Mercury Steam, against all odds

[Warlock-]

 

From the ashes of Rebel Act, Mercury Steam was born, one of the leading studies of Spanish industry. Mercury Steam is one of the longest studies of the Spanish industry. His most notable works have been Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, return of the saga of vampire action, and Samus Returns, with which the space bounty hunter landed on Nintendo 3DS. His latest project is Spacelords, a multiplayer pulp shooter that has been remodeling its course thanks to the comments of the loyal community he has built. However, the trajectory of Mercury Steam has not always been a path of roses. His story, narrated first hand by the studio for MeriStation, is paved with disappointments that, far from sinking them, have given him the energy to resurface with more strength and move forward.

 

The wreck of Rebel Act

 

Mercury Steam was born of the shipwreck of Rebel Act, founded in 2001. Its only project was Blade: The Age of Darkness (2001), an action and adventure title that stood out for its demanding difficulty, its illumination and its hyperrealism of the fighting, in those that included mutilations and wounds that bled in real time. However, its commercial success was not as expected. Juan Diaz Bustamante, director of Rebel Act, analyzed the reasons for the decline of the study in an interview for MeriStation in 2017: "Sales in Europe, including Spain, were good for a game like Blade. We can not complain although they were less than expected. Yes we could see that Blade games have a much more limited market than strategy games, to give an example, since they do not attract the casual player.

Blade reached the top of sales charts across Europe to immediately disappear from them. In addition this type of games is very affected by piracy. To give an example of figures, Blade in Spain has not reached 20,000 units at full price, while games such as Age of Empires easily exceed 50,000 units. And we are talking about Spain, where without doubt the game had more impact than in other countries. However, the game did not work in the United States. Causes many, without a doubt. Codemasters signed the game with almost no time to make it known there. The American market is very complicated. It is rare that a European game is among the top sales figures. And if you aspire to it, you have to be practically a year before with marketing actions aimed at making the game known. "

Rebel Act closed its doors in 2002. Its employees stayed in the office to prepare their résumés and look for a new direction. Half a dozen developers decided to face adversity and remain united to continue with their dream of creating videogames, according to Enric Álvarez, director and co-founder of Mercury Steam. "We said: we are on the street, we are without a hard one, but at least we are a team". After an unsuccessful trip with work intentions to Trilobite, they decided to start a new plan: to form a study of their own, and that's how Mercury Steam was born in April 2002. Luis Miguel Quijada, head of design, remembers the youthful illusion of the moment, in which there was no room for a road map: "You had to be irresponsible," he laughs. Enric qualifies that they wanted to continue with their dream at all costs, without following a concrete plan other than to survive the first project, which would take form from a set of ideas: Scrapland.

 

Scrapland was the first space adventure of Mercury Steam, set in a cyberpunk universe that breathed an acid and irreverent humor. Its inspiration was Descent (1994), title of firings in which as much the navigation as the scenes were in 3D. Enric Álvarez, full of pride, describes Scrapland, as "one of the best multiplayer ship games", which highlights its fun. American McGee appears as godfather of this title, although according to the producer his role was limited to being a commercial tool, as he confessed in Reddit during a thread of questions and answers. Scrapland presented an open world steeped in social satire, which finds its creative spark in GTA 3, whose revolutionary concept of the open world had conquered Enric. "Scrapland is very similar: you do the missions you want in the order you want, you wander, you get races, challenges ... It was the translation of the GTA to a world of science fiction." Scrapland, on the other hand, stood out for a freedom of action that allowed the carrying out of a mission regardless of the decisions taken, even if these demolished the objective. Luis Miguel Quijada details that this is possible thanks to the intrinsic quality of the robots: if they die, they recover their lives thanks to a new copy of them. The designers fondly remember the characters who caricatured the bureaucracy of the real world, like the vampire bank robbers who stole money from behind, or the bishops who sold eternal life. The world of Scrapland was alive with its own life, thanks to the interaction of the non-player characters with each other, and the randomness of the events in the junk city.

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by -Dark*
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