Knock, knock, travelers!

We’re declaring Friday notes open! Let’s hurry up and see what this week has brought to us.

Last time we showed you our animators’ work on Vanadis’ pets Prince and Waggytail. This week, the charming honey badger, Tulip, has finally acquired some upgraded movements, too.

Next in the line is the wise raven Hoogin, but more on that in the next diary, stay tuned.







Animals, mixed in with work on Vanadis, have taken a secure place among our tasks. For example, we continue to work on the pets’ energy design, and there are already some preliminary results. We can’t help but share the process with you. However, we’ll keep it interesting and won’t tell you about everything at once.

Which of these animals do you like the best? Tell us your impressions in the comments!



Sometimes we receive quite interesting comments from our players. We gladly take these comments and use them in our work.
One of them was about the Archdruid, a Frontier boss, and his attack ‘Dumbfound’, which deals damage to the hero while also adding a bad card to the deck. Although this action is not unique among the opponents in Midian, it nonetheless calls for a unique movement animation. Otherwise, it just won’t have the right effect. Let’s not forget about the devil in the details and things like that.

So we thought a little, tried out a few options, and decided to teach the Archdruid a new spell – he’s got a whole staff for that.



A few short words on our preparations for the grand finale. Alas, we can’t show you many of the things, but we can let you have a peek at how we’re preparing the throne hall for the last battle.

We’ve already said that it’s going to be epic, haven’t we? Well then, nothing more to add here!





Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon, is here with you again. Today I’m going to tell you a story about a game bug.

Once upon a time, there was a bug. It wasn’t just a bug, it was magical and had something to do with potions. It was doing nicely until it was discovered. After that it agitated the public, from the players to the whole developer team. What did the bug do? An experienced player might have already guessed. The bug caused the following – potions either disappeared for good at the worst possible moment, or were placed in slots and kept returning to the inventory; some of them could even be used many times without disappearing! Some magic, for sure! A critical situation, especially considering the fact that potions and other magical quest items that can be put in the slots can drastically change the outcome of a battle or even a whole game.

“This is bad,” – we thought and got down to catching the bug and testing. With the help of the players, we found and seemingly fixed many variants of that bug, but something new kept showing up again and again. We’re stubborn, so if we start doing something, we’ll see it to the end. We equipped our most daring developer and set him out to search for the cause. For several days, he looked for the root of that evil and finally, he found it. It turned out that the biggest problem was hidden deep in the code, since times long, long ago.

Anyway, one day, we came up with the idea to secure potions in their slots where players had placed then. Because why not? It’s convenient. But that is where all the problems started :) The idea was put into the game, but we somewhat overlooked the way it worked. Yes, we admit, things like that can happen. It all led to errors growing like a snowball and leading to soft-locks.

During the search for the causes we discovered that, when changing the mechanics of potion usage in battle, we didn’t take into account that there are two ways for said usage: clicking on a potion and dragging it onto a hero. This diversity ruined the whole picture. The investigation turned up another hitch: in some spots, the comparison mechanism wasn’t changed in the best way possible, which added to our problems. Then these two causes started intertwining, so we decided to end this vicious bug circle. We had to do it radically, by re-assembling the whole system for potions and slots. After that we had to test it, and test it, and then test it some more.

The results of that hard work are in the latest patch. We’d like to believe that this bug has been defeated and it won’t bother our players anymore. BUT if you see, on the off chance, that potions are behaving weirdly, then make sure to report it!

By the way, we’re starting preparations for our next video-diary, and we’ll soon need your help with it. I’ll give you a tiny spoiler: we’re going to invite the very same daring developer from the story above! Don’t miss an opportunity to ask him questions about a developer’s life, or maybe some technical details. More news on that next week.

And with that, we might as well wrap it up. We wish you a nice weekend, and as few bugs as possible in your runs

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Patch 0.85.03 with new content and a bunch of fixes is available now. What's inside?

