Throughout right now’s Triple-i Initiative showcase, Gearbox Publishing unveiled a model new sport it is supporting from indie studio Wabisabi. The sport known as RKGK, and it is a color-soaked love letter to 90s anime, 3D platforming, and Mexican graffiti tradition.
RKGK is a single-player 3D motion platformer, going down within the futuristic dystopia of Cap Metropolis the place the evil CEO of B Corp is attempting to drain the metropolis of colour and life. The principle character, Valah, is on a mission to cease them by combating B Corp minions, and coating the town in graffiti utilizing a slick-looking parkour system.
Valah leaps, hovers, dashes, and glides across the metropolis, spraying paint as she goes each as an offensive tactic, an anti-establishment assertion, and at instances merely as a marker to point out she was there. The snippets of gameplay I noticed gave off deliciously chaotic vibes: there’s among the platforming sensibilities of 3D retro collect-a-thons, however the motion and vibes are a bit extra like Jet Set Radio, after which the bullet hell boss battles appear like one thing out of Nier: Automata.
Talking with IGN forward of the reveal, Wabisabi shared a bit extra concerning the graffiti and tradition on the coronary heart of RKGK. From the beginning, the studio needed to make a sport round graffiti tradition, particularly its expression in Latin America and Mexico Metropolis, the place the studio is predicated. “We strongly imagine within the medium of graffiti as one of the vital trustworthy, purest methods for folks to specific their minds, particularly when the message is just not simple to digest,” says Wabisabi CEO and co-founder Anwar Noriega.
RKGK’s model does appear to be bursting with totally different inspirations. For one, its designs are taking cues from AR and VR improvement. Although Wabisabi was based in 2018 with the intention of creating RKGK, it took on plenty of VR and AR initiatives to hold the studio afloat. Because of this, RKGK’s in-game graffiti has some noticeable AR vibes – I can see them even in trailer in the way in which among the sport’s largest designs appear to pop off the display screen.
However much more than AR, Wabisabi poured love for the 90s tradition its founders grew up with into RKGK. They inform me its closely influenced by Japanese popular culture, the “golden period of 3D platformers,” the 90s and 00s digital and rave music scene, and early 90s anime that aired on nationwide tv in Mexico: Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Captain Tsubasa, and extra. Noriega tells me they particularly needed to combine the anti-establishment messages of each graffiti tradition and cyberpunk anime corresponding to Akira, Ghost within the Shell, and Ergo Proxy, and used these inspirations to form RKGK’s visible language.
Wabisabi is a small, unbiased studio, however its bought some hefty assist. Riot Video games supplied preliminary funding for RKGK via its Underrepresented Founders Program, after which launched RKGK to Gearbox to publish and assist the remainder of the way in which. Noriega says that Gearbox supplied improvement sources, manufacturing recommendation, accessibility instruments, advertising and PR efforts, and important expertise and insights to assist the fledgling crew “keep away from making frequent errors with the event.”
“The truth that they trusted a newly created studio from a area the place the video games {industry} isn’t as nicely developed, speaks loads about their dedication to convey extra voices into the ecosystem,” says Noriega.
Gearbox Publishing supplied the next remark: “It’s a privilege for our crew to lend our experience and expertise to unbiased groups around the globe and empower them to change into leaders inside their native sport developer communities. From the primary second we met the Wabisabi Video games crew, we believed of their imaginative and prescient and pursuit to make the form of sport they all the time needed to see on this planet. RKGK wears its coronary heart proper on its sleeve, and we love celebrating that form of earnest ardour from builders. We admire how Wabisabi has thoughtfully crafted a love letter to their childhood joys and pay homage to what makes video games so creatively inspiring. We are able to’t wait to assist convey RKGK to gamers in all places this summer season.”
As Noriega identified earlier, Latin American builders and Mexican builders particularly are underrepresented industry-wide. However with the assist of Gearbox and Riot, Wabisabi hopes to introduce a worldwide viewers to a tradition it could not have in any other case had the chance to join with. And it will get that likelihood when RKGK launches on PC through Steam in 2024.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Obtained a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.