Knock-knock!

Thank God it’s Friday! We’re happy not only about the end of this work week and the new diary entry, but also about the fact that we definitely have some news to share with you. Let’s start already!

You asked us many different questions on social media, and we promised to answer them, as well as release something new and unusual. Well, here it is! Yes, it's the video developer-diary, but... well, you'll see for yourselves.

Let's say right away, we liked it, and we hope you will, too. So, we're looking forward to your comments and new questions. Support us with a like if you find this format interesting.


If you've played KOTCL at least once, you'll definitely agree with the statement above. To make that choice less agonizing and clearer, we asked you to vote for the best-looking arrows in the trophy-choosing screen. The voting is over now, and with the majority of votes, the winner is … *drum roll*… option #2!


You've decided that these arrows better suit the game's style, and at the same time they are more informative, which we agree with. Of course, we'll add expressive visual effects; for example, the trophy card will get bigger and more vividly show the item the player chooses keep. We're also considering highlighting the card.

Thanks to all the voting participants! Great team work!

Remember we had a card workshop? Well, now the main part of creating card art is complete, so it’s our animation workshop that’s working at full speed. There’s a fresh batch of animations this week too. We can’t leave you without animations.


Here’s one of the most productive workers of the Northern Gate (can't argue with that). Although he’s a demon, he does a very important job and can help players before an upcoming battle. The main thing is you have to find the way to his forge.


It definitely looks like conversations about Midian politics happened at this table. Not very successful conversations, by the looks of it.


You’ve definitely seen this image before. The most keen-eyed ones among you might have noticed that the background quality was a bit lacking, to say the least. Oh well, anyway, we’ve improved this image and soon, we'll update it in the game.

Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon is here with you again. It’s funny that I appear both at the beginning and at the end of this diary. Everything is a circle in the world… But that’s not what I’m going to talk about.

I hope you've already watched the video diary. We tried to answer the most interesting and pressing questions you sent us on social media, and we succeeded, it seems. There were so many questions that we had to reduce their number for the video this time, otherwise it would have been the longest developer's video diary in the history of KOTCL :)

It was a very interesting experience, and I’d like to continue releasing videos as a means of communication, inviting other team members and asking them more specific questions from the audience. If you enjoyed it too, feel free to drop a like or add a comment. That will greatly support us.

In this episode, I talked about many things, probably even more than necessary, but I have no regrets. I like sharing plans without spoilers and discussing various topics, especially when they touch on not only development but also our studio and life in general. It's nice to share my experience and realize that someone might find it useful and apply it in practice.

Since we've already announced the release date, we ask you to send us bug reports and tell us about any errors or inaccuracies; this is crucial for us. Soon, we’ll begin polishing the game intensely, and I really want it to be ready by the release date, allowing players to shape the destiny of the heroes smoothly and without hiccups.

For example, during the rework of Vanadis, we dedicated a lot of time to the Crimson Steppes and discovered many bugs and inconsistencies in the events. Surely you've had some moments when events should be connected, but something goes wrong, and nothing fits together. It may seem like it was intentional, but I'm sorry to disappoint you (and myself as well) – we’d planned it differently.

If you have doubts about the development of a certain event, or if you want continuation and further development of events, or if some events are not giving the desired effect or reward, most likely something is broken there. In such cases, feel free to report it to us. I repeat: we want to make KOTCL as good as possible before its release. Remember that reports can be sent directly from the game; this way, they’ll reach us along with the important log files of your game, which greatly helps us address the issue faster.

To wrap up: we're eagerly waiting for your feedback, and in the meantime, we'll continue reworking, getting enraged, and tending to other important matters.

See you next week!

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Knock, knock, travelers!

It’s time to make another entry in our travel notes. Without further ado, let’s go!

We continue working on a convenient and pleasant display for effects.

‘Burning’ will now charmingly flame up like in the animation below. As Mortis likes to say “It’s a fire show!”, and we can’t help but agree with him.



And now a bit about negative effects – have a look at the animation of ‘Blight’. Creepy, but impressive, isn’t it?



And the ‘Cover’ buff that redirects enemies’ attacks to an ally will look like this. Of course, we feel for Waggytail, but he’s ready to protect his master at all costs.



You may recall that during final clashes with Millenis, Mortis just stands there under a dome and calmly watches. We’ve extended that buff to the heroes too, but only if they’re immune to attacks. We can’t make it too easy!



