Interview with the Team Behind Rue Valley
We were super excited to have Rue Valley join the showcase because we fell in love with the game’s concept and art style. After playing the game’s demos I absolutely cannot wait to see what the full game will offer.
A huge thank you to Emotion Spark Studio for answering my questions and being on the showcase!
Can you tell me about the team behind Rue Valley and how you got started working on the game?
Our studio was officially founded in January 2020, which is when we started working on Rue Valley. But the core of the team has been together much longer than that. Most of us originally worked at our previous studio, Zero Gravity, where we developed Hellion. That project began back in 2013, so we've been working together for over a decade now.
In the time between Hellion and Rue Valley, many team members went on to gain experience at other studios—some really big names in the industry. We have people who worked at Ubisoft, Saber Interactive, Ebb Software (on Scorn), Art Bully (an outsourcing studio from Belgrade that contributed to Call of Duty, Rocket League, Amnesia, Stray, and many others), Mad Head Games (now under Saber), and Eipix (now under Playrix).
A lot of them eventually came back to reunite with the team, bringing with them a wealth of knowledge and experience. So even though Rue Valley is our first project under this new studio, it’s very much the product of a tight-knit team that’s grown together over the years.
Can you explain more about how your personality choices affect you in the game?
When you define your aspects of personality (Decisional, Social, Emotional) you get different Traits that shape your character. These traits can either give you additional choices in the game or they can block existing choices. Traits are never about being better but being different. In that way you can have a specifically tailored experience for the personality you chose that brings both bright and dark moments.
On top of Traits there are also Personality Checks that you can either succeed if your personality aspect is within normal limits or fail if it is in the extremes.
What inspired the unique art style of the game?
Various comic books but mostly the modernization of comic book style used in other media, like animation (Into the Spiderverse, Love Death Robots etc.)
Can you give a bit of detail about how the timeloop works in the game? How can the loops differ each time?
Each new loop the protagonist approaches with new knowledge, therefore interactions and dialogues are never repeated. With each new information you gather, your goal and your perception of the world changes. And so even though you are witnessing the same events and the same characters you are seeing it from a different angle and approaching in different context.
During the game, players can store memories in a graph. How does storing memories help with progression?
Memories and intentions basically show you your progression through the story. Since the time loop resets everything you do in one loop the mind map keeps record of it so you are aware at all times what you learned and what you did.
The main character is trapped in the desert. If you were stuck in a time loop where would you hope to be trapped?
During a quiet night in the old Rubacava, the same place I was trapped 28 years ago.
What does “indie” mean to you?
For us, “indie” means making the game you want to make. Brave ideas, real passion, and a bit of chaos. It’s about taking risks, being weird, being honest. Rue Valley couldn’t exist any other way. It’s too personal, too strange, too us. That’s what indie is.
Rue Valley is available to wishlist on Steam right now.