RKGK / Rakugaki is a 3D platformer that tasks the player with saving Cap City an evil color-draining mega-capitalist company called B Corp with, well, graffiti. You play as Valah, a member of a rebel graffiti group trying to save the city. Developed by Wabisabi Games with support from The Riot Games Underrepresented Founders Program and published by Gearbox Publishing, RKGK / Rakugaki is adding to the cyberpunk genre and making its own stamp on it. We got the chance to talk with Mexico-based developer Anwar Noriega, the Wabisabi Games CEO and Co-Founder, about the game’s development, anime, and what graffiti means as a cultural touchstone.
BUT WHY THO: Latin America is one of the largest consumers of anime. Even for me, [as a Mexican-American], Dragon Ball on Telemundo in South Texas was an entryway. From the Bulma and Naruto-inspired fits to the manga skin, Wabisabi Games’ love of anime comes through. How has anime and Japanese storytelling impacted how you approach game development?
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ANWAR NORIEGA: Growing up watching anime and playing Japanese games is what made us want to make games in the first place! Without this influence, we are 100% sure we would not be here. Somehow, even with the heavy input from US pop culture in Latin America, our formation as artists was way more influenced by Japanese culture, and we simply love it!
We connected deeply with the larger-than-life stories where the creators were able to make entire worlds that circled around one very specific topic, and the stakes were incredibly high, like, for example, an anime about soccer, where every single piece of interaction is around soccer, and you are heavily invested with the characters and its world. These types of stories were not being created in Latin America or in the US and resonated incredibly well with us.
BUT WHY THO: Mexico has a flourishing graffiti culture that is alive and vibrant in color in RKGK/Rakugaki. What was the inspiration behind the mural work, if any? Do you have a favorite?
ANWAR NORIEGA: Graffiti has played a big role in Latin American society. Some people love it, some others hate it, but regardless of how anyone feels, it is an important medium to express discomfort with the status quo. This region of the world has been facing very challenging times in the last decades. Because of this unrest, graffiti is huge in Mexico and many artists have emerged from this movement who now are very influential in the entire world! We follow the trajectory of many graffiti artists in the region, and we are huge fans of them!
For the art style of our graffiti, we again went back to the inspiration of Japanese pop culture, mainly because it fits our fantasy of the entire world, but also because our main character, Valah herself, is a huge fan of anime, manga, and games as well.
BUT WHY THO: RKGK / Rakugaki’s mechanics pay homage to so many of the platforming greats. But they always feel unique and interpreted in a new way. What were the mechanics that you knew needed to be included in the game? How did you pay homage while also crafting something so unique?
Since the very beginning, we knew we wanted to pay tribute to a group of several games from the late 90s, but not copy or reference a specific game. With this in mind, it was a very chaotic process at first to be honest. We were trying so many different mechanics from different games that somehow were not working in ours, until little by little we found the ones that were feeling right and started to make sense for our vision.
Because of the nature of how we got to the final selection of the gameplay, it was a very diverse set of mechanics that we needed to fine-tune to make them work together, and I believe that is why they feel a bit different to other games. It all worked out in the end in a very fun, nostalgic, but new way.
BUT WHY THO: RKGK / Rakugaki isn’t just gorgeous, its sound is also phenomenal. With a score that gets your blood pumping and can even factor into the mechanics, what inspired it?
ANWAR NORIEGA: Thank you so much! When we were young, we played the Psygnosis Wipeout games and we were blown away by the soundtrack. Wipeout was actually our gateway to electronic music. Through that soundtrack, we were able to discover artists like Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, The Prodigy, The Future Sound of London, and many more. The fact that it is “non-game music” made it even cooler!
We wanted to create a 3D platformer game that doesn’t necessarily look or sound like a typical 3D platformer, so with this in mind, we very quickly decided to create a soundtrack that didn’t sound like game music.
We were very fortunate to be close friends with a very talented Mexican artist called “Trasto Nueve Vidas.” He is a very relevant actor in the independent electronic music scene and has played in some of the most important festivals such as Mutek in Canada. He loved the idea of creating the score for the game, as he himself was also a huge fan of Wipeout and he understood perfectly the vision of creating “non-game music”.
BUT WHY THO: The level design offers near-endless replayability. Whether you’re finding ghosts, moving faster, or defeating all the enemies, there are always more ways to improve your run. What went into designing the levels and ensuring players would want to come back?
ANWAR NORIEGA: Being a small team, it was very difficult to create a lengthy game so, instead of fighting against constraints, we used it as inspiration to look at creative ways to add replayability.
Collectathons are a bit tricky to balance. There are several examples in the past where games add way too many things to collect and players lose interest in finding all the stuff, so we tried our best to find the balance in the amount of objectives to tackle for each level and we hope you have enjoyed it!
From very early in the development, we knew that we wanted to create an experience that was enjoyable for players who may not always pick platformers as their genre of choice, but also provide a challenge for hardcore platformer fans who really want to make the extra effort to find everything in the game.
BUT WHY THO: Fighting the capitalist machine is the story we all need right now, but there is something salient and beautiful about doing it with a can of paint. Especially in the current industry landscape. What do you hope players take away from the Rakugaki / RKGK’s theme and Valah herself?
ANWAR NORIEGA: We hope players feel the exciting rush to express themselves! There will be times when it will be very difficult to do so, and the world will try to silence us, but no matter what, we cannot lose our voices, and, as you said, right now more than ever, it makes sense to not stay silent and to fight for what we believe in. We felt graffiti was the perfect vehicle to ignite this fight and express our feelings because it is super punk and a universal art form, whether it’s loved by all or not.
