Rime dev believed the game wouldn’t be released at one point, explains how it changed
Rime is finally launching in May. It’s been a long and stressful development period for Tequila Works, having originally announced its project in 2013.
Tequila Works creative director Raul Rubio admitted to IGN that Rime’s development was actually in jeopardy at one point. As he explained:
“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 rumors. 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?”
As for what’s changed with Rime since it was originally announced, Rubio said:
“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.”
Rubio went on to say that “the final 10% of a project takes 90% of the time.” While the game has been done since 2015, an entire year was spent on polishing the experience.
“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.”
