Hello, TMNT fans! We’re almost done cooking. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is coming out very soon, and you probably have a lot of questions. I’m going to answer everything I can.

What is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City?

It’s the first ever Turtles game in VR. You’ll get to fully embody your favorite Turtle in first-person play for the first time on any platform, complete with three very green fingers and an award winning smile (well, if you’re Mikey. I made him a trophy). 

What is it about?

We don’t want to spoil anything, but we’ve definitely talked about the story publicly a few times, starting with our panel at New York Comic-Con (and we’ll be revealing more in new dev diaries in the coming weeks). Here’s what we’ve said so far:

• Empire City exists in its own timeline, but draws a lot of inspiration from the IDW comics
• The story has its roots in the old Mirage Comics’ storyline City at War, but marches to the beat of its own drum
• Shredder is gone, a power vacuum emerges, and Karai steps into the fray. This is the New York you’ll be stepping into (with big, green feet).

Who is making it?

Hi! We’re Cortopia Studios. We’re an indie studio in Sweden made up of an international band of misfits, and we’ve loved the Turtles for just about as long as we can remember. We’ve had the pleasure of delivering past VR favorites like Gorn 2 and Down the Rabbit Hole, but getting to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is a lifelong dream coming true. And while we’ve got fan cred, we wanted to make sure we brought in someone who loves the Turtles just as much from the other side of the table. Comics legend Tom Waltz (The Last Ronin, First 100 issues of IDW’s TMNT series) has been helping us craft Empire City’s story since day one.

Will [INSERT YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTER HERE] be in the game?

Maybe! We’ve already confirmed a whole bunch of characters. You can expect April, Splinter, Casey, Bebop and Rocksteady, Karai – it’s a pretty big list. You can get a great sense of things by checking out our cast list – though we still might have a surprise up our sleeves we haven’t mentioned yet. Also, LOOK AT THAT CAST LIST.

When is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City coming out?

Spring 2026. We’ll announce an official date soon, I promise.

Where can I play it?

Empire City is the first Turtles game for VR. Confirmed platforms are Meta Quest, SteamVR, and Pico.

How much will it cost? $24.99, but if you pre-order on Meta Quest you can save 20% and bring it down to a cool $19.99. SteamVR player? Do not fret, we will offer an equal launch discount on Steam for a limited time. 

Does it support co-op?

Absolutely. Up to four players can embody their favorite Turtles and work together to save the city, cross-platform. But while co-op is a blast, it’s also entirely optional. If you’d rather play Empire City as one of those lone wolf episodes where Raph breaks away from his brothers and does his own thing, you’ll still have a blast.

What does it feel like to play?

In many ways, that’s up to you since we designed Empire City to let you play your way. If you want to slow down, be stealthy, and strategize with your friends, Empire City lets you do that. If you want to go full Leroy Jenkins and jump from a rooftop to land on top of a Foot ninja, surrounded by other foot ninja, you can do that too. (We’ll be sure to send flowers to your widow). Empire City wasn’t designed to be just any Turtles game, it was designed to be your Turtles game. 

If you want to dig more into gameplay, we’ve talked about combat, traversal, and boss fights previously, and we’ve put out a gameplay trailer to give you a proper taste of things.

Anything else?

If you  have a question we missed, pop into our Discord and let us know. If we can spill the beans, we’ll break out the can opener and cook you up a whole bowl. 

Yeah, maaaaybe I’m getting hungry. I’m gonna put down this keyboard and go find some pizza.

Go ninja, go,

– Ace

**EDITOR’S NOTE: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City will be available Spring 2026 for $24.99, with Meta Quest pre-orders available now at a 20% discount. You can also try out the introduction to the game with a demo during Steam Next Fest, February 23rd – March 2nd, 2026.**.

In previous diaries, we’ve talked about how you move through the city, how combat feels when everything clicks, and how the game changes the moment you bring friends along for the ride. But what about when all of these elements really come together for the game’s best moments, when the heavy hitters show up? 

Get your health up and go in with a strategy, because you might not live to regret it. It’s finally time to talk about boss fights.

Larger Than Life (Literally)

One of the things virtual reality does better than almost anything else is presence. Scale hits differently in VR, and that became a huge pillar for how we approached boss encounters in Empire City.

Bebop and Rocksteady aren’t just enemies. They’re forces of nature, and they should feel like it. Their size, their weight, the way they dominate the space around you all shift how the encounter feels. They overwhelm and make you feel small. Being able to capture that feeling in-headset makes them feel exactly as big and intimidating as they are.

