PAX East 2023: WrestleQuest Is a Slamming-Good RPG for All

During day three of PAX East 2023, I had the privilege of meeting the founder of Mega Cat Studios, James Deighan. He guided me through the demo of his new role playing game, WrestleQuest.

As a kid, Deighan purchased Super Mario RPG, believing it to be a platformer game. After playing the game for a bit, he experienced a revelation about the genre: role playing games are incredible! That experience stuck with him and significantly impacted his development as a game creator.

That lifelong love of RPG’s, along with a deep passion for professional wrestling, led Deighan to create WrestleQuest, which he describes as “the wrestlefication of the RPG genre.” The game features turn-based combat with quick time events, requiring players to press the correct button with the right timing to pin an opponent or to deliver an elbow drop. Timing these well builds the hype meter, exciting the crowd and buffing your player. The game really simulates the feeling of a big-time wrestling match. Deighan said he wanted to “triple down on nostalgia and that iconic 80s era” while making a great RPG that could even be enjoyed by people who don’t love professional wrestling.

He did exactly that.

WrestleQuest is incredible. I spent nearly an hour playing the demo; I’m not a wrestling fan—I loved this game. It’s clearly made with love and projects a sense of quality at every turn.

The *WrestleQuest* booth even featured real wrestling matches!

Meg Cat Studios developed the game for four years with a team of thirty people. They licensed over thirty current and former professional wrestlers. The game has 12 playable characters, 400 NPC’s, 10k frames of hand-drawn animation, and 70 music tracks. The team is PASSIONATE about this game.

WrestleQuest has a 40-50 hour critical path, but players can add plenty of time doing side quests. The game also boasts high replayability as players will want to try the various character classes, which are wrestling variants of the classic fantasy genre class system, part of Deighan’s motto of the “wrestlefication of RPG’s.”

No release date is set for the game, which will launch on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 5/4, and Nintendo Switch; however the developer team is hoping for a 2023 launch. The game will likely get an art book and strategy guide, which are already prepared, six to ten months after launch.

Tell us what you think! Will you be attending PAX East in the future? Are you here now? Share your reactions in the comments below or join the conversation on Boss Rush Network’s Discord and Facebook.

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