A lot has been said about Rime’s radio silence before re-revealing the game a few weeks ago. Prior to that we hadn't seen or heard anything about Tequila Works work for a really long time. In fact the last time that we saw something official was a Gamescom trailer over two years ago.

Since then we were left to wonder what Rime was: what was the final game going to be like, and whether the game would even be release at some point. Those doubts got bigger in March 2016 when Tequila Works stated that they had acquired the rights to Rime from Sony Computer Entertainment. A few short months later, in August 2016, Tequila announced that the game would be published by Grey Box and Six Foot. The pieces were apparently moving, but the doubts were still there.

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That’s why when we had the chance of speaking to the developers of Rime, we asked them what happened throughout the entire development process.

“ There were a lot of moments where we thought that the game wasn’t going to be released.

When asked whether there was ever a moment the development team thought Rime might not be finished, Rubio was candid, “Yes, there were a lot of moments where we thought that the game wasn’t going to be released. In fact I was completely sure of that once," Rubio said. "Fortunately that didn’t happened.”

Though the more interesting aspect of that revelation was the reason behind it. "That [possibility] was always for technical reasons," Rubio said. "Not for financial or something business related.”

"When we announced that we were acquiring back Rime’s IP there were cancellation rumors. The truth is that in that precise moment we were moving to a bigger office,” Rubio said, “that's pretty far from being closing a Company, isn’t it?”

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But what was Rime during the earliest days of development and how did it evolve during the development process? “A lot has changed since the beginning” Rubio said. “There was always an island, and there was always a tower."

“ There was always an island, and there was always a tower.

Rime's gameplay has also evolved over the course of its development. “Now we have a bigger structure and many islands, not just one," Rubio said. "And now we have all the content complete, which is great.”

But the biggest change to Rime, as Rubio puts it, wasn't the art, or code, or design of the game. The biggest change was in the scope of what Rime would become.

“ They love it... but now it needs to be perfect because otherwise they are going to kill us.

"That’s what we have been doing since 2013. The game was playable then, and had been playable for six months, but being playable doesn’t mean that it’s the game.”

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In fact Rubio explains that "the final 10% of a project takes 90% of the time.” He reveals Rime’s content has been finished since “[2015] and we have spent one year just polishing.”

“ People don't see the difference between an indie game and a AAA game, it’s just a good or a bad game.

“We have spent four years developing Rime. And in terms of how the production has been, we did a design by subtraction," Rubio said. "That means in 2014 we had way too many things. Removing those superfluous things and achieving a minimalist result that feels elegant and compelling is something that you reach, not something you start from.”

We can’t wait to play the final game and see what Rime has become after all this time, when it's released this May on Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

Juan Garcia is an editor at IGN Spain. Chat with him on Twitter at @xcast