Fight the Foot as a Hero in a Half Shell in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, Available Today on Meta Quest

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have a long and storied history in video games, reaching all the way back to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1989. But while players have had a chance to control the Turtles countless times over the years as they beat up the Foot Clan and face off against The Shredder, they’ve never had a chance to get behind the bandana — until now.

In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, available today on Meta Quest, developer Cortopia Studios has brought the Turtles into VR, allowing you to totally embody the heroes in a half shell. You can take on the role of any of the Turtles, or team up with friends to play as all four brothers as they fight the Foot in a new, original story, based on the Mirage and IDW comics.

Empire City finds the Turtles during a difficult time. The story picks up after the defeat of the brothers’ nemesis, The Shredder, which has left a power vacuum among the criminal ninja Foot Clan in New York City. Powerful figures are stepping in to fill the void, bringing new threats to the city for the Turtles to deal with.

That means taking to the streets to battle the Foot — as well as some familiar mutant villains like Bebop and Rocksteady — using the Turtles’ iconic weapons and their different ninja abilities. Each Turtle fights a little differently from the others, in keeping with their personalities, but you’ll also be able to tune your Turtle to match your preferred style through Empire City’s upgrade system. And in addition to melee weapons like Leonardo’s katana or Michelangelo’s nunchucks, you’ll also have items such as shuriken and gadgets to turn the tides.

Making your way across the NYC rooftops is a big part of the experience, too. Empire City sports a parkour system that is less realistic than it is speedy and fluid, allowing you to whip around the city like a seasoned ninja to cross distances, get the drop on foes, or quickly escape danger.

Empire City isn’t all about knocking out ninjas and bashing bots, though. The game’s original story is a big part of the experience. At the center of the Foot Clan civil war is Karai, the head of the clan in Japan, who has ventured to New York to deal with the fallout of Shredder’s death. You’ll face Karai more than once, and choices you make throughout the story will influence her as a character — as well as the game’s ending.

With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City emerging from the sewers on Meta Quest today, we sat down with Creative Director Ace St. Germain to talk about what it took to capture the feeling of being the Turtles in VR, and what players can expect from the story, combat, and co-op.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have appeared in a lot of games over the years, but this is their first foray into VR. What was it like trying to capture the feeling of being one of the brothers from a first-person, immersive perspective? What were the things you thought were essential elements from the turtles’ appearances in games and other media that you tried to translate into VR?

With so many versions of the Turtles over a 40-plus-year history, we knew the Turtles meant something different to everyone. So instead of focusing on who the Turtles are in any specific universe, we wanted it to be more about the player embodying and truly being the Ninja Turtle that resonates most with them. We were really afraid this experience would just become a Turtle-shaped rollercoaster ride where the avatar takes the lead in all the reactions and decision-making. So a major part of the philosophy was to get out of the players' way, limit internal monologue, create designs that were different from any existing designs, but familiar, let the player make choices based on the Turtle they relate to, and give each Turtle a slightly different combat trait and progression path that was consistent across most iterations of the brothers.

More important was the spirit of family and the world-building outside of the embodiment. Three-fingers and a shell are certainly a Ninja Turtle requirement, but details in the lair, conversations with Splinter, the sensitive combination of goofiness and levity, and other intellectual property beats are what pull it all together.

Combat looks pretty intense, with players needing to do things like block and parry blows as they take on Foot Clan ninjas. Can you talk a bit about your approach to combat and how it works?

When you put weapons in people’s hands, they tend to default to wild swinging unless they volunteer to really give in to the experience. We wanted to prevent that kind of careless play, but we didn’t want combat to be prompted. We wanted to give the player a sense of freedom in combat while rewarding them for fighting a bit more Turtle-y and ninja-y, so our combat is really built around incentives to play like a Turtle.

To make things feel more ninja-like, we put in a big emphasis on dashing in and out of engagements. You can dash in with your weapon, dash kick, dash back, and to the sides. To encourage this kind of play, we purposefully made it so the Foot Ninja do not take turns, they spread out, and execute attacks that can sometimes not be blocked. This encourages the player to take advantage of that dash mobility often, which feels more ninja-like.

The Focus System is intended to drive character feel and overall momentum. The objective of the Focus System is simple: 

1. Build the Focus Meter through attacks and defensive moves 
2. Kick the enemy when the Focus Meter is full to enable a weapon’s Focus Mode 

Weapons enabled with Focus Mode deal higher damage and add secondary benefits like stun. This extra damage and secondary benefits are crucial to surviving group fights and boss fights, especially midway through the game.