All New Podcast Episode

To complement this dev diary, we dove into the subject in podcast format and brought in TMNT heavy hitter and TMNT: Empire City Story Consultant, Tom Waltz, to discuss boss fights and, we assume, two of the franchise’s most beloved characters. Take a look at the video below!

It’s Not Just “Hit the Big Thing”

Empire City has a lot of room for planning, stealth, and teamwork, and boss fights are no different. Sure, you can try to rush a boss with your whole crew, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re after four bruised and battered brothers.  

Each boss is unique, but two things that most have in common are their ability to counter-attack and willingness to call for backup. Spamming attacks is a sure way to end the fight quickly… for yourself. Each boss is equipped with several tools to interrupt your momentum, create distance, close distance, and hit you with something from anywhere in the room. Reading their movements and familiarizing yourself with their patterns is the only way to stay alive and win. And, when they’re not charging at you or pelting you from afar, expect Foot to mob you from every direction. And while these extra minions might not seem like the biggest threat in the room, when you combine them with area-of-effect attacks that force you to move, reposition, and make decisions fast, you’ll find yourself knee deep in chaos, wishing you’d had the foresight to plan ahead.

Making Turtle Soup

With so many beloved eras of Turtles, we’re not pulling inspiration from just one place when it comes to boss fights. We’re pulling from everything, including classic games in the Turtles canon.

While we didn’t want to attempt to emulate making this an arcade beat-em-up in VR, it was hard not to be influenced by the incredible TMNT games that came before like Turtles in Time and Shredder’s Revenge. These games solved a lot of inherent problems in their design to make fights fun for both single and multiplayer experiences, and we looked to them to learn from their greatness.

We even took inspiration from the original NES game. While the mechanics were justifiably simple, there was something about their presentation, sequencing, and mix that always stuck with me. One fight in particular is a major callback to that game. I’ll let you guess which one.

It’s not so much that you’ll instantly recognize the influence, but when you meet our boss characters, something in your memories just clicks on, even if you can’t quite put your finger on what. 

Bebop and Rocksteady: Goofy, Terrifying, Indestructible

Few characters embody Turtles villainy quite like Bebop and Rocksteady. They’re dumb, funny, chaotic – and absurdly dangerous.

One of the things I love about their modern interpretation, especially Tom Waltz’s work in the IDW comics, is the contradiction of low IQ and unbeatable power. These are two of the least intellectually sophisticated characters in the franchise, and at the same time, two of the hardest to take down. You can’t just punch them until they fall over. You have to outthink them and outmaneuver them. Sometimes you even have to let them defeat themselves.

That approach to these characters carries directly into Empire City. These fights aren’t just about smashing someone until their health bar shatters into a million pieces (although, if Bebop were on the design team, that probably would have been the solution). They’re about understanding who these characters are and using that against them.

They want to belong; to be part of something bigger. They try too hard. And when they try too hard… things explode.

What Comes Next

Movement, combat, story, and tone all crashing together at once – boss fights are where systems collide. But they’re nothing without the right characters behind them. In our next dev diary we’ll be diving into someone we’ve only hinted at so far. It’s someone that plays a major role in shaping the world around you. Maybe even the most important character in Empire City that isn’t wearing a shell on their back.

Until then, thanks for sticking with us.

Booyakasha,

Cortopia Studios

We’ll see you in the city.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City will be available Spring 2026 for $24.99, with Meta Quest pre-orders available now at a $20% discount

**EDITOR’S NOTE: Playing together will be a blast, but we appreciate that you want to know when you can play Turtles with your friends. Today we confirmed that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City will be available Spring 2026 for $24.99, with Meta Quest pre-orders available now at a $20% discount**.

After revealing the combat of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City last month, there is one question that I’ve been asked time and time again: “that’s great,” they’d tell me, “but I want to play Turtles with people – so how does co-op work?”

The honest answer? It works pretty much however you want it to.

From the very beginning, freedom of expression was a key pillar in our design. We didn’t want co-op to feel like a rigid system of roles, rules, and forced mechanics. We didn’t want to tell you, “You’re the tank, you’re the healer, you’re the DPS – now go stand in your lane.” While every Turtle has their strengths and weaknesses based on their varied histories with the franchise, pre-defining them to a rigid class system felt wrong. The Turtles adapt and improvise, so we set out to build a flexible system to allow the player to do that too.