We’re diving deeper into animating backgrounds for out events. Of course, static images are endlessly pretty (we read your comments and are happy to receive words of encouragement), but to improve visual perception some motion needed to be added. The devil is in the details, right?


Is there a bear around here? It’s big, brown, and angry.


In this peaceful glade a man was cruelly done away with. He and his buddies, all bandits, couldn’t settle on how to split their stolen goods. But that’s another story.


For some reason the diary today is turning out to be all about crime. Anyway, you can see it all for yourselves. Elven shooting practice spares no one.

Hey! It’s Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon, and I’m coming to you today with a cautionary tale.

More and more often, I catch myself thinking that from the very beginning of KOTCL development, we set ourselves an extremely challenging task. Due to the non-linear plot of the game (and you know that our plot is full of twists, and many things are interwoven and interconnected), any, even the smallest, change in the plot can completely break the logic and lore of the entire game. This greatly hinders and sometimes demotivates us from taking certain actions. After all, if we want to change or add something, it all will turn into a large snowball. Let me explain.

Let’s say, we want to change one of the events. However, we know that each event can be drastically different for different heroes, which means we need to rework three events instead of one. Then it becomes clear that the event affects future events, just as past events affect the one we want to change. What amount of work will we have to do? Quite a decent amount, to put it mildly.

And if we want to add something new, the situation doesn't get any better – we'll have to change a lot of what we've done before, and this requires a lot of resources: energy, time, and sometimes even financial means.

The project is growing, and what initially took an hour to implement now can stretch for days or even weeks. And I'm talking about small features here.

So today I’d like to give advice to future independent developers: start small, don't try to make a large project right away if you don't want to get stuck with it for many years. This is fraught with numerous problems, which I wrote about earlier.

Burnout is the scourge of many developers, especially beginning ones. I would add that due to burnout, the result of your work will not feel like a reward for all your efforts, quite the opposite. Redoing your work with a no-desire-attitude is very unpleasant, believe me.

In summary: don't make our mistakes.

As for us, we continue working on KOTCL. There’s going to be some good news, which involves next week when we plan to answer the most popular questions you've asked us on social media. A small teaser: we'll answer the most pressing question that starts with 'When' and ends with 'release date'. I suppose we're ready for the announcement :)

That's it, friends. Don't forget to check our social media; we love keeping in touch with you.

Until next Friday!

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Greetings, seekers!

Knock on the Coffin Lid is participating in The Storyteller's Festival 2024 from January 29 to February 2!
Organized by indie studio Two and a Half Studios, each year the festival offers the opportunity to discover new games and embark on an exciting journey through uncharted worlds.

The Storyteller's Festival is a celebration of storytelling, with games ranging from heart-wrenching dramas to lighthearted novels, there's sure to be something for everyone.

And in honor of the event, Knock on the Coffin Lid is available for purchase at 10% off 🙂

Knock, knock!

As tradition has it, Friday has come and it’s brought with it a new entry for the diaries. What have we been up to this week? Let's see!


This week, we asked for your help in choosing the best arrows for trophy selection to make this crucial moment in the game clearer. The voting is still happening, so if you want to make a contribution to the creation of KOTCL, don't miss your chance!




We continue to explore the Northern Gate, which is densely 'inhabited' by various demonic creatures. Although they can quite often be encountered in the Castle and its surroundings, we didn’t have a worthy visual representation for such encounters. Lately, we've been actively addressing this regrettable situation, and now we want to share the results with you. What do you think of this demonic collection? Sometimes it might seem that they aren’t even all that evil... don't you think?










Of course, we can’t do without news from our animation room! More details on this week’s agenda below.

We like to periodically show the inner workings of our project because it can be quite interesting; and for some, it might even be useful. This week, another event was animated. Let's take a look at it through the eyes of the animator.


It’s not clear what it is, but it’s very interesting, isn’t it? So what came out of that multi-colored ‘palisade’?



Pretty lively! Perhaps, one shouldn’t linger in this place – it’s all mosquitoes, swamp and who knows what else…

(That’s what we called this scene amongst ourselves.)

And we keep on animating scenes that can be changed by the player, like this one. So where did the marauder go?



The elves, orcs, Firebrothers, and even death all have their own idols, but the goblins don’t. It seemed unfair to us; do they really have nothing sacred at all? We decided to make things better for poor goblins. Soon you'll come to this place in the caves. What you do there – you’ll have to decide based on the situation.




It’s me, Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon, once again. When you’ve got something to do, the days fly by at warp speed, and the things that we have to keep on increasing and increasing.

