Get your Plumbuses and VR rigs ready Justin Roiland, co-creator of the phenomenal Rick and Morty, just announced that he is opening Squanchtendo, a VR game dev studio. Roiland’snot alone in this endeavor either, joining him is Tayna Watson who worked on games like Gears of War, Fortnight, and Bulletstorm while at Epic Games.
As stated by their mascot Little Splzooshly, Squanchtendo is a studio that will focus on “strong characters, story, and gameplay”.
According to Polygon, the two met after Watson ran into Roiland’s agent at E3. For Watson, it was perfect timing as she was between projects at the time.
It couldn’t have been better timing. I was right in the middle of evaluating all my options.
This isn’t the first time Roiland collaborated with a studio. Roiland worked with Owlchemy Labs, creator of Job Simulator, to bring Rick and Morty to VR with Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality. It also won’t be the last. In an interview with Polygon, Roiland said that he has been obsessed with VR for some time and has been talking with developers about what would and would not work.
I’ve been dabbling and fairly obsessed with VR across the different platforms. I’ve been filling notebooks with ideas and of course talking to a bunch of different developers and exchanging notes about what works and what doesn’t work in VR.
The studio’s first game will be a comedy action-RPG. The game will also have a bit more substance than most VR games, which have more of a short form feel to them.
Aside from working on games, the goal right now is to secure funding so that they can actually make the games. The studio is also looking to hire talent devs for the team. So, unfortunately, it sounds like we won’t be seeing any games coming out of the studio for some time.