New:
🔸 Updated version for MacOS
🔸 Changed the offset of units in battle when summoning helpers
🔸 Added display of karma for answers in events that have been previously clicked (and changed the appearance of the buttons)
🔸 Added ability to send bug reports from the main menu
🔸 New sounds for Ritualist's Ichor Magic
🔸 New music for the "The hungry demon" event
🔸 Added animation for the event "Dying Bandit", in the development of the event without the bandit himself
🔸 Added animation for the event "Ferocious Bear", in the event development without the bear
🔸 Added animation for the event "Abandoned tavern", in the development with the death idol
🔸 Added animation for the "Demonic Blacksmith" event
🔸 The "Coveted Trophy" event has received minor edits to the animations
🔸 Added new visual effects for: Burning, Poison, Healing and Miss
🔸 Added animation for the event "Marauder", in the development of the event without the marauder himself
🔸 Added animation for the event "Bomber", in the development of the event without the bomber itself.
🔸 Added animation for the event "Gone astray"
🔸 Added visual effect for "Blight" debuff
🔸 Added animation for "Goblin Idol" event
🔸 Weapon "A Thief's Knife" added type of animations for one-handed weapons
🔸 The unit "Son" has received an updated escape animation
🔸 Added animation for "Keeper of Fear" event
🔸 Added animation for the event "Sniper", in the development of the event without the sniper himself
🔸 Mortis' phrases now don't disappear while the cursor is over them

Fixed
🔸 Fixed the problem of potions disappearing
🔸 Fixed slot jumping when summoning allies in the battle with the High Goblin
🔸 "Dwarven Axe" - fixed display on Vanadis
🔸 Fixed the “Self-destruction” card upgrade, now damage is correctly applied
🔸 Bandit armor now gives correct characteristics
🔸 Fixed localization of “Golden claws” buff.
🔸 “Hedgehog” card now works correctly as a talent
🔸 Fixed skipping battle in the Crimson Steppes
🔸 Helmet of Batu the Smart now correctly imposes weakness.
🔸 Fixed Space button working when getting rewards
🔸 Fixed Mortis’ phrase when encountering an enemy (animals)
🔸 Added description for "Hedgehog" buff
🔸 Fixed display of "Vassal Armor" on Vanadis
🔸 Fixed the ‘Plague Priest’ card, now gives correct values
🔸 Special Event (spiky question mark) has updated part of the icons on the map to one type, depending on the path state.
🔸 Fixed a number of freeze in different places of the game
🔸 Added a corresponding icon for the "Token" buff.
🔸 Fixed the size of the icon that pops up from the demonic boots buff.
🔸 Fixed display of the “Leather helmet’ on Vanadis
🔸 Fixed a bug where on the class selection screen for Vanadis, when hovering over items and the cards behind them, a white background from the card in the portrait would appear.
🔸 Fixed Potion Merchant model in combat
🔸 Fixed softlock in one of the battles with Gram
🔸 Fixed a bug in Vanadis' answers when skirmishing with the Patrol
🔸 "Ritual Keeper" has received minor animation edits and new visual effects for abilities
🔸 "Armadillo" units received minor animation tweaks

Knock-knock, seekers!

We're finally ready to reveal all the cards in front of you. We are officially and proudly announcing:


We will have to finalize the final battle, launch a revamped Vanadis, and actively polish the game.

After the release of the main game, story development will continue in the DLC "Millenis' Nightmares" (February-March 2025).

Purchasing KOTCL before release will give you access to the DLC "Millenis' Nightmares".
After release, these will be separate products and the total cost will be higher.

Add "Knock on the Coffin Lid" to your vishlists so you don't lose us!

And we will definitely tell you about all the news and stages of development in our developer diaries, as well as in social networks and our Discord server.


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Knock-knock, seekers!

Friday has come – it's time to tell you what we've been up to this week. It’s been beastly! And since we’re reworking Vanadis there will be plenty of news about her today. Let's get started.

