WrestleQuest may be a love note for rasslin’ pro, but it’s an old fashioned RPG first

Make no mistake, the whole point of investing four years growing into wrestlingQuest is because Mega Cat Studios wanted to make an old fashioned turn-based role-playing game, just like the original The Last Illusionor Earthor the Dragon Quest series.



But that doesn’t mean Mega Cat is simply tapping into the allure of professional wrestling video games with an easier to develop gameplay loop; there’s a lot of childhood love for the superstars of the 1980s and 1990s inside wrestlingQuest, also. And there are 30 of them from real life — like Jake the Snake Roberts, Diamond Dallas Page, and most essentially Macho Man Randy Savage.

James Deighan, founder of Mega Cat, said of Pittsburgh, where he grew up and based the studio: “We’re a heavyweight sports town. “Friends, family, colleagues will come to debate the game of Steelers, Penguins or Pirates, my dad is more of a Bruno Sammartino fan,” said champion of the original Global Wrestling Federation of 1960s and 1970s.

Deighan said of his father: “I think he really saw that industry come into being. Deighan and his six brothers were born after his father, in their 50s. “Some of my favorite memories of my childhood revolve around wrestling. I miss my wrestling toys more,” than other sports.

It makes an unexpected wrinkle in wrestlingQuestthe story of. The characters — 12 of them playable, 400 of them NPCs, and about 30 of the real-life, old-school heroes of the past 40 years — are all action figures. motion. Some are not even wrestlers. The world in which the main character “Muchacho Man” lives is a fantasy world of toys, which a middle school student would spread out on the bedroom floor and indulge in non-canonical, intersecting pitches. glory.

«There’s something that inspires us a lot, that’s a lot of us growing up without a lot of things,» Deighan told Polygon. «So sometimes, GI characters Joe and He-Man go up against Hulk Hogan, and that fight goes on, and that ultimately inspires this kind of WrestleQuest universe.»

IN wrestlingQuest, launching August 8 on Everything (including mobile, via Netflix), players explore a fantasy kingdom dotted with gyms, arenas, and even temples. worship the legends of yesteryear. Battles take place in the ring (usually) and follow a familiar turn-based rhythm, with wrestling moves and quick action points that alternate for spells and energy. Do a particularly devastating move from the top rope, and a guy’s plastic arm might pop out. Don’t worry, he just glued it back on.

«It’s part of the high fantasy humor,» says Deighan. “What inspired the game was that same meaning, these two toys are going to be tough in that ring. And one of them in the dressing room later, maybe what he’s doing is turning his face around, because he’s a toy.

“This is part of why we wanted to make the game in the first place and why we started Mega Cat,” he added. “As someone with a huge reverence for RPGs, we wanted to make sure we were willing to commit to something that we thought fans would want to play and the time it took to balance that out. and tweak, something with that much content. It was a big design challenge.”

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

Image: Mega Cat/Skybound Entertainment

wrestlingQuest Deighan says it’s the biggest game his 11-year-old studio has tried. Much of Mega Cat’s résumé to date has been for rental projects, some of which use licensed properties (most recently, Renfield: Bring your own bloodOne Vampire Survivor-alike based on the Nicolas Cage movie). Those experiences gave Mega Cat some structure to work with as they approached the managers and properties of real-life wrestling stars. But it’s still a playground for them to log into an exit concept.

“The experience with Jake the Snake is not like talking to Hasbro’s trademark and licensing team,” chuckled Deighan.

At first, most wrestlers and their agents were only interested in the terms of the deal. “Most of them are not particularly excited about the genre of the game or the detail of the game,” says Deighan. But he and Mega Cat found common ground in discussions with the likes of Page and Jeff Jarrett, early on in their superstar subscription campaign.

“Almost every wrestler in the game must have their own indie circuit [wrestling] start,” Deighan said. “In many cases, these people are in their 50s, 60s and 70s. And they don’t know what the indie game is, but they certainly know what indie wrestling is. I think some of them feel like they’re supporting us and being a part of that journey, too, because they know this is a big risk to the group and a real love letter. A lot of times, it has inspired some unique conversations with them, sharing their own problems that they encountered on their journey, which, when they were just starting out, was quite understandable.

Affectionate love letters can be found throughout wrestlingQuest, even if building toys and jigsaw puzzles is more of a means than an end, creatively speaking. Opinion wrestling, always, first doing a turn-based, team-based, story-heavy RPG. But as Deighan and his Mega Cat colleagues focus on their work over the past four years, they continue to look for things to celebrate from their childhood and fandom. As a result, they’re creating the game they’ve always wanted and using cherished childhood memories to create that game.

“The game content is informed more by love for JRPGs and wrestling, than because of the best commercial scheme,” Deighan said. “This could be a game that can reach 30% of its final size and is viable. The reason so many people work on it for several years is for that goal. How we measure the success of wrestlingQuest Not quite a commercial thing. It could be the third or fourth goal.”

wrestlingQuest launches August 8 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

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