What do “Toy Story,” “The Lord of the Rings” and wrestling have in frequent?
That’s how James Deighan describes his new roleplaying online game “WrestleQuest.” The sport launched worldwide on Aug. 8 and comes from Bloomfield-based Mega Cat Studios, one of many few online game studios primarily based in Pittsburgh.
“People are shocked that we’re in Pittsburgh,” he says.
But Mega Cat’s founder sees Pittsburgh as the proper match for what he calls a blue-collar studio in an business that’s saturated on the West Coast.
From robotics and immersive expertise like Sandbox VR to Carnegie Mellon University, Mega Cat Studios has a wealthy expertise pool to attract from in a area thriving throughout a tech increase.
Old-school RPG meets wrestling
The Mega Cat workforce all the time needed to create a turn-based role-playing sport (RPG), the likes of which they grew up taking part in, they usually discovered a shared basis between RPGs and professional wrestling.
“Both have this extreme emphasis on larger-than-life characters and narrative-driven content,” Deighan provides. “So much of wrestling is not just about people throwing each other around in the ring. It’s about the conflict that leads to that, the ultimate betrayal, things like that.”
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Mega Cat describes the sport as “a classic RPG combat meets wrestling moves, match styles and gimmicks galore” or, because the workforce calls it, “wrestlfy.”
Play as rookie wrestler Randy “Muchacho Man” Santos on his approach to develop into a world champion. Muchacho Man should defeat standing champions within the native wrestling scene earlier than he can advance to harder opponents.
What makes “WrestleQuest” distinctive is the gameplay itself. Mega Cat’s Head of Studio Zack Manko says in some video games like “Super Mario RPG,” the participant can repeatedly press the assault button.
“Battles become autopilot at that point,” he says. “We really wanted to avoid that with the combat system. A big focus was making it feel exciting. By making every battle a live wrestling match in front of an audience, it adds to this whole new dynamic. If you keep doing the same move over and over again, the audience gets bored.”
When this occurs, the “hype meter” drains and strengthens the opponents.
“But if you approach it like a wrestling match and put on a good show, you can build that meter up,” Manko provides. “When that happens, you get different bonuses, better attacks and unique loot. There are a dozen systems to make it so you can’t sit back and hit the same button over and over again. It makes it snappier, and more fun. It’s like a WWE game, but an RPG.”
Unlike old-school RPGs, all the things is animated, Manko provides. From moonsaults to piledrivers to powerbombs, every transfer is created with hand-drawn footage.
Manko says that after they have been conceptualizing the sport, they reminisced extra about motion figures than wrestling itself. The sport characters are designed to appear like motion figures.
“Maybe you have a macho man and a G.I. Joe,” he says. “Well, you just match them together and make them fight. It’s about capturing that idea of being a kid and having unbridled creativity with your toy box.”
“WrestleQuest” options 30 licensed legends, together with “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Jake “the Snake” Roberts and Jeff Jarrett.
Mega Cat Studios has a Discord for followers and posts reels on Instagram, just lately that includes none aside from professional wrestler Jeff Jarrett.
“We have a lot of cool stuff to share,” Deighan says. “If you love games and want to support a local Pittsburgh-based company, there’s a whole lot more coming after ‘WrestleQuest.’ Also, do you like cats? We have a lot of cats.”
“WrestleQuest” is offered now on most main gaming platforms, together with Steam, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Netflix.
Punching above their weight
For a studio that Deighan says has by no means made a well-liked sport earlier than, Mega Cat Studios has received 20 completely different Best in Show and Best in Gameplay awards from Gameacon, Indie Prize USA, MAGFest, and others in its seven-year historical past.
“We were just fighting an uphill battle because none of us came from the games industry,” he says. “We had to learn in the trenches. We’d make a game, bring it to the trade show, go back home and say, ‘Well, we have changes to make.’”
And sport design takes a workforce. Deighan says greater than 30 individuals labored on “WrestleQuest,” together with freelance artists and voice actors. The sport took 4 years to create greater than 50 hours of story content material.
“There are so many layers to every little piece,” he says. “It’s the pacing, camera behavior, cinematic, sound effects, the personality of the voice actor, the lighting. It’s like building a house.”
Deighan and Manko say that after they have been youngsters they might dream about online game design as a profession. But what was as soon as not thought of a viable profession choice is now turning into extra practical.
“We get a lot of proud parents that send us clips of their 10-year-olds making bouncing ball (animations) in school,” Deighan says. “It’s now part of the curriculum because the games industry is major. They can make games a career.”
Through sport jams, on-line tutorials and different academic content material — and software program like Unity — Deighan says anybody could make a sport.
“The only thing that’s stopping you is yourself,” he says.