Beside the tasks concerning Vanadis and Bjorn, there’s one that popped up literally just now. We've added a lot of new content to the game: cards, sets, items of all kinds, and so on. That’s all wonderful, but there's one small issue – elite battles and boss fights pretty much haven't changed and have become too easy and, in some places, tad boring.

‘That won't do!’ – we thought, so now it’s up to Ksay and Cain Caiaphas to spruce the battles up. We’re not planning extensive or critical changes. We want to make the battles a bit more challenging, diversify them, and in general, get rid of the blandness. Moreover, I've seen feedback that the game has become too easy for some, even on the high difficulty level. We hope that the changes made to elite battles and bosses will make our players happy.

The final battles can also feel boring in some places. For example, we’re currently not satisfied with the battle with Mortis – in the first phase, he has too few attacks, and there are no differences when you play as different heroes. It's sort of illogical. An event like the confrontation with Mortis can be made much more interesting. There's plenty of room for imagination, all we need is to come up with something new.

On the other hand, Sigismund, for example, in his second form turned out to be much weaker than a hero who’s all leveled-up and stuffed with talents and wearing shining armor. The whole fight feels like some ignoble massacre of the helpless. I'm joking a bit, but the fact remains, and we’d like to add something here so that no one thinks that life is all wine and roses :)

Well, that's it for now. See you next week – make sure to drop by, we're cooking up something new for you

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Greetings, players!

Recently on our Discord server we discussed the non-obviousness of trophy selection.
How to understand which trophy you donate and which one you keep and not make a mistake? This is a very important issue, because sometimes a successful choice of the trophy can decide the outcome of the whole run. Earlier we tried to make it clearer, but, apparently, we didn't turn the obviousness resistor all the way down.

A player suggested this option and we liked it.

After talking to players, we realized that visual arrows and the trophy card enlargement can solve this problem, so that now definitely no one is not confused. We have prepared several options for the arrows and now it's up to you. By the way, the card enlargement will also be implemented, but now let's choose the arrows.

What do you think, which variant is the most successful and suits the game’s style? Help us decide!

Please feel free to share your opinion in the comments, because this way you help to make KOTCL better (and clearer🙂).

Variant 1


Variant 2


Variant 3


Variant 4


Variant 5

Knock-knock! A new patch 0.82.01 is already available. You’ll find some bugs and softlocks fixes as well as some new things.

Balance changings
🔸 There has been a nerf of the card "Forest Breeze". Sorry Bjorn, fate is cruel
🔸 Demonic Claw and Demonic Bow have had 50% max health penalty removed.
🔸 Agility reduction/increase has been removed from Demon Set (2)

New
🔸 The inscribed Fire Brothers set has received a visual update
🔸 Added new item The Marauder''s Blade
🔸 Added new item Soultaker
🔸 Added animation for the “Cursed Sword” event
🔸 Added visual effect for the Dynamite item
🔸 Added sounds for the Dynamite item
🔸 Added sounds for Answers and Nods in the "Turmoil" event
🔸 Added sounds for vendors in the Crimson Steppes

Fixed
🔸 The "Forest Breeze" card now correctly doubles health points
🔸 Removed blank button on the starting language selection screen
🔸 Fixed the icon on the card for the battle with the Demon of Illusions
🔸 Fixed the animation of taking damage from the "Double Strike" card
🔸 Fixed visual display of evasion buffs
🔸 Fixed animation of buff icons zooming in and out in battle, when applying/removing them
🔸 Fixed ability to use attack cards in click in Tutorial (previously only drag and drop worked)
🔸 Fixed display of multiple warp paths in the Crimson Steppes
🔸 Fixed cards types (Attack/Skill) in new cards
🔸 Fixed softlocks in events under certain circumstances
🔸 Fixed Tutorial appearing after skipping it under certain circumstances
🔸 Fixed softlock after defeating Millenis
🔸 Fixed softlock in fight with Lycan
🔸 Fixed softlock in battle with Archdruid
🔸 Fixed the work of the Internal Reserves card. Energy now works correctly. Also made a variation for Bjorn
🔸 Fixed the display of set parts of the Bandit set at the top of the screen
🔸 Handmade Magic card has changed animation of transition to discard pile
🔸 Exposed from Demonic Axe is now correctly blocked by Ward
🔸 Drain Strength card now correctly steals power.
🔸 Added bowstring for "Bow of the Crimson Steppes"
🔸 “Self-Destruction” card now correctly takes away HP
🔸 Fixed the "Unblemished Honor" card. It now correctly doubles all positive buffs.
🔸 Fixed the damage dealt by the "Full Force" card
🔸 Fixed "Resistance Is Futile" card
🔸 Fixed missing battles in the Crimson Steppes
🔸 Updated animations and sound for Father's attacks in the "Father and Son" event
🔸 Fixed display of new weapons icons
🔸 Fixed the exp points multiplier for story mode difficulty
🔸 Returned unfolding scroll effect for Frontier map
🔸 Fixed unsightly roads in Frontier
🔸 Fixed hand shadow in traders' events
🔸 Added Esc button triggering on the map view panel in battle (right mouse click)
🔸 A number of localization fixes

