Knock, knock, seekers!

Friday has arrived swiftly, and the developer diaries are here again to share with you what we worked on this week.



The closed beta test is well on its way, with bug-fixing in progress, and feedback actively being collected. However, we collected most of the issues and put out a major patch. We hope we’ll finish working on the CBT and update the live version of the game next month.



It's best not to argue with our archer too much, otherwise you might experience the full force of her pets. To make it clear that you shouldn't mess with Vanadis, we're sharing some visual examples.
Plus, they’re simply beautiful, aren’t they.





There's no limit to perfection, so we're continuing to improve game balance with new outfits. This week, we asked which version of the new set you prefer. The voting is still open, and your comments are highly welcome!





We're constantly improving visual effects to create a pretty picture and a more immersive atmosphere. Yes, being a demon's minion is a heavy burden in every sense.



Some characters not only look audacious but make audacious movements too. You have to admit that this is an extremely high concentration of audacity in just a few pixels. And it looks quite unnatural, too. To tame their behavior, we took some disciplinary actions.





Once again, Bjorn has found his way to our operating table. The thing is he’s developed a habit of losing his things during adventures. We had almost given up on finding the reasons for his remarkable absentmindedness, but our animators came to the rescue. What would we do without them? Diagnosis: the patient was suffering from internal code conflicts, and the animation was causing complications. We prescribed crutches and sent him home for further outpatient observation.





Let's get acquainted!

My name is Andrew, aka Innrey, and I'm the founder of RedBoon Studio. I’d like to tell you about some interesting moments that took place and the experience we gained over these long four years of development.

The second week of CBT is underway, with many bugs identified, but we're fixing them quickly and successfully. At the same time, we're continuing to develop new content, which we hope to show you soon. I'd like to thank all the participants of the closed beta for their reports and suggestions, especially Altair, CallMeShadow, Dark Knight, GribanovIV.

Many players have emphasized the unique and recognizable imagery of KOTCL in their feedback, and I'm damn proud of it! Of course, there have been and there still are shortcomings, which we continue to work on. In the near future, I'll try to announce the release date and share more about our future plans.

One thing I can already say – my team and I, and the players who help us – we learn something new every day. What can you learn in 4 years of game development? It may seem surprising, but we've learned how to make... games. We’ve learned how to make cool 2D animations. We switched from Unity animations to Spine, which immediately revamped the behavior of characters in the game. We've learned how to work with sounds – there are more of them now, so the scenes have become more immersive, and I hope events will become even more enjoyable. We've learned how to code – it's challenging to make it in a way so that you don't have to rewrite everything when a new programmer comes along. Mind you, we had to change programmers three times -_-

However, now because of everything we’ve learned, we need to polish the entire project, as the difference between before and after is quite noticeable. Personally, I've learned not to lose heart and not to abandon the project in seemingly hopeless situations but to keep on improving our game.

One thing that I’d like to mention specifically is the importance of proper task setting and communication with the team (especially if your team is small and proud!). Through my own (sometimes painful) experience, I've seen that the level of detail of a task and of its discussion determine the speed, the quality of realization, and the task’s impact on the entire development pipeline. From the outside, you could say that 4 years is a lot for the development of a game. I agree, but it's also an invaluable experience that will help me to make the next game faster and even better.

Sincerely yours – Andrew aka Innrey


See you next Friday! Don't forget to check if you follow us.

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Greetings, Seekers!

You know that we pay great attention to the balance and struggle with existing meta (too powerful Persival, for example). We unite items to create complete sets, so they can be effective as well as meta and give more abilities for experiments.

What do you think about our set options? Please, rate them from 1 to 3 Ezio Auditore :D
You’ll see the best option in the game.

Knock-knock, seekers!

Friday is here so the week is over! That means that KOTCL developer diaries are back on the air! So, what's on the agenda today?



Our answer: sure thing and it’s better than you can imagine! After the start of CBT, we received tonns of messages, reports, and all sorts of reactions from our amazing seekers. We welcome every feedback and every report and then start to work on it – feedback for the feedback god!



At least when it is about our UI design. Recently we’ve asked for your advice on a convenient glossary marker. Today we’re glad to announce the winner: with the large majority option 1 got 1st place. Please, welcome!





