First of all I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has played the game and for all the lovely comments and reviews. I’m really blown away with the positive feedback! 

This game was my first solo project so I wasn’t too sure how it was going to go but I’m really pleased how it turned out in the end. It has also made me want to make other solo games in the future, so watch this space! 

I thought I’d write a little post about the creation process of the game. There will be spoilers so please don’t read this if you haven’t played it yet. Anyway, let’s go…

Story

When I was trying to come up with a concept for the game I started thinking about my favourite stories and films. I got to thinking about fairy tales, specifically Beauty and the Beast and I thought it would be an interesting spin to have the playable character be a beast. I then got to thinking about traditional stories with knights and dragons and then everything slowly came into place, the main character was going to be a dragon but the player wouldn’t know. I then needed to think of a reason for the knight to meet with the dragon and that’s where the missing heir idea came in. 

Overall, I did find the script writing the most difficult part of making the game. I haven’t done any creative writing for years and I made life harder for myself by creating a story that included a major twist. Additionally, the language barrier between the main character and Frederick meant that the way they communicated to each other would have to be carefully considered in the narrative. For example, in one of the early choices in the game, Frederick asks you if you understand him and you can choose between yes or no. If you lie and pick no, the option will lead to the same outcome as if you picked yes because you spoke the answer and Frederick cannot understand the language you are speaking (dragonlish).  

In the end, the game ended up being a story about accepting kindness and using it as an opportunity to change and also not judging people based on appearances. 

Artstyle

I decided on the black and white aesthetic really early on in the ideas process. I had a lot of fun challenging myself with a limited colour palette for two Hyakuten Games projects, Sweet Mellow-Di and Karaloki so I knew I wanted to try something different. I thought the black and white style would suit the mood of the game and it also meant that I could produce the artwork far quicker which was important with the game jam time restriction. I decided to go for a charcoal/pencil style after discovering a really nice pencil on clip studio paint and that was that!

There are only two moments where another colour is used in the game. The first is the red of Frederick’s blood if you kill him and the other is the green of the dragon’s eyes in the stay ending.

Frederick

I’m so happy with all the love that Frederick is getting haha! I’m sure that he would love it as well! 

Design wise Frederick didn’t take too long to create at all. I knew I wanted to give him chainmail rather than armour because he had to have travelled to see the main character and I thought armour would be too restrictive. His facial appearance is very roughly based on early 17th century fashion, basically…The Three Musketeers. I’ve never drawn a character with a moustache or facial hair before and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity! I wanted to make sure that his expressions reflected his personality so he has a lot of cute smiles!

As I was writing him, Frederick became a lot softer than I expected. The main character suffers memory loss and doesn’t really know who they are, so as a contrast I wanted Frederick to be very open and honest. He also needed to be a character that could talk a lot without much prompt.

Maybe one day Frederick can try and start up his acting career again and get back to performing monologues… with the main character’s encouragement of course.

Before I go…

The Knight of Thistledown wasn’t the only game I worked on this NaNoRenO. I did the artwork for the game, The Inbetween. If you like handsome demons who like bad jokes then this game might be perfect for you!

I’d also like to give a shoutout to my wonderful friend Seraten for all her help and encouragement when I was making The Knight of Thistledown. Please check out her NaNoRenO entry Inside The Box :).

Thanks for reading!