Persival
🔸 Fixed display of Persival's bare feet in the inventory panel
🔸 Updated the animation for the “Elven Hospitality” event for Persival
🔸 Millenis in battle with Percival no longer freezes when moving to the third phase of the battle

Bjorn
🔸 Fixed “Caravan” event development blocking when playing as Bjorn
🔸 Fixed a bug in Bjorn's Demonic Claws work
🔸 Removed an extra button in the event "Mite's Bride" when playing as Bjorn, and fixed localization on the button
🔸 Fixed the battle background in the "Crazy Alchemist" event when playing as Bjorn.
🔸 Added a reward in the event "Gram" when playing as Bjorn.
🔸 The Bandit’s Shiv is now correctly sold only to Bjorn

Vanadis
🔸 Added animated portraits for the classes: Raven''s Sister and Honey Badger''s Ally
🔸 Added sounds for Vanadis' "Demonic Blacksmith" and "The Well" answers
🔸 Added sounds for Vanadis' "Mite's Bride", "Mushrooms" and "Zombie Catch" answers
🔸 Fixed a bug in Bandit’s Bandana
🔸 Removed Persival videos when playing as Vanadis

Knock, knock!

It’s Friday and the new entry in our developer diary is making its way to you. The second work week of the year made us more active than ever. You’re going to see it all for yourself now, below.


…anything – and that’s a fact. Especially now, when his arsenal includes updated attack animations. Just look at that left hook! As for his mighty axe blow, it can be fended off only by sturdy armor or inhumane agility.





As you can see below, elves have finally had their turn with SPIne-procedures. Our latest patient was Bjorn’s fellow in misery – the strong and very angry Lycan. He changes his appearance so swiftly now. It’s simply stunning! However, he still needs to work on his manners a bit.

But, to be honest, we are surprised that he patiently sat through the whole process without obliterating everything around him. We all know how those 'wolves' can be.





Remember how we kept working and working on the coffins on the character selection screen? Well, we can inform you of the following: there have been some movements in the matter, in the literal sense of the word. We’re happy as ever to share the interim results with you.

How do you like the new animations? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments!





A couple of backgrounds have been animated this week, too. Let’s add some serenity and fluidity to our diaries.


It seems that someone was not letting the characters past here…Someone insane, obviously.


And here we diversified the goblins’ ecosystem with the fungi kingdom. Because why not?


This week, we’ve been gathering up your questions for our video diaries. Don’t miss this chance to ask us about whatever interests you. We'll do our best to answer, even if it’s a question about the release date. We promise!

Speaking of talent, we’re always on the search.

How About Some Chit-Chat?

Hello again, my friends. It’s Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon.

The farther into work, the deeper, as they say, and the more tasks, of which we already have plenty. But what am I saying? Getting deep into work is exciting and engrossing (spoiler: well, not always, which is a pity).

After significantly changing the game balance in the last year we still have things to strive for.
Aside from the long-suffering Vanadis, Bjorn requires an intervention, too. He’s still got some misbalance that messes things up.

For example, while playing for Bjorn, you can endlessly use all sorts of combos on enemies thanks to the ability to use health points to draw more cards. Bjorn also has some imbalanced cards that give armor and healing. And if you combine healing with drawing cards, you become a terrible and undefeatable force (if you didn’t known about this, hurry up and use it before we nerf it all). On top of that, Bjorn is still quite powerful in the lycan form; his multiple attacks, additionally multiplied by the strength stat, sweep away all before him. All of this is great fun, of course, but it doesn’t really fit with our concept of how Bjorn’s mechanics should work.

We see it this way: lycan-Bjorn uses very powerful one-off attacks, casts debuffs on his opponents - for example Bleeding - but receives curses as a trade-off. That would be a peculiar and logically sound way to help elf-Bjorn.