Co-Op as Unique as Your Play Style

Empire City’s co-op system isn’t about complicated combo trees or scripted team moves that you have to memorize. Even in solo, we want to give players to approach Empire City however they want. This is something we’ve talked about previously, so to recap, if your Donnie wants to focus on fast and furious bo attacks rather than tempered tactics, that’s totally up to you. Maybe your Raph thinks first and attacks second. It’s really up to you. Now think about what it looks like when four totally different players with different Turtles, each with their own unique play styles, preferences, and physical prowess, all come together to take down a rooftop full of Foot. 

It’s anarchy in the best way possible. There are simply no rules what what your co-operation looks like. How you’ll work together is entirely up to you, and every group you play with will end up having its own unique flare.

But but but…. Why would anyone want Raph to be anything but a tank?

Just because we’re striving to give players limitless freedom doesn’t mean we ignored who the Turtles are. Raph does naturally have more health, so he can lean into tanking more easily if you want,  but, as an example, if you choose to give up some of that survivability for mobility, you may want to appoint a new damage sponge, like a Michelangelo with the right health upgrades. 

Our goal is that when you and your friends play together, you start saying things like, “you handle this group, I’ll cover here,” not because the game told you to, but because you’ve figured out what works for your squad. It’s organic, flexible, and personal.

Progression That Supports Your Playstyle

All of this feeds into progression. As you move forward, the choices you make about upgrades and gear shape how you want to contribute to the team.

Some upgrades improve defense, augment offense, increase health, provide more mobility, control aggro and more. The various gadgets in the game serve as both offense or support functions. The combination of both may mean you build a Turtle that supports the team through heals, or thinning crowds through a devastating shuriken barrage to open fights.

We want your Turtle to be your Turtle. And when four of those come together, every group ends up feeling a little different. That’s something we’re really excited for players to discover once Empire City is in your hands.

What Family Looks Like

To keep us inspired and to make sure the theme of brotherhood stays top of mind for us as we work towards finishing the game, we commissioned the celebrated comics book artist Fero Pe to do an original work that captures the look and feel of the Turtles working together. Fero has an extensive modern history with the Turtles, providing art to IDW books ranging from TMNT: Nightwatcher to Turtles crossovers with Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and Stranger Things. 

We asked Fero about his process for creating this piece. Here’s what he had to say.

Brothers in the Fight

At the end of the day, co-op in Empire City comes back to one simple idea: You’re not just playing alongside other players. You’re fighting as brothers. We’re building a game that lets you show up as the Turtle you want to be, trust your friends to do the same, and then see what kind of team you become together.

I can’t wait to see the brothers you create.

Pork Rind?
Ace

When Alex May describes the sound of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, he doesn’t start with software, synthesizers, or the kind of digital audio wizardry you’d expect to hear from a game composer in the 21st century. Instead Alex focuses on the hiss. The moment you hear the soul-satisfying “click” of the tape locking into place. The soft, imperfect whisper of a cassette spinning after you push play. The warmth and grit of a ’90s sampler. The tactile fingerprints that analog recording leaves behind.

For Empire City, May has turned the clock back. Not just because he misses the days of scramble to find a pencil to wind the tape back into place, but because it’s the most honest way he knows to express the Turtles.

Alex recently sat down with Turtles enthusiast and industry veteran Jim Squires for a wide-ranging discussion about the sound, spirit, and craftsmanship behind Empire City’s aural identity. What follows is a recap of that conversation (which you can view in its entirety below).

A 13-Year-Old and a VHS Tape (Well-Worn)

When did the Turtles first enter your life, Alex?”

“It arrived at this perfect moment when you’re searching for identity,” May recalls. The 1990 film, which he describes as equal parts earnest, gritty, and delightfully weird, had a lasting impact. Ninjas. Martial arts. Japanese-American themes. A killer soundtrack. “I recorded it off TV onto VHS and paused out the commercials,” he admits. “I watched it nonstop.”

Who is Alex May?

May’s career spans VR arcades in Japan, indie mobile development, and his own studio, Moon Mode. “Mostly games nobody’s heard of,” he jokes, though each built the eclectic toolkit that now fuels Empire City’s bold audio identity.

What were your first thoughts when you were asked to helm the soundscape for a TMNT project?

“Disbelief first. Then excitement. Then a tidal wave of imposter syndrome.”

