01 Feb Scrap Riders : Meet Raúl Díaz Ríos
- How did you get the idea to create Scrap Riders?
Raúl Díaz Ríos – Scrap Riders was born after some prototyping in different game genres. So we thought combining two different genres could be a good idea. We saw some video games that did this in the past, and we saw for example Mass Effect.
In Mass effect you can play a more narrative-focused-experience in the RPG side of the game, and also you can play a more action-focused-experience in the third person shooter side of the game.
Since we love pixel-art and we love the 90s video games, we thought “How could we do something like this using gameplay and style from the 90s?”
On one hand, the narrative-experience we chose from the 90s was the classical point & click adventures, on the other hand the action-experience we chose was the beat’em up.
After that, we just thought about the pop-culture references we liked the most and we had a small brief of Scrap Riders.
- There are a lot of emotional references when playing Scrap Riders. Could you tell us about your influences?
Raúl Díaz Ríos – Sure, in the point and click adventure we love Lucas Arts and Sierra adventures, and especially for this game “Full Throttle” but also games like “Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis” or “Gemini Rue” (this one is not from LucasArts but we love it).
In the beat ’em up side, we have been strongly influenced by “Streets of Rage” and “Final Fight” as games from the 90s but also from modern games like “Fight and Rage”.
- How did the development of Scrap Riders go? When did it start ? How many people are on the project ? Did you encounter any difficulties? What about your partnership with Microids ?
Raúl Díaz Ríos – The first prototypes of Scrap Riders were born 5 years ago. We started the project just to try new things. But at some point, we saw this combination had good potential, therefore we started to look for a publisher in order to work on the project in a proper way, not just prototyping. After that, we were lucky to find Microids in an event in Paris.
After a meeting where we showed a small demo of the game they thought we could work together to finish this game so we started communication in order to achieve this.
However, a big problem appeared at the beginning of the collaboration. COVID and lockdown. It was very difficult at the beginning, but we got used to the situation, and we could move forward in order to keep the project alive.
Thanks to Microids, they were very patient during the process, and they have always been there to help us in any issue we faced during this time.
- Now that Scrap Riders is available on Nintendo Switch and Steam, what are your future projects?
Raúl Díaz Ríos – We have to think in depth about our next project. We need some time to analyze Scrap Riders, its impact and what the community says about it.
After that, maybe a next game about Rast and his gang, or who knows… it is really soon to say.
- If you lived in the Scrap Riders universe and could only play one video game, what would it be?
Raúl Díaz Ríos – We would do the same as Rast (the main character of Scrap Riders) and we would choose “Super Street Kombat Deluxe Edition”.
Mass Effect, GTA5 or a good old Streets Of Rage, those would also be good options.
- How did you come to work with Nicolas de Ferran? Was it a choice of Marc Celma?
Raúl Díaz Ríos – Yes indeed, Marc and Nicolas have known each other for a long time and finally for this project things aligned perfectly for them to collaborate for the first time. We think that the synergy of them working together was great, and hopefully our players will appreciate it. We’re super happy with the result!