Have you noticed the suspicious similarities among all merchants you meet? You know, it feels like they're either spying on you or they have a really huge retail network (and lots of twin brothers!). We’ve been discussing this for quite a long time and we finally decided that it's time to broaden the range of merchants just because we can. The RedBoon Antimonopoly Service is always here for you!






Balance, oh balance... You can’t even imagine how many sleepless nights we've spent thinking about balance. We thought and thought and thought and we've come up with a solution. But it requires some re-work. We decided to add a couple of new ones and make changes to a few existing ones. While we’re scratching our heads over how to make the already demonic set look even more demonic, we invite you to take a look at the first prototypes from our fashion designers. We'll tell you about its impact on balance in the upcoming episodes. Stay tuned.


The first Persival wasn’t too lucky and caught a headcrab.



The balancing and arming our brave Vanadis continues. After all, the more cards, the better, right? ...Right?





That's all for today! Hope you enjoy our news. Don't forget to check if you follow our media, we usually post some updates, don't miss out. A small reminder that we have awesome Discord where you can find lots of handy information, memes and chat with developers.

See you next Friday!

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Knock-knock, travelers! In today’s diary, we continue sharing the development results for this week. We hope you love numbers. Enjoy your reading!

So, this week we have:

- Created 36 icons for events on the map.
- Created 10 images for new battle cards.
- Improved 6 hero portraits.
- Added 24 new character animations.

And all in one month we have:

- Fixed more than 120 bugs.
- Addressed game freezes.
- Fixed issues with card descriptions and their operation.
- Corrected translation errors.
- Started closed beta test,

and much more. Details below!


If you've been following our news, you probably know that we've started closed beta testing. The update will bring a vast amount of new content, which we hope CBT participants will enjoy. Through this testing, we aim to gather feedback from our most dedicated players about the modifications we've added to the game in the last 6 months. We carefully examine your feedback and suggestions to make KOTCL the highest quality and most enjoyable game possible. Beta testing will help us gather even more feedback before releasing the final version.

We have extended the acceptance of applications for participation in the CBT until Sunday, 10/01/2023. We remind you that if you have played more than 20 hours and want to participate in the CBT, leave a request with your Steam ID in our Discord (test thread).


One of the innovations we'd like to share with you is the adjustment of the battle UI/UX. This task turned out to be more challenging than we expected because sometimes the list of all buffs and debuffs above the heroes was so long that the descriptions could take 20-30 seconds to appear; if overlapping was turned on, the text became entirely unreadable. As a result, to ensure you don't miss out on what happens to your character during battle, we filtered out and removed some buffs and kept the most important and non-obvious ones. Besides, we’ve re- introduced a universal animation that appeared in the earliest builds! (Do you remember how long ago that was?) That is, displaying buffs and debuffs as arrows of different colors: golden-white for buffs and blood-red for debuffs. We look forward to hearing feedback on this feature from CBT participants and are ready to make adjustments.



Another important innovation is the event journal, which we added to make the gameplay easier and clearer.

As the name suggests, the event journal is a record of your actions, but not only that. It provides a brief description of the events you’ve visited and tells you what has happened. The journal is your assistant in tracking the progression of events, which can now change if you revisit the events. The journal helps players keep track of key moments and storyline developments. Do you like this idea? Feel free to write your thoughts in the comments.




As usual, let's talk a bit about animations. Sergey a.k.a. Animatoid shared his vision of the animation for Vanadis’ second class – the Raven's Sister. Unlike other characters, this animation “has a beginning" rather than being just a looping motion. This new approach sparked a lot of debate: will it cause discomfort when switching between classes? Will such a difference be too noticeable? What are your thoughts here?



The process of creating animations can be very interesting and fun, not only for animators but for the entire development team. Sergey shared some animations with us as they appeared during his work, and we decided to show them to you. In the first picture, Vanadis got a bit "stuck" in the textures. It looks like she really doesn't want to let go of the raven and is holding onto his tail, much to the bird's displeasure.


Later, while trying to fix this animation, we encountered some slight issues with Vanadis's facial expression, and now she looks slightly arrogant :) During work, we always try various options in order to eventually choose the best one of them.