With a franchise as beloved as TMNT, he explains, everyone has their own “correct” idea of what the Turtles should sound like. “You can’t please all of them. If I think about that too much, it becomes terrifying. So I just focus on doing the work.”

A Sound Without a Single Era

When asked how he approached the sound of Empire City, May reveals he started by re-immersing himself in every past TMNT soundtrack.

“And I mean everything,” he says. “From Trent Reznor to Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer.”

The variety was overwhelming, but also liberating. There was no definitive sound. No singular audio template. What emerged was a philosophy: Don’t imitate. Interpret. Cortopia’s creative director, Ace St. Germain, encouraged him to trust his instincts. 

“We’re all children of the late ’80s and early ’90s working on this game,” May says. “So I leaned into the thing that feels most natural to me: ’90s electronica.”

A Sound Shaped by ’90s Electronic Heavyweights

May’s influences read like a curated museum of ’90s electronic culture: Leftfield, Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, DJ Krush, Future Sound of London, and even the soundtracks of John Carpenter.

It wasn’t intentional at first, but when paired with Marcus Fritze’s concept art – a style dripping with neon, grit, and urban texture – the connection was undeniable. “It just fit.”

(If you’re interested in getting a taste of the DNA that inspired Empire City’s soundtrack while you wait for the whole thing, May recommends giving these records a spin):

1. Leftfield, Rhythm and Stealth
2. Future Sound of London, Lifeforms
3. DJ Krush, Kakusei

Mastering to Tape in Modern Era

May’s commitment to capturing that ’90s mixtape feel goes beyond the music itself, extending into how it’s made. Every single track in Empire City is mastered on an old-school audio cassette. 

Tapes like these were once the backbone of underground electronic music. Cheap, shareable, and imperfect in all the right ways. “There’s a sacredness to how cassette tape colors electronic sound,” May says. “The bass gets goopy, the highs soften, the hiss becomes part of the texture.” To achieve this, May purchased a modern Tascam deck (one of the few new models still available) and a stockpile of Maxell UR cassettes. 

“Every track you’ll hear in the game has lived on tape. You can’t fake that sound.”

The Challenge: Adaptive Game Sound on Analog Tech

Empire City’s design calls for rapid, player-driven transitions between stealth and combat. Scoring that elegantly, especially on cassette, became the biggest speedbump for May. His first attempts were highly systematic: dynamic stems, triggered beats, intricate timing. But it all felt too rigid. Eventually, he found an approach that blended simplicity with emotional clarity:

• A foundational ambient layer always plays
• A rhythmic combat layer kicks in as encounters begin

But because both layers are recorded to cassette separately, they don’t always align. Tape speed fluctuates, timing drifts – things go out of sync almost immediately. And to fix that is no small task.

“I spend hours manually beat-matching tape recordings. It’s incredibly painful. But it’s worth it.”

No Two Turtles Alike, Even in Audio Profile

Lightning Round, Alex: What one word designs the sound design of each Turtle?

• Leonardo: “Confidence”
• Michelangelo: “Humor”
• Donatello: “Structure”
• Raphael: “Aggression”

Bonus round:

• Kermit the Frog: “It’s not easy being green.”

That’s not one word, but we’ll allow it.

What the Soundtrack Will Make You Feel

“If you grew up with the Turtles, this soundtrack will make you feel…”

“…like a teenager.”

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is coming later this year exclusively for VR headsets. Wishlist today on Meta Quest and SteamVR.

As we get a lot closer to the finish line, it’s finally time to show you exactly what our game has to offer.  We recently let a handful of folks in the gaming media go hands-on with the first ten minutes of Empire City, which is designed to teach you how to play and give you a taste of the game’s scope through its fundamentals.

So what did they get to experience?

• Freedom of Expression: A fundamental value of VR is the creative freedom it gives players since they can move any way they want. No pre-determined combos or finishers. Stealth before fighting? Your call. Smoke bombs mid-fight? Up to you. Finish with a punch, a kick, a staff to the head? Which direction? Enjoy.

• Stealth: Move silently, and get the drop on enemies before you’re spotted. Sneaky Turtles make for speedy takedowns, which can give you an advantage – especially if you’re tangling with a larger group of enemies.

• Everyday Action: All four Turtles, all four weapons – and while they handle differently, they handle exactly like you’d expect them to. This is one of the great advantages of VR. There’s no magic button sequence you need to memorize to feel kickass. Just grab Mikey’s nunchuks and swing!