This system does two things:

1. It gets the player to throw kicks in the middle of melee engagements, breaking up the monotony of motion in the fight and encouraging the player to be a little more Ninja Turtle-y. The Turtles are known for martial-arts combinations, not just swinging wildly with weapons.
2. It rewards the player for keeping the pressure on the enemy since the player becomes more powerful if they push in, instead of pulling back.

Finally, we built everything around a medium-low time-to-kill. Enemies can be eliminated quickly, but so can the player. There are consequences for carelessness that encourage more deliberate action. Understanding the character’s unique Focus-building and abilities, using items like smoke bombs, and eliminating with stealth before going head-to-head are major benefits. So while we haven’t fully kept the player from swinging carelessly at the enemies, that strategy becomes far less viable as the game progresses.

One of the great things about the Turtles is their different weapons and how they lend to different fighting styles. It’s great to see that things like Michelangelo’s nunchucks working exactly like you’d expect them to. What did it take to capture the feel of the weapons and styles?

Coincidentally, several folks at the studio were trained in martial arts weapons, and we had been working on weapons in other games like GORN 2. The bo, katanas, and sais were relatively straightforward, but the nunchucks were special. A lot of extra math went into those, but they were nearly correct for what we wanted right out of the gate. We’ve only made small changes to them since we started the project over 2.5 years ago. Overall, the key was testing for satisfaction and making those adjustments.

All that said, I felt getting too focused on individual weapons in isolation was a trap since the sais in Raphael’s hands would be different than the sais in Michelangelo’s hands. That is to say, the fighting style with the weapons wasn’t the only part of the equation, since we had to consider what these weapons meant in the context of the characters.

The personalities of each of the turtles are obviously a huge part of their depiction and stories, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City also gives players the ability to shape how their turtle plays and fights throughout the game. How did you go about balancing that player freedom with maintaining each of the brothers’ personalities and unique elements?

Each Turtle has a strength and a flaw, and we wanted to use those differences to give them just enough difference in feel.

Leonardo is designed to fight with patience. He fights well mid-distance and can take his time building up Focus, and can maintain Focus the longest. He outputs a moderate amount of damage instead of high damage like Raphael. This means fights can go longer, and the player will need to exercise their own patience and consistency to win fights. When progressing, he upgrades to a modest amount of health, item slots, and Tech slots. Steady DPS (damage-per-second), if you will.

Raphael is designed to fight with aggression. He fights at close distance, which means he’s prone to being hit more. That said, getting hit builds his Focus, and his damage output is higher than everyone else's. This means ending the fight faster is in your favor since each engagement is higher risk, and long fights tend not to work out for Raphael players. When he progresses, he gets a lot of extra health, but much less of everything else, keeping Raph players focused on the physical fight instead of juggling items or depending on upgrades.

Michelangelo is designed for more playfulness. He also fights at close distance, but he can build Focus simply by spinning his nunchucks, and his Focus Mode causes enemies to be stunned. Downside is that his damage boost from Focus Mode is relatively low, and his health is only moderate, so he can’t stand and tank damage like Raphael can at short range. This means that Mikey players benefit from kiting enemies around, dashing in, stunning, and repeating. Playing, if you will. He also gets the most amount of item slots when leveling up the Harness, which allows him to sow more chaos than the others with bombs and shurikens, or be an effective healer for the group.

Donatello is designed for more thoughtful play. Ever the over-preparer, he gets a massive boost in Focus from defending and can subsequently stun enemies with his electric staff. Mechanical enemies cannot be stunned, only electrocuted, which is where Donnie also gets a leg up. His reach is a huge help, especially with having the least health, but having one weapon instead of two puts him at a disadvantage versus his brothers damage-wise. Donnie gets the most slots for Tech Upgrades and is a powerhouse when stacked with the right setup, making him the most versatile.

What can you tell us about the progression system players can use to shape their turtles?

Instead of a permanent experience points and leveling system, we decided to go with a gear-based system so people can experiment without feeling too locked into a build. The players increase their base traits by leveling up their Harnesses. Within those Harnesses, Tech Upgrades can be installed that give the player special benefits like more Health, Higher Damage, more mobility, and so on. 

