WrestleQuest flexes its muscles. Pax East Dev interview.

 

TAG TEAM WITH DESTINY! Pro wrestling and RPG fantasy collide in the ultimate pixel powered adventure. “Macho Man” Randy Savage and tons of other icons offer guidance as you powerbomb your way to glory beyond the ring. This hero’s journey ain’t just an epic quest, it’s WRESTLEQUEST!

WrestleQuest is the world's first pro wrestling RPG. The game combines the best aspects of pro wrestling and turn-based RPGs. During PAX East 2023 we were able to talk to the developers about their upcoming game and what we can expect from this unique take on the Wrestling world. We talked about the game's origins and how it evolved from a 2D pixel art wrestling game into an RPG. The game that takes place in a child's toy room, where players play through unique wrestling stories involving their favorite classic wrestlers and various stuffed animals, dinosaurs and more. The game features around 40 licensed wrestlers, each with their unique side quests and special moves. Players can customize their character's walk-ons and archetype, and the game includes a morality system, allowing players to become either a face or heel wrestler. You can listen to the entire interview in the YouTube below or read it right here.

GVG: Tell me what is WrestleQuest is all about.

WQ: Yes, this is WrestleQuest the world’s first pro wrestling RPG, it combines the best aspects of pro wrestling and turn-based RPGs into one. The way we like to think about it is what we took turn-based RPG and try to Wrestle-fy it. When you take all the great things from those games, we try to make those more wrestling based. They have a fantasy setting, you have your wizards they cast spells, we got that too, except it's suplexes.

 We got a lot of great people in the game, we have about 40 licensed wrestlers in the game. We got the Macho Man. Randy savage, Andre the Giant, Jake “the snake” Roberts, the Road Warriors. Tons of guys in the game.

GVG:  What I understand from the premise, it is not the wrestlers as much as their toy versions?

WQ: Yeah. So, it's a, it's a toy room that you're in. And it is sort of this mix of pro wrestling and Toy Story as well, right? The reason why we end up going with that was because when we were talking about our experience growing up watching pro wrestling, we talked about like the toys we play with, you know, we didn't have every single pro wrestler action figure out there, you have like, maybe one or maybe two. And so, you would end up having them wrestle all your toys. We’re like how great that would be if that was like an angle on it and so now, we're making up like wrestling stories for these like stuffed dinosaurs and stuff. 

GVG:  All the intros are really nice too.

WQ: All the walk-ons as you get through the game, they're fully customizable, you can make your own walk-ons for your characters. And those are elements that you unlock throughout the game, and you'll find things like treasure chests that has a new entrance theme or things like that in it.

GVG : What kind of features have been added by now? Because you've been doing this for a while that you might have not even thought of in the beginning that you now an opportunity for. Is there is anything that you added onto it.

WQ: Yes. This has been a pretty wild experience. we've been developing this version of the game for about three years now. It originally started as a wrestling game; we're just going to make a 2d pixel art wrestling game. And as we came up with more and more ideas for it, we were like “We don't want to make a wrestling game. We want to make a game about wrestling is what we want to do”. And so, it's sort of grew into this RPG. And from there like we looked at fusions we could add to an RPG that would tie it into wrestling. So, your characters, once you build a party of like around three characters you can start doing tag team maneuvers. You can cue people up to like do its tag team maneuver and pick another person. Each combination of characters has their own maneuvers. 

GVG : Can you design your own special maneuvers as well?

 WQ: No, you can't design your own maneuvers but, you the things you could customize for your character are the walk-ons, you can also pick an archetype for the character. Like, what kind of wrestler are they going to be? Are they going to be more technical guy, they going to be a heavy hitter, are they going to be like a showman and do a lot of taunting? And all of those will have their own strengths and weaknesses to them.

GVG : Okay, so you make your customized character, right? You play with and then you meet all these other famous wrestlers, throughout the game and different toys is what you're saying?

WQ: Yes, and the fun thing we have about a lot of the real-life wrestlers is that they'll have their own unique side quests to each of them. Which will either unlock them to like be summons for you or give you items that are related to them. So, when you do like Andre the giant side quest, when you finish it, you can actually summon him into fights from that, from that on out and he'll like, come in and pick the whole ring up and slam it down. 

GVG :  So, it really starts writing sort of your own, your own group, your own league, or allegiances for your wrestlers?