Although many players are not very fond of Bjorn’s mechanics of curses, we’d like to make playing the lycan more attractive and add more variability so that players will find it interesting to explore new strategies rather than just abusing the game over and over. However, making it too difficult is as bad as making it too easy. The key is not to overdo it. We won’t forget about taming our inner hardcore and finding the right balance.

Perhaps, on this profound note about balance, we’ll end our diaries for this week :)

Wishing you a great weekend and successful game runs!

Check out our social media, where you can ask questions, have discussions with other players and our team, and contribute your suggestions – we're always happy to hear from you

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Greetings, seekers!

Recently, we asked our players to ask Vanadis uncomfortable and tricky questions. It turned out to be really exciting and helpful. Thanks to the questions, we came to several conclusions and even learned a few new things for ourselves. Overall we enjoyed the experience.
And so because of that we’ve decided to call on our community again, but this time with a different theme: if you’d like to learn something about creating video-games, we'd love to share our experience with you!

Are you considering becoming a Unity developer, but you don’t know where to start and what to expect? Or do you dream of a career in game design? Maybe you’d like to break into game development with your own game studio? Don’t be shy – ask us about things you’re keen on knowing. And of course, we’ll happily answer your questions about KOTCL, too – we can’t do without them, can we?
The most interesting questions will be answered in a new format in the Developer Diaries. We won’t show our hand right away, but we think it will be not only insightful, but also entertaining. We hope you’re intrigued :)

Feel free to post your questions in the comments!

Knock-knock, travelers!

We are back and very happy to greet you in the first diary entry of the new year. Here’s how it went: holiday break was successful, energy has been restored, and fighting spirit is present.

Let's get started!


Very often, when various cards, buffs, and de-buffs are triggered, it's completely unclear what the effect was and what’s happening on the battlefield. To make everything clear and illustrative, we’re continuing to work on visual effects. This time it was Vanadis’s turn to go under the animator’s “knife”.


Upon being triggered, damage is dealt to all enemies.


Parrying enemy’s card damage.


Restoring health.


By the way, beside the animator’s knife we also skillfully wield the art-department knife. What do we mean? You’ll find out right now.
After a final polish, every model, every piece of art ends up in the caring hands of our animators. But before that, however, the art needs to be prepared for the animation process. That is, the artists have to cold-bloodedly chop up and dissect each object into parts that will be animated.
This dismemberment certainly looks amusing and perhaps – slightly frightening. However, we've gotten used to it :)








Our heroes can find plenty of ways to achieve their goals. Sometimes their journey becomes so perilous that their only solution is to trust to higher powers. Specifically for desperate moments like the above, a new animation for one of the idols has appeared in the world of KOTCL. Is it menacing? Mysterious? Will it help? You won't know until you try.




Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon, is with you again. Our short holiday rest is over, and it’s time for us to gradually get back to work.

We did a lot last year, but lots more awaits us in this year. For example, right from the beginning of the year we’re starting another re-working of Vanadis. I’d like to say that this will be the last, but I won’t, because anything can happen.

Recently, we asked our players whether they had any uncomfortable questions for our archer, and we received interesting and, I must say, fair feedback. Yes, there are issues in the mechanics, yes, we are aware of them, and yes, we will definitely come up with some fixes. Moreover, the Game Design team already has some ideas, and community members have provided valuable suggestions. It's good to see players recognizing the potential in Vanadis and actively participating in discussions. We'll delve into the details of Vanadis’ reworking process in future diaries. If you have suggestions or just want to discuss anything related to KOTCL, feel free to join our Discord server; social media links are, as always, at the end of the diary.

At the end of last year, the live version of our game got significantly updated with a lot of additions (did you see the patch note?) But, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. More specifically, with new content came new bugs. It's its own kind of balance :) But we're not despairing; we're slowly figuring out and fixing all the issues. As for me, I think I'll go look for more bugs to fix now.

Well, those are the results of the year’s first work week. Don't forget to take care of yourself, and remember that it’s not worth stressing after you’ve had a long break.

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Hello, everyone!

We'd like to wish you a Happy New Year! 🎄

May your skills and strategies grow stronger and more cunning, and your achievements become even more impressive. Don't forget to enjoy your gameplay and share your experiences (especially from KOTCL and especially with us).

Thank you for inspiring us with your enthusiasm and passion for gaming. We really appreciate your support ❤️

May the new year be full of adventures, new worlds, and incredible opportunities! Good luck to your gaming achievements, and beyond, and Happy New Year!



RedBoon team🎉