPhone 5 event from Venturebeat on Vimeo.