CharacterBank set out to develop Knights of Fiona with the goal of incorporating what they learned from Ruinsmagus into a more expansive and ambitious role-playing game.
Part of that journey includes multiplayer.
“When Ruinsmagus first launched, it was a completely single-player experience, but we heard a lot from our players that they wanted to keep playing and exploring the world, so our biggest goal with this experience was to create this big world that players could keep coming back to,” CharacterBank CEO Hideto Mikami explains about the genesis of this new title. “Additionally, in the previous game, the actual gameplay was almost linked to a shooter in the way it plays, and we wanted to create something that felt more like an RPG. It’s the introduction of styles that bring the game closer to the genre, such as the use of magic, swordplay, and bows that don’t feel like shooting bullets.”
I dived into Knights of Fiona for the first time during an exclusive demo at the studio’s offices in Kyoto, Japan, and observed their efforts to build what felt like a true traditional RPG adventure. There are similarities between the hub world of Ruinsmagus and this title, but this time the hub is one continuous large town that feels more alive, even in its early stages. I still had to warp to some parts of town, but that should change with further development.
Instead of feeling limited to just you and a small cast of characters, you have a team of party members and a supporting cast, each as visually distinct and individualized as the last. The main starting point for many missions, the train station has moving trains and a large space to explore.
It’s when you dive into the quest itself that the differences and evolution of this experience compared to CharacterBank’s previous works become most apparent. As Mikami points out, the first thing that stands out about the gameplay loop compared to Ruinsmagus is how much more depth and variety has been added in terms of combat. Bows, swords of all sizes, sorcerer’s staves, and more are at your disposal, and not only is each class distinctly unique from each other, but weapons within the same class are also unique, allowing you to increase their strength and further upgrade them to suit your own style.
For example, to shoot an arrow, you need to use your whole body to pull the bow with both hands. Aim and fire with the help of arrow flight path guide. This allows you to counter the slow nature of these weapons and attack from a safe distance. Swords of all sizes give you a unique feel and weight, which is instead built into the way you swing these weapons and approach combat, despite the common limitations of virtual forms that make it impossible to differentiate the weight of virtual objects. Magic is the closest you can feel to combat in Ruinsmagus, with different aiming methods and different spells for each wand allowing for some control and variety. However, it’s not just about swinging aimlessly; multiple actions are assigned to various buttons, allowing for a wide variety of attacks, and everything from positioning to mastering attack patterns is important for victory.
The game further encourages you to switch between these weapons for all the reasons that have to do with the weapons themselves, as well as the upgrades and passive abilities that support your loadouts. These come as rewards after each quest or in the form of cards randomly received from the in-game shop. These cards also affect passive abilities that can increase base strength and introduce additional enhancements to weapon abilities. You can also merge weapon cards to increase the level and experience of your weapons, rather than simply using them to create new weapons, or place passive cards in open slots to give you an advantage in battle. The rarity and power of these cards increases based on the difficulty selected in each quest, and you are encouraged to revisit the quests to obtain these abilities.
He explains that the gameplay focuses more on fun than on the realism of combat or mechanical design. “We brought in real weapons and tried them out, so we had an idea of how we wanted to recreate that feel in-game. That said, one of the things we kept in mind when designing the swords and bows was that they weren’t too technical. We want them to be accessible to casual players and people who just want to jump into this world and experience it.”
This is important when creating multiplayer experiences that you can play with friends. Another thing about Knights of Fiona is that it is, at its core, an online game. All quests can be undertaken as a party, whether on the CPU or online with friends, and you can even engage in melee voice chat and explore the hub world together. I played the game with a few developers in my office, and as much of the fun of the experience came from just exploring and talking among friends as much as fighting hordes and massive bosses.
How you approach a mission varies greatly depending on your party and the quest itself. Playing most of the first chapter, including the finale, during a session, we experienced the story of seeing off the first major threat. From fighting early low-level hordes in the open field to gain the town’s trust, to battling the game’s first boss, an angry fire-breathing dragon. This set-piece is a clear statement of intent for the team’s ambitions. As you charge through waves of enemies and projectiles on the flaming bridge that enters the town, you encounter a large red dragon with eyes intent on killing, breathing fire with every attack that shocks the world. In a group, you can divide up the tasks and distract the dragon, but alone you’ll face a battle of wits and agility as well as strength.
