The first thing that strikes you about The Knightling is the vibrance of the action-adventure RPG's art style. There's just so much colour in this indie game's charming open world. The next thing you notice is a curious twist. You play the character of an aspiring knight, but you have no sword; only a shield.
The intriguing game is the work of Twirlbound, which previously developed Pine. I caught up with creative director, writer and CEO Matthijs van de Laar to learn more about the thinking behind a game that offers something for everyone (see our guide to the best game development software and the best laptops for game development if you're working on your own indie title).
The Knightling sees you play as a knight in training who must search for his missing mentor, Sir Lionstone. Equipped with only with Sir Lionstone's shield, you have to venture through different environments in a world called Clesseia, solving platform puzzles and fighting bandits and monsters to uncover the truth of the shield’s power.
Matthijs says the aim was to blend an open-world action-adventure design with a nimble, platforming character. The result is a fun, uplifting atmosphere in a game that only takes around 20 hours but still presents plenty of challenges along with interesting characters and developed story.
“We love colourful stuff at Twirlbound, and we think the world can use a little bit more colour every now and then,” Matthijs tells me.
The world of The Knightling has a fantasy feel, and there's a touch of Breath of the Wild about the game, but developers also took inspiration from real places. “We look at the real world a lot to give a grounded feeling to the worldbuilding, and a real sense of place - for example, the architecture of Clesseia takes inspiration from Byzantine culture, with their colorful clothing and arched shapes," Matthijs says.
The germ of the game came from one simple thought, Matthijs says: the decision to give the character a shield but no sword.
“It immediately invited creative thinking around the design, shape and affordances of a shield,” he says. “Beyond being tools in combat, shields have the perfect shape and affordance to hold them over your head like a glider, to slide down hills on and even to roll around with them.
“The team had a lot of fun coming up with ideas for all things we could do with it, especially after it also became a companion character in the game! If anything, the challenge was to limit the applications of the shield to only a few meaningful ones that would not overencumber the player and kept it intuitive.”
The Knightling involved a very different approach compared to Twirlbound's 2019 game Pine. The first game was very systemic, so simulation and the way the world worked took a lot of focus, leaving less time for moment-to-moment gameplay like traversal and combat.
"With the Knightling, we wanted to invest more time into creating movement that felt good both right away and throughout the game,” Matthijs says.
The Knightling is also more intentionally paced. As players explore the regions and discover new mechanics, there’s a stronger sense of progression.
Twirlbound decided to stick with Unity for the project since the small team had experience with the engine and had already built many of its own tools on the platform, tailoring them to their own needs. But using Unity for an open world game had its challenges but familiarity won out.
“It can be quite challenging to build and maintain those tools – especially when you realise other engines like Unreal might have much more of that out of the box,” Matthijs recognises. “It just takes a lot of time to re-train the team in new software and we think every engine has its quirks, so we’re comfortable with Unity and the flexibility of tooling it gives us.”
Twirlbound benefits from being a tight-knit team, which means they can easily talk about anything that comes up on a project, Matthijs says. That and the support of publisher Saber Interactive has helped it get through difficult times during the pandemic and to focus on building the vibrant and delightful world of The Knightling.
The Knightling is out now for PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X. See more at Steam
For more creative indie titles, see our feature on the best indie game developers.
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