There’s an art to keeping a crowd entertained that goes beyond moves. Skybound GamesĪs any wrestling fan will tell you, a great match isn’t just about big moves. It’s a smart system that twists a standard RPG party system into something that makes sense in a wrestling game. One character can spend a turn to set up a tag maneuver, allowing another in the party to unleash a powerful tandem attack. Though what’s particularly neat is its approach to combo attacks, finding a fun way to integrate tag team and trio moves. Each recruitable character comes with its own suite of moves, from stunners to multi-target hockey slapshots (in the case of my deer pal Stag Logan).

I can even counter certain enemy attacks by landing a correct button press at times, a clever way to emulate reversals. It’s a little more active than just choosing a move from a menu, which adds more stakes and tension to even the simplest strikes.

The basic attack system isn’t too far off from the Mario and Luigi RPG series, where players need to nail button presses to get more damage from strikes. Each turn, party members can choose between four different actions: Strike, Taunt, Item, and a list of character-specific special moves that use up AP. Naturally, all battles take place in a ring and are presented like a wrestling match. What I’m more engaged by so far, though, is a creative RPG setup that feels wholly original. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason, but I suppose that’s exactly what my own stories were like as a kid. One minute I’m in a junkyard avoiding wrecking balls and fire-spewing cars, the next I’m traversing icy mountains.

So far, I’ve been shuffled between biomes with very little narrative setup or cohesion. It’s clearly going for childlike silliness, down to its toy-themed presentation. That journey starts with an extra narrative twist too, as players jump between two different lead characters seemingly on a collision course.īased on its earliest few hours, storytelling isn’t so much where WrestleQuest shines. To achieve that, he sets out on an unpredictable, often absurd adventure full of big muscles and even bigger personalities. Road 96: Mile 0 shows the pitfalls of ‘choose your adventure’ politicsĭeveloped by Mega Cat Studios, WrestleQuest follows an amateur wrestler named Muchacho Man who is looking to win his world’s most prestigious championship. This ingenious Summer Game Fest indie needs to be on your radar This witchy indie will challenge your idea of what a ‘narrative’ game looks like

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