Studio Profile
The Madrid studio on ‘creating with gusto’ and refusing to get drunk on success
Madrid studio Tequila Works on ‘creating with gusto’ and refusing to get drunk on success
Celebratory drinks are traditional at the end of any creative project. And at a certain Madrid studio, tequila shots and a distillery are central to its immediate post-launch plans. Yet it’s not what you might think. These are Tequila Works’ terms for, respectively, internal game jams and a small group tasked with conceiving and developing short-form projects that may inspire future games, or influence ongoing ones. This focus on creative experimentation is one of several smart decisions that has seen this boutique dev grow from two founders to more than 80 full-time staff as it marks its tenth anniversary. Still, the studio’s creative figurehead Raúl Rubio is staying humble. “Back in the day, we were young and foolish,” he says. “Now we are just old, not wiser. But when you grow old you look wiser, so that kind of works.”
Rubio left MercurySteam, where he had worked on Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow, to set up the studio in 2009 alongside chairwoman Luz Sancho. The two established a motto: creating with gusto. “We thought there was room for top-quality, small experiences,” he says. “A smaller package, but keeping the high quality that we were used to as professionals. That’s why we gathered together people from not just the game industry, but animation and comics too.”
Tequila Works’ first game, Deadlight, originated from a piece of concept art painted by the studio’s art director César Sampedro Guerra: a landscape in silhouette, with strange figures between the trees. Following a desperate park ranger looking for his wife and daughter, the game involves more flight than fight, as you struggle to escape the undead. Tequila Works drew inspiration from the cinematic platformers of the late ’80s and early ’90s: Another World, Flashback, Prince Of Persia. And then – in the first case of what would become a running theme for Tequila Works – “everything got more complicated.” The game became more literary in tone, Rubio says, with Cormac McCarthy and JG Ballard as reference points. “That’s why we ended up creating this very dark tale about a survivor in the apocalypse who in the end is more like a serial killer.” He catches himself midflow. “Oh, yeah, sorry. Spoilers.” He laughs. “Ah, it’s years later, I guess it’s okay.”
Though many of its development team had industry experience, for its first game as an indie, Tequila Works had to fly by the seat of its pants – especially once it had staffed up. “We anticipated having eight or ten people in the team, and then we got to 18 and that was huge for us,” Sancho says. “In terms of time, it was far away from our expectations. We learned a lot.” The studio’s flat structure brought problems, too. “When everyone has a voice, who has the final decision?” Rubio asks. “But we worked out how to bring more order to the chaos.”
Nevertheless, Microsoft was impressed – enough to offer Tequila Works a publishing deal, plus a prime slot during its Summer Of Arcade campaign in 2012. Sales were healthy, and the
“WE GATHERED TOGETHER PEOPLE FROM NOT JUST THE GAMES INDUSTRY BUT ANIMATION AND COMIC BOOKS”
studio had shrewdly retained control of the IP. Deadlight subsequently became even more of a success on PC. A Director’s Cut published by Deep Silver followed, with PS4 and Xbox One launches too. Across all formats, total sales stand at around four million. Not bad for a debut.
But the studio’s second game almost proved its undoing. When Rime was first conceived, Tequila Works considered working with Microsoft again, but eventually signed with Sony. An early teaser trailer – which, Rubio emphasises, features actual gameplay footage – was shown off at Sony’s 2013 Gamescom conference. But with development in its infancy, the wave of interest that followed was as overwhelming as it was unexpected. “We were eager to let the world know that we were doing something pretty special,” Rubio says. “But it almost killed us. The hype was something that we didn’t know how to manage back then. There is a thin line between love and hate, and fans get very passionate. We were trying to create something far beyond our previous limitations and at the same time dealing with people saying, ‘Show more, where’s the game?’ And then we made the mistake of checking NeoGAF…” He laughs wryly. “That’s when we decided to isolate ourselves.”
In the years that followed, Tequila Works came to an amicable agreement with a supportive Sony. Both parties agreed Rime should be multiplatform, and the studio reacquired the rights in 2016, having learned not to announce too early (since then it has only revealed games within a year of release). So why had it taken so long? Did the studio’s ambitions simply get away from it? “Maybe Luz wants to say something about that, like: ‘It’s your fault, Raúl’,” Rubio teases. “It’s your fault, Raúl,” Sancho deadpans. He laughs. “I tend to joke that the creative process of designing a game is like treating a tumour, in the sense that if you’re not a good doctor it’s going to grow and basically kill you. I guess we overreacted to the hype, not just because we were scared but because we tried to deliver what people expected from the game. Rime was always designed to be bigger than Deadlight. But we made it bigger still. And then we made it smaller again so it was truer to the original vision.”
