WrestleQuest might be a love note to pro rasslin’, but it’s an old-school RPG first
Make no mistake, the whole point of investing four years of development wrestling quest is because Mega Cat Studios wanted to make an old-school, turn-based role-playing game just like the original Final fantasyor Earthboundor the Dragon Quest series.
But that doesn’t mean Mega Cat is simply exploiting the video game appeal of professional wrestling with an easier-to-develop gameplay loop; there’s a lot of childhood love for the superstars of the 80s and 90s in it wrestling quest, at. And there are 30 of them from real life – like Jake the Snake Roberts, Diamond Dallas Page, and especially Macho Man Randy Savage.
“We’re a hardcore sports town,” Mega Cat founder James Deighan said of Pittsburgh, where he grew up and where the studio is located. “Friends, family, co-workers came over to argue about the Steelers game, or the Penguins, or the Pirates, my dad was more of a fan of Bruno Sammartino‘, the champion of the primal Global Wrestling Federation of the sixties and seventies.
“I think he really saw that industry come to life,” Deighan said of his father. Deighan and the youngest of his six brothers were born later in his father’s life, when he was in his fifties. “Some of my favorite childhood memories are all about wrestling. I remember more about my wrestling toys than other sports.
It creates an unexpected wrinkle in it wrestling quest‘s story. The characters – 12 of them playable, 400 NPCs, and about 30 of those real, old-fashioned heroes from the last 40 years – are all action figures. Some aren’t even wrestlers. The world the “Muchacho Man” protagonist lives in is a fantasy world of toys, the kind a high school student would spread out on the bedroom floor and mix in glorious crossover, non-canonical throwdowns.
“Something that inspired us a lot is that a lot of us grew up with not a lot of things,” Deighan told Polygon. “So sometimes the G.I. Joe and the He-Man characters are in the ring with Hulk Hogan, and that fight plays out, and that ultimately inspired this kind of WrestleQuest universe.”
In wrestling quest, which launches on August 8 on everything but mobile, players will explore an imaginative world dotted with gyms, arenas, and even shrines to the legends of old. Combat takes place in the ring (mostly) and follows a familiar turn-based cadence, with grappling moves and action points deftly taking the place of spells and mana. Land a particularly devastating move from the top rope and a man’s plastic arm can pop off. Don’t worry, he just sticks it back on.
“That’s part of the high fantasy playfulness,” Deighan said. “What inspired the game is that same feeling: these two toys are just going to go hard in that ring. And one of them in the locker room after that, maybe what he’s doing is turning his face back, because he’s a toy.
“This is all part of why we wanted to make games in the first place and why we started Mega Cat,” he added. “As someone who had such a huge reverence for RPGs, we wanted to make sure we were ready to commit to something we think fans would want to play, and the time it takes to balance and adjust , something that has so much content. It is a huge design challenge.”
wrestling quest is the biggest game his 11-year-old studio has attempted, Deighan said. Much of Mega Cat’s resume to date has been work-for-hire projects, some of which utilize licensed properties (most recently Renfield: Bring your own blooda Vampire survivors-similarly based on the Nicolas Cage movie). Those experiences gave Mega Cat some structure to work with as they approached the managers and estates of actual wrestling stars. But it was still a pitch for them to sign up for a way-out-there concept.
“It’s not the same experience talking to Jake the Snake as talking to Hasbro’s brand team and licensing agent,” Deighan chuckled.
Initially, most wrestlers and their agents were only interested in the deal terms. “Most of them weren’t particularly excited about the type of game or the details of the game,” Deighan said. But he and Mega Cat did find common ground in discussions with the likes of Page and Jeff Jarrett early in their campaign to sign up superstars.
“Almost every wrestler in the game had to have their own indie circuit [wrestling] start,” Deighan said. “In many cases, these people are in their fifties, sixties and seventies. And they don’t know what indie games are, but they sure know what indie wrestling is. I think some of them felt like they were also supporting us and being part of such a journey because they knew this was a big risk for the team and a real love letter. Often it inspired some unique conversations with them, where they shared their own issues they had on their journey, when they came up, which is pretty relatable.
The love letter sentiment can be found everywhere wrestling quest, even though the construction of toys and rasslers is more of a means than an end, creatively speaking. The point of wrestling quest, was always to do a turn-based, party-up, story-heavy RPG first. But as Deighan and his Mega Cat colleagues leaned into their work over the past four years, they continued to find things to celebrate from their childhoods and fandoms. As a result, they make the game they’ve always wanted to make and use cherished childhood memories to make it.
“The content of the game was based more on the love of JRPGs and wrestling than on the best commercial plan,” said Deighan. “It’s probably a game that could have been 30% of its final size, and viable. The reason so many people worked on it for a few years was because of that goal. How we measure success wrestling quest is not purely commercial. It’s probably the third or fourth goal.”
wrestling quest launches August 8 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.