Vanadis' pets make up the entire queue to the animation department. There's just no squeezing through them! You might ask: what are they there for? The answer: to get new animations, of course. But not simple ones, but the ones you haven't seen yet. All of this involves a lot of mechanics redesigning. Let's go through everything in order. We already have some things that look pretty good as far as we’re concerned.

Meet Waggytail. Just look at him! He definitely warrants his name – what grace, what agility, a feast for the eyes!







Our beloved baby-boar Prince is already trying out new moves. What a spectacular entrance! And no less spectacular is his retreat. Yes-yes, he can retreat – that's something new :)
We invited the dwarf only as part of the background, don't pay attention to him.





Big changes are accompanied by big (and small) additions. We decided to make new energy icons for Vanadis and her pets. How do you like these icon options for the fox? Share your opinion in the comments!



Despite a multitude of other tasks, we continue to work on Mortis’ books, in which he carefully collects all information. For example, an opportunity will be soon added to the Bestiary that allows you to see the second, and sometimes even the third and fourth forms of an enemy (ahem, isn't that right, Sigismund?). Because it's nice to know who might be waiting for you and be ready for anything.




Since today our diary has an animalistic theme, a photo collage with fluffy moral support for the RedBoon team is a perfect fit. Here’s hoping that our beloved friends bring you good Friday vibes.



Greetings! Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon, is here again.

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who watched our video diary last week and supported us with likes, comments, and feedback. It was great to see the response and understand that the format "clicked." We’ll continue to make videos like that for you.

In today's diary, you saw some news about Vanadis. I also talked last week about the progress we’re making on the rework, and I hope that by the end of February, we’ll be able to show you something. I’d like to talk a little more about this.

We collected feedback about our archer, and we agree with many points. Honestly, over time, it became clear to us that Vanadis didn’t turn out completely successful, but the concept was very interesting, so we didn't want to give up. We told you that we wouldn't completely re-make Vanadis from scratch, but something new will be added anyway, it’s inevitable. Hopefully, you will like it.

The symbiosis of Vanadis and her pets is the main difference between the archer and the other heroes. But often, if a pet died, she could do nothing more or less without it. Of course, in theory, a player could build the character without involving the pet, which is difficult but possible. But in our vision, pets should be more involved in Vanadis’ mechanics, so we decided to stick to the original idea but tweak it a bit. For example, there will be an ability to summon and call off a pet.

If we look at Persival’s and Bjorn’s classes, each of them has more or less unique gameplay within each character. However, with Vanadis, only the honey badger had fundamental differences from her other classes. Now we’ve added this uniqueness to each of Vanadis’ class – starting cards and pet effects that will allow players to move in the direction of the chosen build.

There were also complaints that pet training in the camp was too weak. We hear you and strengthened the leveling up. By the way, we removed several mechanics altogether, such as Dome and Cover. Freezing underwent a rework as this de-buff stunned in too much of an imbalanced way. I'll add that we abandoned the experimental critical hit mechanics – it was unclear to the player, and our games with percentages turned out to be unworkable. But don't worry we’ll make up the loss with new mechanics, cards, and effects.

The main difficulty is that in our understanding, Vanadis is a ready-made character with classes. Now, having started the rework, we have to change, make, and attach a lot of things. But, I repeat, we’re not giving up, and we try not to even think about how many bugs will pop up after the launch of the updated archer – at least, for now :)

Perhaps, on this note, we can end our Friday entry. See you next week!

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Happy Valentine's Day, dear players!

May this day be filled with love and joy. We would like to wish you to always find time for your loved ones, as well as for your hobbies. After all, this is the only way to maintain such an important and fragile balance between work and personal life.

And remember that love is not only romance, but also care, support and respect.

We want to thank you for your support and love for KOTCL. We appreciate each and every one of you!

Our characters will help you confess your love to someone special 😉

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