And of course, we ended up with a few funny moments. Here's a dynamic video we came up with while creating the animation for the "Turmoil" event. It won't be in the game, but we decided to share this creation with you. We hope you enjoy your weekend as much as the folks in the video!



Those are all the highlights for this week! To stay updated on the latest news, don't forget to subscribe to our social media channels, where you can also interact with the developers and ask any questions you have.

See you in the next diary!

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Closed Beta Test is Coming!

Dear players,

We would like to invite dedicated KOTCL players to our Closed Beta Test (CBT) of the updated version to gather initial feedback and reviews. Only after the successful completion of the CBT will we release the patch to the main Steam branch.

🌟 What awaits you in the CBT? 🌟

- Numerous bugs have been fixed (although we can't guarantee that new ones haven't appeared).
- Buff appearance animations have been added at the beginning of battles.
- Many events have been fixed and updated.
- New Spine 2D animations have been added for various units.
- An event log has been added during runs.

🔑 Participation requirements: To join the CBT, you should have played Knock on the coffin lid for more than 20 hours.

🎮 How to join the CBT? Join our Discord and write a comment with your Steam ID in the #test-branch. We will contact you next week to provide access to the CBT.

To reiterate, we currently don’t plan to release this update to the public branch now, but your feedback and participation are highly valuable to us.

Don't miss the opportunity to play the updated version of Knock on the coffin lid and contribute to the game's development!

Knock Knock! Today we want to share with you class portraits for Bjorn and Percival and wish everyone a productive working week! Which class do you like best? ❤

Knock-knock, travelers!

Another eventful workweek has flown by! In today's diary, we'll interview the head of our art department; tell you about the process of animating characters, and reveal some developments for your Steam accounts. Rest assured we have plenty of interesting content for you!


As you know, true magic happens behind the doors of our art department – our artists work tirelessly to make our game a visual delight for you, dear players. Today, we’ve prepared an interview with the person in charge of our team of artists. Enjoy the read!

How did you become an artist in game development? Were you inspired to choose this path by some childhood games, or were there other reasons?

I've been drawing since childhood and quite early on, I realized that I would connect my future work with drawing, design, and creativity in general. I couldn't see myself in any other professions. I also started getting into games at a young age, and I guess the combination of these factors led me into game development. I'm relatively new to the game development industry, and you could say I'm a budding little art lead who's working very hard.

What is your work process like?

It all starts with the project brief. We’re given tasks, usually by the game designers, and then I distribute these tasks among the artists. If needed, we clarify the brief, conduct research, and search for references; I also might provide some comments on the topic. Then the artists create rough sketches, we approve ideas and discuss them, and then they move on to the final drawings. If necessary, we cut them for subsequent animation. Of course, this is all accompanied by feedback and revisions. Something like that.

What was the most challenging task you’ve encountered while working on Knock? What task was easy and enjoyable to work on?

UI, it's very intimidating, very. Although I wouldn't say that there were extremely difficult tasks, they were more unusual, perhaps initially daunting because of their briefs, or their monotonous nature, for example making character images for videos. Drawing content for social media was easy and fun. For example, drawing comically long snouts for wolves for a YouTube short or a Christmas bow with bells for the game icon with a coffin, ha-ha-ha.

What do you like most about working on Knock?
I simply enjoy feeling like part of the team, taking on various tasks, and then watching how what I've done becomes a part of the project.

Name your three favorite games.

The Last of Us, Uncharted 4, Portal 2. I love games with a good storyline and charismatic characters.

And finally, what would you like to say to the players personally?

Eat well, get at least 7 hours of sleep, go out for some fresh air regularly, and play Knock!


And now, let's get back to the summary of this week’s work, starting with animations.

Our animators put their hearts into breathing life into every character and creature in our game (and they do it exceptionally well!). Take a look at this hefty guy living in the swamp; he's always ready to engage in battle with you and drown you... in not the freshest of breath, so we recommend being cautious.



And also, a new character has appeared in our game! It's a tiny midge, but unfortunately (primarily for the midge itself), its role in our game is far from significant.



Even the main heroes of the story couldn’t overlook this wee little insect!



