'Mindtaker', a love story

Relief Videogames and Virtualware team up to develop a horror video game that will land on Sony's virtual reality system in the summer of 2017

     It has been "a love story" and as such is expected to have a happy ending in the form of a video game. The shoot will be called 'Mindtaker' and it will be terrifying. Emerged from the union of two Basque companies, Relevo Videogames and Virtualware, will come to PlayStation 4 and the virtual reality viewer that Sony has developed for the machine in summer next year.


   Neither of the two companies are new arrivals. As explained this Friday Jon Cortázar, CEO of the company, Relevo Videogames has already published several titles, being 'Baboon!', PS Vita, the Sony laptop, successful for PS Vita, the most successful. "We are a small studio in Bilbao and we do what we can, we cover milestones with tranquility and space," he said during the presentation. For its part, Virtualware has spent thirteen years dedicated to the world of virtual reality, but had never entered the leisure sector.

   "We lacked money," acknowledged Sergio Barrera, director of technology of the company.

Precisely, that spine stuck Virtualware was the spark that set the engine in motion. They wanted to get into the videogame industry and knocked on the door of Relay Videogames. "We were preparing the version of 'Baboon!' for PlayStation 4 and it was a good time to go further, "admits Cortázar.

The chemistry came up instantly and the company behind the "videogame monkey" began to rummage in his trunk of projects yet to begin. 'Mindtaker', a conversational adventure from the era in which the company was engaged in retro games for 8-bit computers, was revealed as the best bet. In addition, the project departed from the type of "more infantile" stories that had been carried out so far.

"It seemed to us that the idea was very well elaborated and written," Barrera describes. The great seed became a first-person horror game in which the player must solve a series of puzzles in each scenario. But with a peculiarity: the presence of a cat that accompanies the player throughout the adventure. The link is such that if the user separates for a long time the animal loses life. "His erratic behavior, Cortázar explains, offers us the possibility of offering new mechanics, not only playable but at the level of history since one has the feeling that at first the cat protects him but then ends up being his puppet."

The Fun & Serious Game Festival, which started on Friday, has brought a demonstration that although it is not part of the title, it does summarize what the playable experience is like. We will have to wait until next year to see how it works but at the moment both teams are putting all their "passion" into a co-production for which they only have positive words. "We have achieved a successful relationship combining the best of both parties, the creative and the technological," says Cortázar before daring to give advice: "The culture of trying to do everything yourself is wrong, you can reach synergies that allow you to accelerate Maybe we could have played the game alone, but it would have taken us six years. " His partner, of course, seconded him: "Do not be afraid to cooperate to take out bigger projects,