River City Girls Dev Shares More About The Game’s Features, Will Include Local Co-Op Only

About a month back, Wayforward and Arc System Works unveiled River City Girls, a new spin-off title in the Kunio-Kun series of beat-em-ups.

In addition to speaking with Destructoid, the game’s director Adam Tierney also sat down with Nintendolife to share more about the game’s current features and future plans.

The full interview can be found here, but you can check out some highlights below:

Concept

• River City Girls features Wayforward’s own unique take on the Kunio-kun series and characters, fitting “anywhere” within the series’ history and timeline.
• Having Kyoko and Misako be the leads was Wayforward’s idea, and was pitched to Arc System Works in person while Tierney was in Japan.
• Arc System Works was heavily involved in the project, and assisted in developing both the story and combat system.

Artstyle & Music

• River City Girls‘ pixel artstyle was chosen as a “baby step” for the Kunio-kun brand so it wouldn’t be too jarring for old fans of the series
  • If Wayforward makes another Kunio-Kun game, 2D HD or 3D may be considered.
• The game’s cutscenes were produced through a mix of in-house and external animation.
  • A combined effort from Wayforward’s own animators and Studio Yotta.
• There are 62 unique music tracks in the game with about 9 full vocal tracks.
  • Includes several homage tracks to older Kunio-kun, Double Dragon, and related music.
  • The River City Ransom Boss Track and Store Theme is included.

Gameplay

• Combat was handled by Bannon Rudis, who worked on River City Underground
• Each playable character has over a dozen unique unlockable attacks.
  • Moves are performed using the three attack buttons and the D-Pad, a la Super Smash Bros.
  • Combat system is more simplified to make it more accessible
• The Game features a Recruitment System
  • Enemies can be recruited by beating them till they are of low health and sparing them
  • Recruited enemies become support characters that can be called in as assists
  • There are over 50 recruitable enemies
  • Enemy profiles will be unlocked as they are recruited.
• The game will not support online co-op at launch, and was designed around local co-op only.
  • Online co-op may be considered for future Wayforward produced Kunio-kun games
• Both WayForward and Arc System Works were very pleased with how the game and partnership turned out.
  • If River City Girls does well, Wayforward may work on more Kunio-kun games.
  • Post-launch updates and DLC are also being considered.

River City Girls is set to launch on September 5, 2019 for Nintendo Switch.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.