RIME Developer On Early Development Struggles, Rumours Of Company Closure And Unreal Engine 4 Implementation

Creative Developer, Raul Rubio at Tequila Works, shares some interesting information about the development for the upcoming RIME game which is being released on the Nintendo Switch. The game was in the works early 2013 and has since changed a lot since then with the company facing some issues that nearly had the game cancelled. You can read the interview below:

“Maybe we did announce the game too early. Yes, there were a lot of moments where we thought that the game wasn’t going to be released. In fact I was completely sure of that once. Fortunately that didn’t happened. That [possibility] was always for technical reasons, not for financial or something business related.

When we announced that we were acquiring back Rime’s IP there were cancellation rumours. The truth is that in that precise moment we were moving to a bigger office. That’s pretty far from being closing a Company, isn’t it?

A lot has changed since the beginning. There was always an island, and there was always a tower. If you compare the first Rime project in early 2013, we had a tiny island and things like the use of sound and there was a kid stranded on an island, but the rest has changed a lot. For example we are now using Unreal Engine 4, and that engine has evolved, so we can include many more features and visual effects that weren’t possible then. Now we have a bigger structure and many islands, not just one and now we have all the content complete, which is great.”

When we started Rime it was a small indie game – and that’s still the case, a small indie game – but the reception of the first trailer at Gamescom was overwhelming. So when we returned to the studio we said ‘You know what? They love it… but now it needs to be perfect because otherwise they are going to kill us’. That’s what we have been doing since 2013. The game was playable then, and had been playable for six months, but being playable doesn’t mean that it’s the game.

It may sound like a lot of time, but considering how difficult it is making games today with so many platforms and so many great competitors out there, it means that people don’t see the difference between an indie game and a AAA game. It’s just a good or a bad game, and we wanted to make a good game. A very good game. We have spent four years developing Rime. And in terms of how the production has been, we did a design by subtraction. That means in 2014 we had way too many things. Removing those superfluous things and achieving a minimalist result that feels elegant and compelling is something that you reach, not something you start from.”

Source / Via