WQ: Yeah. And on top of that, there's also a morality system so if you want to become a face or a heel, you can do that.

GVG : You'll beat me to it I was going to ask if you could be a face or a heel, can you also go back and forth?

WQ: Yes, you can because there's a series of moral more moral options you can take, And that will actually other things. For instance, you have managers in the game and you can call them out. And they will have little abilities to help you out. If you're a heel you're going to get heel-managers, if you are a face, you're going to get face-managers. Face-managers might heal you up while the heel-managers, they are doing detrimental things to the other people.

GVG : How much of the game versus story and comment like, what's the percentage like gameplay vs story?

WQ: I mean it's an RPG, so its very story driven, every step of the way you're following the story of these multiple characters. Right now, you're playing as Muchacho man, Randy santos. He is a young guy that grew up idolizing the “Macho man” Randy Savage. He wanted to be just like him when he grew up and when you start playing the game, he is grown up but he's just kind of working in the gym. He hasn't quite made it yet and so his story is all about breaking into the business.

 Another character we have to play has a Frank Logan, who comes from a big like Canadian style, wrestling family. He wrestles for his dad's federation but he's doing what's best for his family. So he's like losing matches to guys to put them over and he wants more than that. He wants to become a star so his story is all about like becoming a bigger star than he has already.

 But you'll meet other characters throughout the game that represent other parts of a wrestler's journey. There is the Luchador, he is half fish, half luchador. He sort of represents our like grizzled veteran in the storyline. He's the guys who has been wrestling for a real long time and his storyline is all about like how he needs to balance things like missing out on things with his family, versus his career and how that, plays out for a guy who has been doing it for a really long time.  

 GVG :  What is your, um, what is your favorite? I would just say wrestler, but a period of wrestling.

WQ: Uh my favorite period of Wrestling?  I’m going to not say a period as much as a style. I am a big luchador guy. I love Mexican wrestling. It's I saw a wrestling match. He was a wcw pay-per-view in the 90s. That was the moment I became a wrestling fan. I always thought wrestling was cool, but it was the moment I became a big fan. It was an eight-man luchador tag team match as the opening match of the   pay-per-view. The match ends and the guy that went on to become my favorite wrestler La Parka, his team loses and so he gets in the ring with a steel folding chair. Takes out the opponent's team one by one. So, one of his teammates gets in the ring and goes to shake his hand and he starts taking his own teammates out, one by one, grabs his chair and just struts out of the ring. That was the moment where like that got me and I was “I am now a wrestling fan” and what is so great is that we actually got him in the game. It's like him and his sons are in the game and they have their own storyline you get to go through and that happens at the end of the storyline is he just starts taking everybody out.

GVG : That is a great story. That's great that you have him now in the game as well.
WQ: Yeah. Oh, that was pretty exciting for me.

GVG : So how many hours of gameplay? You think we're going to be looking at here?
WQ: We're looking at about 40 hours of gameplay.

GVG : That's good. Solid, and is everybody going to have the same experience, or does it change a little bit on choices that you make?

WQ: There are going to be some changes based off a choice they make. Also, when I say 40 hours, that's a lot of side stuff too. Like I said, a lot of the licensed wrestlers have their own sides stories you can do. Like Jeff Jarrett has one where someone steals his guitar and you have to go find it for him.
It's been a long time coming, man. Like I said this version of this game, like just this specific version of it. It's been about three years in development.

GVG : When are you now expecting it to be released? this year?

WQ: It's going to come out this year. All major platforms. Can't get more specific than that.  But pc and all the consoles and sometimes this year

GVG : You got a whole bunch of different licensed wrestlers in there in there. So that's seems like they are all on board as well.

WQ:  Oh yeah. I'll say probably one of the biggest swellings of pride that we had in the office was we come in one day and our CEO, who's doing a lot of the licenses and stuff. Pulled us all in. And said “I heard back from Andre the Giant’s estate. They said this is something he absolutely would have wanted to do. So, like, oh my god. That is like one of the of the proudest moments. You could possibly have as someone who grew up with this stuff.

GVG : Fantastic, I appreciate you're taking the time to show us Wrestle Quest. we're looking forward to it. Hopefully, we get to check it out soon this year WrestleQuest on all platforms.

WQ: Thanks for playing it