I was lucky enough to meet Chris O’Neill of 9th Level Games at UK Games Expo.
My copy of Rebel Scum is a first edition, was never able to resist Sentai & Sensibility and so managed to steer the conversation on to Wrastlevania.
Take your favourite classic Metroidvania-style computer game, something like Metroid and Castlevania, and you’re off to a good start. Castlevania would be a good choice as the villain in Wrastlevania is Dracula. Actually, the villain in Wrastlevania is Ultra Dracula.
Ultra Dracula is immune to all weapons, and the only way to defeat the monster is to pin him three times.
In Chris’s opinion, Wrastlevania is the craziest thing 9th Level Games have ever made and given their catalogue, that’s quite a claim! But, all people, Chris should know.
The game will be presented as a ‘cinematic’ experience (my term, borrowed from a large Swedish publisher), in which there is a clear start and finish to the game. It’s not a campaign setting as such. This means that the game can be structured in a Metroidvania way, such as players picking up a random item in one fight and discovering that there’s an encounter later that just so happens to require the same item. Think retro computer game puzzles.
A crowdfunding campaign for Wrastlevania is set to launch in about six weeks, and the BackerKit preview page is now live. The omens are looking good for Chris O’Neill and the team at 9th Level, as more than 2,000 people have already signed up for the launch alert.
Just as a sidebar, if you think ‘America’ when you read 9th Level and then, because of that, names like McMahon when someone says ‘wrestling’ worry not. It’s the International Wrastle Force who have sought hero wrestlers Ultra Dracula, so we are as likely to get a masked luchador raising money for the church as we are a guy in a yellow handband. 9th Level, after all, are the publisher who brought us two editions of Rebel Scum.
Quick Links
- BackerKit: Wrastlevania.
A special thanks to Vortex Verlag for sponsoring Geek Native’s coverage of UK Games Expo. You can meet them at stand 3A-758 and find out about the exciting new Serenissima Obscura crowdfunding campaign.
