Virtual Basement Working On Next Gen Wrestling Game, Many Wrestlers Have Already Signed On, nZo Helped With Contacts

While WWE has the market cornered on wrestling video games, several people have tried to compete over the years. According to Fightful, the next to try will be Virtual Basement, who are developing a next-gen game similar to the 2K series. This is a notable change from the Fire Pro Wrestling series or the upcoming RetroMania game, which have a unique look and play style.

As of now, no promotion is tied to the game, but many wrestlers have. That list includes Ken Shamrock, nZo, Matt Taven, Brian Pillman Jr, Alex Riley, JTG, Matt Sydal/Evan Bourne, Jonathan Gresham, Kenny King, Shad Gaspard, Brian Cage, Bull Dempsey, Caprice Coleman, Shaheem Ali, Su Yung, Cheeseburger, Ivelisse, Kylie Rae, Killer Kelly, Rich Swann, Kongo Kong, LSG, O’Shay Edwards, Fallah Bahh, and others.

nZo reportedly helped the company make contacts in the business. As for the wrestlers, he convinced several to sign on while working for Qatar Pro Wrestling. He also claims that he’s trying to get Vince Russo to come on board to write the game’s story.

Here are highlights of an interview with Virtual Basement:

On a possible release date: “We don’t have a set target release date in mind yet as this is a passion project and we don’t want to rush anything. Which is one of the main reasons why we’re doing our best to self fund the project and avoid publishers/investors. We plan on building the game in steps/pieces and potentially launching over time early access. I have been making games professionally now for over 11 years, but before that I have been playing wrestling games for as long as I can remember. From No Mercy to Here Comes The Pain, to Day of Reckoning and it’s finally the right time and moment for a new wrestling game that can create opportunity and an alternative.”

On a possible promotion working with them: “We have not spoke or worked with any of the promotions directly. We’re working with independent talent from all walks of life directly. This means past, present, and future professional wrestlers. We have a fantastic roster thus far that we’re proud of and a lot of new surprises coming. There is a strong possibility down the line to include add-on content with various promotions but as of right now we’re focusing on creating our own fictional brand to work within for the game while having options to select various Independent promotions and arenas. As for the roster, we have hand picked everyone thus far and it has been a group effort of everyone involved reaching out to their contacts and friends. That is one of the biggest things we have noticed and love about this project is the genuine excitement of everyone involved.”

On character design and play style: “Since we’re building all our characters from scratch using zbrush and other digital modeling tools, we’re not using 3D scan technology it takes us a bit longer, anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks per character depending on complexity. Honestly, we’re taking inspiration from various games and playstyles that we’re fans of over the years but we’re looking to focus on building a very strong foundation that is fun and polished that can be built and expanded upon as we like. For example we plan on focusing on polishing the movement system first as it should be fun as possible just running around and interacting, and then we will build striking, reversing, grappling systems step by step on top of that core. If we had to give examples of the style of gameplay based on other games, I would have to say it’s a mix of No Mercy, Here Comes The Pain, Day Of Reckoning 2, and Smackdown vs. Raw 2011. As for motion capture, we plan on doing a hybrid of hand animations and mo-cap depending on the situation. Something like taunts for example it makes sense to do as much motion capture for as possible but for move sets and grappling, we may want to make sure we have that attention of detail and smooth transitions that only hand animation can achieve.”