In our previous posts, we shared images of the mysterious priestess who appears in one of our unique events. Today, we have great news – thanks to the efforts of our animators, we present you brand new animations of this enigmatic lady.





While we're experimenting with animation, loud war horn sounds are echoing in the Frontier... Recently, we asked you on our social media which dwarf animation you liked the most. Your responses were very quick, which made us very happy!

We listened to your comments, tweaked and improved the animation, and here it is the final version!



Thank you very much for participating in the survey; you’re genuinely helping us make our game better.


But that's not all! Our artists have also been busy creating unique backgrounds, frames, and avatars for your Steam profiles. Each element is designed to be stylish and attractive, so that your profile looks fantastic! And now, we're ready to show you some of them.



https://postimages.org/ru/

That wraps up this week! We continue to work diligently in order to be fully prepared for the release of KOTCL. We’re fixing, repairing, and adding new features and content again and again, striving for perfection! We'd be delighted if you dropped by our Discord for a cup of tea! There, we share the latest news, discuss our current progress, and more.

Wishing you a great weekend! See you in the next diary

Knock-knock, adventurers! How is your Wednesday going? 👀

We are experimenting with character animation and would like to ask you which of the options below you like best. We will be very glad to receive your feedback 😊

We are looking forward to your comments!

Knock, knock, travelers!

Another week has passed, and we continue to work on the upcoming update for Knock On The Coffin Lid. There isn't much news this week: we've dedicated all our time to bug fixes and small improvements, which you'll see in the game very soon.


Heated debates are underway in our art department as they try to choose the perfect UI for the glossary. Which version do you like more, travelers?




We're sharing with you new cards for our archer before they take their place in the deck:




Oh, it's been a very creative week! The animated residents of the Frontier have been joined by:

The dwarf and his four-legged friend



The hospitable golem



The disgruntled father



There's still a lot of work ahead of us, but development is heading towards its logical conclusion. To stay updated with recent news, follow us on our social media.

See you in the next diary!

Knock-knock, travelers!

Today is a remarkable day – the first day of autumn and the last work day of this week! So we’re in a somewhat lyrical mood.

As you might have noticed, we took a short break last week, but we are back now and ready to share with you events and notes about the game process!

For example, our animators have created a visualization of how our team looked at the beginning of the sprint and how it looked at the end:



The art department continues creating beauty; as a result we have these new, stylized portraits of the characters for our project:



Furthermore, we are currently focusing heavily on tooltips and UI friendliness.
We'll try to showcase the updates in future diaries!


But games don’t survive on good design and programming alone. Our sound designer has also been diligently working on some misplaced and mixed-up sounds in some game locations.



Can you guess where this is from? Write your answer in the comments!


And finally, we'd like to share a short conversation with our game designer, Green, which took place over morning coffee:

- When you joined the project, was it difficult to integrate into the new environment?
- I joined the project in the spring of 2022. It wasn't difficult to integrate; if anything, it was the opposite. I was very motivated and inspired. I had completely changed my line of work, but my previous experience in IT helped me settle in quickly. Of course, figuring out someone else's work was problematic, as we practically completely reworked the initial concept and significantly expanded the story that accompanies the gameplay.

- What was the most challenging task you faced while working on "Knock"? And which task was easy and enjoyable to work on?
- The most challenging task was answering this question. Probably, the events in the game became both the most complex and, ultimately, the simplest tasks for me. It's not a secret that this part was significantly changed at some point. It expanded to incredible sizes, and I had to take into account an impossible amount of information from the writers. But once you get into the flow, everything becomes clear, understandable, and easy to implement. What's disappointing is that I learned the whole plot right away.

- Did you encounter any amusing incidents during development that later became easter eggs in the game?
- Of course, and we tried to highlight those in the developers' diaries. I wouldn't want to spoil too much, but for example, once the scaling of a regular boar broke, and it became gigantic, and filled in half the screen (laughs). It's probably one of my most favorite bugs in our game. And now there's a chance to actually encounter that boar in the Frontier.

And now, like the elf from this updated animation, we’re going vanish into the weekend! Don't forget to drop by our Discord and other social networks.



See you in the next diary!