One of the fondest memories of my mother was that she loved wrestling. I remember her talking about all of the times that she talked about going to local wrestling shows in California. When I was little I enjoyed wrestling, but I lost interest long ago. I decided to take a jump back in with this week’s demo, which combines RPG with gritty, comedic wrestling tropes. This week is Wrestle Quest.

Wrestle Quest is a fantasy RPG from Mega Cat Studios and will be published by Skybound Games. The game will be released on all of those fancy current platforms. Who knows what the price will be.

You take the role of an up-and-coming wrestling star. Dreaming of becoming the world champ since childhood, fast forward to a world inhabited by all of the biggest superstars in wrestling, it is up to you to train hard, glam harder, and make it to the top, and even higher than the god of the realm, Macho Man Randy Savage.

The story beats are fun and engaging because it feels like an underdog story and everyone likes those, right?!

To be the best you have to wrestle the rest, and you gotta hone those skills, brother. Combat, specifically, is turn-based with some added flair. Combat involves you, the enemies, and the ring. You have to win the fight but you also have to win the crowd. Winning the crowd awards you more experience and more chances to use those “special” moves. Special moves require mana to use and they add flair to the ring. The turn-based combat is just as exciting as it’s always been but this time you get to clothesline and ultimately slam them onto the ring with such force that time slows. After the enemies health bar hits zero, it initiates “pin mode,” where the player gets to play a small mini-game, where, if the player wins the fight is over, but if the opponent doesn’t get pinned then they get back up and regain some of that HP.

The mini-game is quite difficult because you have to essentially live the count to three. Some fights that I had gone on so long that they had become boring.

Wrestle Quest is an impressively colorful game. It’s a really beautiful pixel game. Famous wrestlers are easily distinguishable. I’m pretty sure I saw Road Warrior and Bret Hart. It is really a hit of nostalgia seeing them after not seeing them on TV for a long time.

Wrestle Quest had quite a fun demo, but I did not finish it. That was because I absolutely despise the pin system. The system, to me, was difficult enough to where fights would last a bit too long and get boring. Other than that, the game was a blast. The idea of a standard RPG with the addition of wrestling just works. The combat is fun and exciting to watch, and the world and story seem to be there, but that pin system has to change for me to want to buy the game.