If development of Rime was a rollercoaster, the highs that followed were just about worth the stomach-lurching lows. “The biggest reward wasn’t just the reception but the personal stories,” Rubio says. “When people started coming back to us with real situations that they wanted to share – how they were thankful, what it meant for them, how it helped them – we never imagined it could have such a huge impact.”
Rime wasn’t the only game Tequila Works released in 2017. Rubio had been keen to
make a VR game ever since backing the original Oculus Rift model on Kickstarter and began prototyping an idea based on Hitchcock’s Rear Window: a game where you would play a voyeur. It morphed from a 60s-set Cold War drama into a Victorian murder mystery courtesy of Rime’s lead writer Rob Yescombe. The Invisible Hours’ experimental approach may have been creatively fulfilling, but Rubio admits the studio had no idea what to call it. “It’s not a game, it’s not a movie, what the fuck is it? But it was very similar to immersive theatre in the sense that you were inside the story. In the end, we defined it as ‘truth is a matter of perspective’.”
Meanwhile, the studio had moved into publishing, working alongside Guildford’s Cavalier Studios to co-develop time-loop puzzler The Sexy Brutale. Having been helped by “two godfathers with big hearts” (Tim Schafer and Sean Murray) during the studio’s early days, Rubio had been looking for an opportunity to return the favour. Aware Tequila Works couldn’t realistically help two established devs, he instead seized the chance to pay it forward. After offering to help brothers Jim and Charles Griffiths pitch their idea, Rubio was so impressed with their prototype that Tequila Works took on managing the production: design and code came from Guildford, while art and visual effects were made in Madrid. “For us Cavalier was not another team, or another entity,” Rubio says. “We were working together, as pals. It worked because we respected their design. Because of that, The Sexy Brutale is probably one of the games we’re most proud of.”
With iOS action-adventure WonderWorlds arriving in November 2017, Tequila Works had turned out four games within a year. “It was too much. For the future we know that our limit is two games every two or three years. That was a very big lesson for us,” Sancho says. “It’s not really about the hours because we have a very strict policy in the studio to do no crunch,” Rubio says. “That’s something back in the day we were proud of: we were one of the few studios in Spain that paid overtime. We are all developers, even the managers and the business guys. So we know the consequences of that.”
Even so, 2017 had stretched Tequila Works too far. Something had to change. And something did, with the birth of the studio’s Tequila Shots initiative – an idea which Rubio gleefully admits to having copied from Double Fine. Keen not to restrict jams to the end of projects, when staff were tired, it opened The Distillery. Rubio likens this to an R&D department, in that it’s constantly experimenting with concepts: “All ideas are good on paper, but implementing is expensive and exhausting. But when you plan it as a game jam, everything moves faster. Even if it’s ugly, nobody cares because it’s only for us. And then it became successful to the point that it started defining the future of the company.”
Tequila Works has, in other words, become more flexible. “The problem when you grow is that you may start to become more like a dinosaur or an elephant,” Rubio says. “Every move that you make needs to be planned carefully because otherwise you’re going to break a lot of stuff.” Hence its plan to release one game a year, a rule it broke in 2019 thanks to Stadia-exclusive horror Gylt. With Google’s streaming service aiming to make games more accessible to a mainstream audience, the appeal is obvious. It’s a chance for
Tequila Works to expand its reach. So what does the studio think of Stadia – is it a game-changer? “It’s not supposed to be changing the whole industry, it’s just adding more possibilities,” Rubio says. “Remember when people complained that Candy Crush letting your granny play games on her phone was going to be the end of the industry? It’s not. It’s just another path.”
Another path, another way forward for a team that doesn’t like to stick to the beaten track. It doesn’t seem like Tequila Works has found it hard to stay true to its motto. But has its definition of ‘creating with gusto’ changed over a decade? ”Back in the day, we said our creative process was defined as tango à trois, which means we’re
“WE STRIVE TO CREATE SOMETHING THAT IS BEAUTIFUL, BUT AT THE SAME TIME IS MEANINGFUL AND DEEP”
trying to dance but instead of just two lovers, we have three – art, design and technology, all trying to follow the others’ steps.” Rubio says. “Then we have audio, who are basically improvising the melody. At the same time, the level designers are creating the floor around us.”
Sounds complicated. “It is kind of complicated,” Rubio replies, “But we see it as a dance because we want to feel that there’s an equilibrium. Some games are driven by technology to showcase how powerful they are. Some are driven by design where the gameplay is the most important thing. And some are very artistic experiences. We’ll always try to find that balance, not just to ensure that everyone feels that they are the ones driving the dance. We strive to create something that is beautiful, but at the same time is meaningful and deep. It’s that simple.”