• Action for “Special Occasions”: Sometimes whacking a Foot Soldier with a bo just isn’t enough. Every brother has a special charged attack in Empire City, and in the first 10 minutes, we want you to have a taste. When Donatello grabs his staff with two hands instead of one, it gets juiced with electricity. I say “don’t let the power go to your head,” but I guess it depends where you swing it. 

• Rooftop Navigation (Parkour): Big Turtles make big jumps – and it’s a good thing too, considering how many buildings and alleys there are to navigate in New York. Jumping and scaling low-rises, navigating around their corners to discover enemy patrols, and mixing it all with dash kicks to stun enemies. What a city! Parkour, just like we promised.

• Hacking: Sometimes problems require brains over brawn. Quick puzzle sections pop up from time to time that you’ll need to solve to progress. Just like combat, we get to lean on the power of VR here to bring you into the world. These are hands-on puzzles in the truest sense of the world. (Don’t worry, we have experience on this front. See: Escaping Wonderland)
  
• Humor: As serious as the story is, it wouldn’t be the Turtles without a healthy dose of personality. Between comms with your Turtles, your friends, and overhearing chatter of the Foot from time-to-time, the first 10 minutes help to showcase how the boys will keep things light when everything around them gets heavy in Empire City.

It was great to see the reaction from different folks. Here are a few of our favorite articles and videos:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is launching in 2026, and the new year is right around the corner, so you’d better believe things will be heating up! (Please, please let things heat up – the winters here in Sweden are cold, folks).

In January, you’ll be hearing from our composer, Alex May, to learn about the game’s soundtrack. He’s made some really unique choices that have resulted in something entirely its own, and yet very, very Turtles. I can’t wait for you to hear it. 

“Release date when?”

I hear you. And I promise – I’ll tell you next year.  

Fellow Chucker,
Ace

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is coming exclusively to VR headsets in 2026. Wishlist today on Meta Quest and SteamVR.

When I joined Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, I’ll admit it: I was overwhelmed. I’d missed the original Turtlemania and thought I had a sense of it, but the universe is massive. Decades of comics, cartoons, movies and games. It’s a lot to take in.

I’ve been in games for 27 years, including nearly twenty at DICE and few at Rovio – often as a lead artist on projects. And while each place taught me something different, being selected as the art director for Cortopia’s latest project is something special.  Finding the visual soul of the Turtles in VR has been the most exciting (and terrifying) challenge yet.

In my previous role as a lead artist, I was very hands-on. Fixing, mentoring, and getting my hands dirty with textures and lighting was all in a day’s work. But an art director has to step back. You’re not painting anymore; you’re showing everyone what the painting should look like. My job on Empire City is to define the tone of the game and help the team see the same picture in their heads.

When building our art bible, we looked at other TMNT games to understand what came before – but it’s not where we found our inspiration. That came from the comics, and in particular IDW’s series and the critically acclaimed The Last Ronin. We wanted the game to have weight; to lean into the stakes that the Turtles face every day. Early on, we even toyed with a darker, more mature version, but that didn’t last long. While serious, TMNT isn’t about being grim. It’s about contrast: danger and laughter, shadow and light. They crack a joke even when they’re in over their heads. That balance became our compass.

Translating the comic-book look into VR took some trial and error. We tried outline shaders that looked great in screenshots but fell apart in motion. Eventually we landed on a mix of graphic surfaces for clarity and lighting for depth and mood. Lighting is everything. It shapes where players look and how a room feels. In our game it also defines stealth: light means you’re exposed, dark means you’re safe. It’s simple, but it works.

For the city, we wanted the essence of  New York. To achieve this, we mixed buildings and streets of our invention with spots inspired by actual places: Confucius Plaza, the Manhattan Bridge, and spots only locals would know, like the soccer pitch adjacent to it. Even random rooftops are inspired by real spots you can find on a map. We compress space to keep it fun in VR, but it still needs to feel like the city stretches far beyond what you can see.

The same approach applies to the characters. They should feel instantly familiar, but with our own fingerprint. Shredder’s crew looks like you remember them, just through our lens. We also got to expand in areas where the lore is thin. A key character we haven’t revealed yet only has one piece of reference art in the entire Turtles history, so we got to imagine the rest to fill in the blanks. And new twists on existing enemies, like Mousers that can fly? They’re chaos in motion. There’s even a Giant Flying Mouser that feels straight out of a kaiju movie. My personal favorite design, though, is Rocksteady. Everything about him – the bulk, the silhouette – just fits.

