Mother Russia Bleeds

Gameplay

Mother Russia Bleeds has beat 'em up-style gameplay often compared to those of Streets of Rage and Double Dragon. The players are set to fight through side-scrolling, stage-by-stage levels, using guns, melee weapons or their bare fists to take out enemies. When killed, some enemies start convulsing. Players may fill their syringes with the drug from these enemies' corpses, which can then be injected to refill health or to go into berserk mode, which adds strength and speed to the player. The game can be played in single-player or local multiplayer co-op for up to four players, in the classic arcade campaign, survival, and boss rush modes.

Plot

Mother Russia Bleeds is set in an alternate, 1980s Soviet Union, where a crew of four imprisoned Gypsy street fighters was under the influence of the Russian mafia's new drug, "Nekro", which is being drenched by the authorities themselves. After they fled from prison, they started financing their subsistence with street fights. This crew later decided to get behind the secrets of the mafia's drug and its influence on the authority, while still struggling with their addiction, giving them harsh hallucinations.

Development

Mother Russia Bleeds was heavily inspired by Streets of Rage, Double Dragon and Renegade. The game's development started in September 2013, after former Ubisoft Paris game designer Frédéric Coispeau quit his job and met web designer Alexandre Muttoni, with whom he then formed Le Cartel Studio on 20 August 2013. Le Cartel Studio soon started working on the story and some artworks for their game. In October 2013, the crew welcomed its new programmer, Florian Reneau, where the new composer, Vincent Cassar, followed shortly after.

After a few productive months, Le Cartel Studio opened the Mother Russia Bleeds website, with that making the official announcement to their project, on 1 March 2014. At the end of that same month, Le Cartel Studio uploaded a pre-alpha gameplay teaser for Mother Russia Bleeds on 30 March 2014. The level featured scenes from the level "Night Club", which was heavily inspired by Hotline Miami, which led to a huge spread of the teaser. A week after, Le Cartel Studio announced that the games was going to release in Q1 2015 for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux, and if it sells well also for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, as well as Xbox 360 and Xbox One, set to run through a crowd funding campaign, which was later canceled.

On 18 June 2014, Le Cartel Studio decided to the let the fans of their game's VK page decide on the characters' names, which resulted in "Sergei", "Ivan", "Natasha" and "Boris". The pre-alpha teaser of Mother Russia Bleeds was later acknowledged by Dennaton Games' Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin, the creators of the Hotline Miami, which the level shown in the teaser was inspired by. Söderström and Wedin then recommended the game to Devolver Digital, resulting in a partnership between the two companies, just a few months after.

At Sony's E3 2015 press conference, Mother Russia Bleeds was officially announced under its new publisher, and was announced for the PlayStation 4. The first trailer for the game followed shortly after the Sony press conference, which, besides PlayStation 4, also confirmed the game for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux. As announced on 10 August 2016, Mother Russia Bleeds was released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux on 5 September 2016. Alongside, a Dealer Edition of the game was released, including a second copy of the game, the original soundtrack by Vincent Cassar of Fixions, and the Behind the Schemes mini-documentary. The same day, a port for PlayStation 4 was announced to be in the works, which was released on 3 December 2016.

Reception

Mother Russia Bleeds received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.