In 2013, Rime captivated Gamescom attendees with its debut trailer. An atmospheric, understated adventure game by indie studio Tequila Softworks, Rime garnered comparisons to masterworks by Eiji Aonuma and Fumito Ueda. While those are flattering comparisons, they put enormous pressure on Rime’s developers, especially when people’s expectations were so distant from what Rime actually aspired to be. It was this pressure that would eventually cause Tequila Softworks to sink into a period of silence starting in 2014. They soldiered on with Rime’s development, weathering bad buzz and grumbling that only increased when they switched publishers in 2016. The game debuted last month on Xbox One, PS4, and Windows, garnering solid reviews. Gamasutra sat down with Raúl Rubio, CEO and Creative Director at Tequila Softworks, to talk about Rime’s development cycle, the uncertainty that can plague developers in the early stages of a game’s life, and the lessons the team learned in handling the pressure that comes with developing games in this age of transparency. There are many moments in Rime that are based on real memories from childhood. It was basically us sitting in a circle and sharing those stories. Like, every summer, for example, I went to southern Spain and there was this beach and there were fish on the shore, and we took a boat out onto the water and there was a cave and the cave was filled with water and we always swam there. It was always so cheerful and charming and devoid of dangers, and then when I grew… [Read full story]
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