Each Turtle has a different upgrade path that fits their character. Raph gets the most health, but least item- and Tech-slots. Michelangelo gets the most item slots, but slightly under-averages everything else. Donatello gets the most Tech slots but the least amount of health. Leonardo gets an average of everything.

All Upgrades can be purchased by finding recyclable materials in the world. For Tech Upgrades, the player will need to find special Artifacts that we’ve hidden around, and the same goes for consumables like smoke bombs and shurikens, where the player will need to find blueprints before they’re craftable in the Turtle Lair.

TMNT: Empire City is set in a Turtles story that takes place after Shredder has been defeated, when New York is in chaos, drawing a lot from the comics but telling its own story. It seems like it takes a darker tone, more akin to the comics, than a lot of other depictions of the Turtles have used. Can you talk a little about the kind of story you’re telling, the themes you wanted to explore, and what you wanted to bring to the TMNT universe with the game? No spoilers!

We always wanted to go with a more mature setting. The IP has variants for all ages, but it's been around for over 40 years now, with a massive audience of fans in their 20s to 60s. Nostalgia is a powerful tool, and we made sure to have an underlying current of that feeling of familiarity running throughout, but storytelling has evolved for this audience so much, and we wanted to meet them where they are.

Empire City’s story is certainly darker than the kid shows, but it’s not on the level of “The Last Ronin.” It’s more like the original Mirage and IDW comics, or the original ’90s movie. Serious themes, darker tones, lots of levity, still tons of pizza, bad jokes, and family bonding. Side note: hardcore TMNT fans will call me out on the fact that pizza wasn’t a big thing in Mirage. I know that. I see you....

What we wanted to specifically explore in this story was what it means to lead. This decision was sort of made for me due to the fact that I always told myself that if I ever had a chance to make a TMNT game, I was going to make it about the original “City at War” arc published by Mirage. That story explored a lot about where the Turtles placed themselves in society and whether or not they wanted to help Karai, the Japanese leader of the Foot Clan, take back the Foot Clan of New York. In Empire City, some of this is the same, but the player choices shape the kind of leader Karai becomes, which we felt was more interesting for an interactive medium, especially embodied in VR, where the player’s choices could feel like their own instead of being role-played for a character on screen.

Player choice is also a big part of the story, even shaping interactions with Karai. What can players expect from the choices in the game, and how do they work?

The decisions players make lead to one of two outcomes at the end of the game and on the crime level at the time of the last mission. Those decisions are made at the end of several chapters. In terms of the decisions, they’re clear “A or B” choices. In general, we don’t feel there’s a good or bad ending; it’s more about the Turtles the player wants to play.

The fast, fluid parkour of Empire City looks like a blast to experience, allowing players to move quickly and intuitively all over New York. How much freedom do players have as they’re playing through the city? You’ve mentioned in developer diaries that it’s possible to go in loud or sneak through different situations, so how does that all work together with parkour?

Parkour before the fight gives you the position you need to get the drop on enemies. It also allows you to get away, reposition, or get to a deadly sniper while you’re mid-fight. The better you are at parkour, the more fluid combat will feel. You can brute-force your way through combat; we didn’t want to take that option away, but using the given traversal tools will give the player a significant advantage.

Cooperative play is also a big part of the Empire City experience, and it looks like there are lots of ways to have fun and goof around with friends between giving the Foot Clan a four-player beat down. What sort of co-op elements are waiting around New York?

What’s funny is that we initially went into co-op with a tactical mindset. We thought it was going to be some real serious, heist- or raid-like planning before each encounter. Nope. The moment you get more than one person in a headset as a Turtle, chaos ensues. Any semblance of planning and strategy goes right out the window. The playfulness takes over, and we thought that was pretty great.

So, in addition to balancing the game for co-op, we added some player-versus-player challenges for players to take part in, like a basketball free-throw competition, SKATE-like challenges with parkour, parkour races, shuriken shootouts, dodge bomb (where you dodge bombs), and trash ninja, which is like the fruit-based version... but with trash.

You also always have the city open to play in, so we expect players to make up their own games, and we’ll be watching to make sure we provide all the tools necessary to improve upon that layer of the experience.

Is there anything else you want to add?

I’d like people to know that while the game seems big, it was an indie endeavor. That said, we’d love to keep supporting the game and build it up to be something worthy of AAA scale one day. Keep sending in your requests! We’re listening.

Leap into the streets of NYC and take on the Foot Clan as your favorite brother in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City today. Find it on the Meta Horizon Store for $24.99 USD.