VR brings a lot of creative constraints, but I’ve learned to love them. At DICE we could throw polygons at anything. At Rovio we learned to ask what’s actually necessary. That mindset’s perfect for VR. Everything has to earn its place. If it doesn’t help tone, stealth, or story, it’s out.

We’re also having fun adding personality to the city: graffiti, stickers, little signs of life. New York is messy, exactly like it should be. And maybe a few Swedish Easter eggs, if you know where to look. Nothing obvious, just quiet winks from home.

My main job now is protecting the vision. Every day new ideas show up, and I hold them against that art bible. Does it serve the tone? The humor? The stealth? The city? If not, it doesn’t belong. That’s what being an art director really means: not just making art, but knowing when not to.

I can’t wait for players to step onto a rooftop, see the moonlight, and disappear into the shadows like it’s second nature. Because at that moment, you’re not just playing as a Turtle. You are one.

When the Turtles want to visit the streets of New York, all it takes is a pop of a manhole cover – but for the Cortopia team, our trip took a little more planning. This past month we boarded a plane in our home city of Stockholm, Sweden bound for New York Comic Con – and behind closed doors, 250+ attendees got their first-ever look at the combat of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City. And while I know you’re eager to see it too, we couldn’t help but want to be a part of that time honored Comic Con tradition of “you had to be there.”

 But that doesn’t mean I can’t drop a hint or two as we recap our incredible week in New York.

Before our panel we had the good fortune of speaking with some of the most enthusiastic Turtles fans working in media today, where they had a chance for a first-ever hands-on with Empire City. The experience they demoed wasn’t focused on combat, but on another aspect of the game we’re quite proud of: the Turtles’ lair. Every incarnation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sees the boys and Splinter making their home in the tunnels under New York City, and Empire City is no exception. 

Between missions players can retreat to the lair to talk with fan-favorite characters like April and Casey, toss some shurikens at a dart board, shoot some hoops, and generally just pal around. Shared VR spaces come alive when friends can hang out and interact at their own pace. In Empire City, that can happen above ground too – but we’ve really provided a danger-free sanctuary for players in the Lair. 

While we were excited for all of our visitors, there was one in particular that stood out: while we were all baking bread during the pandemic, Eric Francisco of Esquire learned how to use nunchuks – and he gave our implementation of Mikey’s trademark weapon high marks! Validation like that doesn’t happen every day, and we couldn’t be more grateful to Eric for sharing his thoughts.

Walking the show floor this year, our team interacted with hundreds of excited Turtles fans. It was a banner year for Shellheads at New York Comic Con – and not just because of us. From Paramount’s World of TMNT launch to Turtles Magic: The Gathering cards and previews of upcoming NECA TMNT figures, it seemed like Leonardo,  Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo were everywhere.

On our panel I was joined by Tom Waltz our story consultant and the legendary comics writer behind the first 100 issues of IDW’s TMNT run, as well as The Last Ronin – where in addition to combat we talked quite a bit about the game’s story and setting. We can’t recap everything in just one developer diary, but we definitely want to share some of the highlights! 

Is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City inspired by a particular era of Turtles?

• While Empire City exists in its own canon, it would be hard to not be inspired by Tom’s work for IDW. We like to think of Empire City as being “IDW-adjacent.”
• Our story draws inspiration from the Mirage-era classic story “City at War.” It’s not a direct remake, but a lot of the same core beats are there. Shredder is gone. A power vacuum emerges. Karai steps into the fray.

Are you playing a specific Turtle?

• You can pick from any of the Turtles (and join with up to three friends to bring the brotherhood together)
• More importantly, though, you’re playing your version of that Turtle. Does your Donny get tech heavy, and would he swing his bo first and ask questions later?  Would your Raph hold back and survey the scene instead of barrelling in head first to bash Foot Soldiers, or give into his hotheaded ways?
• Our #1 goal with Empire City was to build the ultimate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fantasy experience. There was a feeling of limitless freedom when you’d play Turtles with your friends in the backyard – and that’s the feeling we’re chasing here.

So… can I see combat now?

• Not unless you have a time machine and a ticket to Comic Con!  
• Don’t worry, the first public reveal is coming fairly soon. Keep your eyes peeled, and we’ll see you back here for the first look.