Mat Dickie, independent game developer known for his work in the wrestling niche, has taken his retro-style mobile and tablet game, Wrestling Revolution, to the console. Created using Adobe Game Developer Tools and downloaded more than one million times across Android and iOS, Wrestling Revolution offers players the biggest wrestling universe with more than 350 characters – and dozens of them in the ring at one time. Now available on the new OUYA console, Wresting Revolution can now be enjoyed by fans on their TV, the genre’s natural home.
OUYA provides an open development experience so that, like Dickie, any creator can publish a game for a console to be played on TVs.
“I was excited about bringing the gamepad-controlled, multi-player experience to consoles. Wrestling games have a proud history on consoles from the NES and SNES to the N64 and PlayStation. But those doors can be hard to open for an independent developer like me,” he says. “Consoles are the genre’s natural home, so on OUYA I’m reaching new audiences that don’t typically play PC or mobile games. What I like most about it is that I have a stable platform for the first time in my career, and I know that players will have the same experience as me.”
In taking Wrestling Revolution to the OUYA platform, Dickie made sure that it wasn’t just a mobile port to the console. The game fully supports controllers of all kinds—right down to analogue sticks for precise movement. The multi-player modes are also exclusive to consoles. There’s an option to play in either “Versus” or “Co-Op” mode, which will involve up to four human players.
“Wrestling Revolution is just one of the first Adobe AIR games on OUYA,” he says. “Some perceptive AIR developers had everything in place ahead of OUYA’s launch which helped me get going quickly.”
Wrestling Revolution climbed over 200 places in OUYA’s O-Rank in its first week of release and jumped into the top 50 games in its second week. The game is being downloaded hundreds of times per day with 10% of players opting to purchase the full game.
“The OUYA audience is obviously a lot smaller than on established systems, where over a million people are playing my mobile apps. However, the conversion rate is higher. The OUYA audience likes to invest in games and support their evolution,” says Dickie. “That ensures that my first game won’t be my last.”
