Knock, knock, travelers!
True to our Friday tradition, we can’t wait to tell you about this week’s news. Make yourselves comfortable, here we go!
Our Giveaway
Let’s start off with something nice. This week we have a giveaway of free Steam keys for Knock on the Coffin Lid. Click on the link, follow the instructions, and let chance pick the winners.
It could be you! :)
Hoogin Is Learning To Fly (And Not Only That)
This week, Vanadis’ avian best friend has finally been updated. Our animators have updated his movements and taught him some new tricks too. Now everybody’s prepared and ready to crush enemies on the expanses of Midian. Hooray!
Do You Love Pretty Lights As Much As We Do?
Let’s not stray too far from the topic of Vanadis and her closest allies. We’re continuing to work on the animal energy design. It took some effort on our animators’ part to animate the icons for each of the archer’s pets. They turned out really great. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?
New Blood
The question “How can I defeat Millenis?” is quite popular among players. Besides methods such as making a powerful build or developing some of the existing events, we’ve decided to add another option. The more the merrier, right? Soon, there will be a new event which will give you a hint about how to defeat this undefeatable sorceress. You’ll learn about the details through your own gameplay. But no spoilers – just the way we like it. However, we’ll share a tiny fragment with you (see the animation below).
So who’s going to participate in this new event? Hey, that’s our old acquaintance the dwarf, isn’t it? And he’s a berserker to boot – a dangerous fella. Wait, what’s up with his eyes? It seems like something strange is going on with him.
On The Importance Of Feedback
Some time ago you helped us choose the design for the new Bandit set. It all went well and we started working. But, after a while we received feedback that the hood doesn’t look as great as everyone would have liked – it lacked volume and realism. It was especially obvious when you paired it with non-set armor.
We totally agreed with this commentary. We reconsidered the design, touched it up, thickened the shadows to add volume, and Presto – the new hood is ready!
Soon to be on all true bandits in Midian!
Questions, We Need Your Questions
This week we’ve started preparing for our next video-diary. We’re looking forward to you questions. Feel free to ask about things you’re actually interested in. We’ll be happy to answer them and tell you more about our game and development.
How About Some Chit-Chat?
Hey everyone, this is Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon. This week has been busy. Mostly, this was due to the fact that we were finishing Vanadis’ rework and gradually testing it. But I’ve been beating a drum on account of that for a while now, so I’ll leave that topic alone today.
What I want to talk about is problems and their solutions. The more work we do and the more we test that work, the more often we find shortcomings, inconsistencies, and simple errors in logic. Obvious bad decisions are immediately clear, but there are always more ambiguous cases. They seem more or less okay, but could also be done differently.
Here’s one such example: once you’ve completed the story for Persival, you can immediately, without playing either Bjorn or Vanadis, replay the whole game as Persival and change any of your final decisions. But this will not affect the outcome. This is explicitly stated when you start your second run; nonetheless, the possibility does exist.
It may seem that's there’s no problem here at all. But it's not that simple – the plot of the game develops from character to character. So that if, after defeating the final boss with Persival, you play Bjorn, the whole logical chain of the plot will play out. You kill the final boss – get your ending – credits run, curtain drops – choose your next character – events take new turns.
But what if you, as a player, want to run around and take a look at the development of events that you missed in previous gameplay? What if you have some lingering curiosity?
It seems that there’s would be no trouble starting the game once again. You can load saves in other games, right? Why can't you do that in ours?
If you get the opportunity to play as Persival again and again, the chain breaks: you kill the final boss – get the ending – credits run, curtain drops – kill the final boss again – get an ending that won't count (?) – credits run again(?), curtain drops – next hero – new events.
Don’t you think that such a turn of events in the Story mode is a little bit strange? Especially considering that the way you finish the game as Persival can affect Mortis’ behavior in the DLC?
Imagine that while playing Undertale, you killed one of the bosses, which affects the ending. Then you loaded the save again and chose mercy, but that had no effect on the overall outcome. Wouldn't that be strange? :)
On the other hand, as in any good RPG, I would like the option as a player to reload before the final boss and make different decisions – because who wouldn’t?
But KOTCL is not an RPG :) Completing a run from the beginning to the killing of the final boss takes 20 minutes if you know what to do. Enjoy.
Our team is divided into two camps on this. For now, we've decided that the option to play the game as the characters will be available after all three heroes complete their stories. In my opinion this is the right decision. Prohibiting replays altogether by making players start a new save if they want a different outcome seems excessive to me.
There is still time to make changes before the release. Perhaps you have thoughts on this, and I might be wrong about something.
I guess on this note we’ll draw a close to our Friday developer diaries. Subscribe to our social media channels and join our Discord server; we love communicating