That’s impressive, but it’s only a small idea of what’s to come. I can barely even begin to fathom how we’re going to overcome their strength, as world-ending, literally gigantic enemies are teased on a scale that makes me feel like an ant just looking up in VR. It will be longer, but promises to be more diverse in its settings, as you set out on a globe-trotting adventure to save the world, even if you’re based in Gallia’s home. A rich variety of characters will support you.
The core story has a clear ending, but you can also replay missions at new difficulty levels with new weapons and ability cards. The team has not confirmed any final plans at this stage, but is open to further ideas.
According to HOI, the game’s director, the multiplayer, online elements are meant to create something that sticks in people’s minds, not just to keep players coming back. Regarding their expectations for the game, they said, “After completing this game, I want people to want to spend more time in this world, to know more about these characters, their relationships, and what other adventures they will go on. I want it for people who want to know more about the world.These days, as soon as a game, manga, or anime ends, it’s forgotten about the next weekend, which is a little sad considering the amount of love and effort that goes into it. Along with other players, we want people to come back to experience more at this location. ”
In the introductory prologue, we arrive at this location unaware of the dangers we will soon face in the coming war. People are losing hope and that’s where you come in. You are eventually tasked with leading the resistance against this battle by the leaders of Gaul, including rulers such as the great tree-like Cernund and Leonhard, allying with the knight Geisenberg and gaining support from characters in the town such as the purple-skinned alchemist Nebulus Babbage.
As for the characters, each design is as unique as it is intriguing, steeped in visual design that conveys more history than we know in this adventure. According to HOI, a lot of time went into the design process, from design to line of code to assigning characters their own Myers-Briggs-style personality types. “When you create a world by thinking about the story before you think about the characters, you often end up creating a god-like character in the world, which is not a good thing. So the first thing you think about every character is: what are their personalities, what are their motivations, what are their desires, what do they love, who do they love?
“For example, we consider the role a character is expected to take on, how they feel about that role, the pressures they have elsewhere, etc. Character comes from considering their inner feelings based on their lives around them. Who can they talk to about these things? What are their more pressing issues and concerns? When it comes to thinking about it, yes, Gaul is a very medieval-influenced setting, so we took into consideration the philosophy of the time and what the internal political debates would be like.”What the place would be like, what kind of world and governance would be here, what would the class divisions be like in this setting, all of this from an early stage.
“Then we bring in a designer. We might have rough sketches of settings, characters, and ideas, but the designer can help us brush them up and build on them further, or the designer might create everything from scratch based on the original design. We’ve also grown the cast, which helps. Ruinsm In agus, we made Iris the main character, but she also had to be the player’s guide, and she had a lot of roles. Fiona started here, but she played a lot more. We thought more about how she would react to different things for the character, and we could develop her character more deeply from there. ”
Another thing about Knights of Fiona is that it is, at its core, an online game. All quests can be undertaken as a party, whether on the CPU or online with friends, and you can even engage in melee voice chat and explore the hub world together. I played the game with a few developers from the office, and we had a lot of fun just exploring the area, talking, and having fun. While the core story has a clear ending, it’s possible to replay missions at new difficulty levels with new weapons and ability cards. The team has not confirmed final plans at this stage, but is open to ideas such as new stories and limited-time skins to support online services and keep the game something to come back to with friends.
Even at this early stage, the game feels alive. The opening hub town includes lots of areas to explore and create your own fun. Although it is not currently active as the game is not yet available to the public, community integration for Town Hall will exist in the form of message boards and will allow you to share fan art with players on Discord.
Now, instead of fan art, we’re featuring doodles from our staff, and the love for these characters is evident in all the fun sketches the team has created (especially my own early favorite Nebulous Babbege). The subtle details of the city and world, the card art for weapons and abilities, the care and sophistication in the city art, you can feel what it means and how much it means to this game, this world, and the team behind it. As the HOI director created the story, he said one of the key inspirations was the challenge and responsibility of creating a new game, and the expectations woven into the world and ideas that drive Knights of Fiona.
Even at this early stage, you can feel that this is a game that CharacterBank as a studio has been working on for a long time, not just because it’s new and a lot of fun. It incorporates ideas from many other works, builds beyond what was able to be achieved with Ruinsmagus, and draws an ambitious foundation for RPGs in VR. To support additional post-launch content, the team is launching a Kickstarter campaign.
All things considered, that’s a tall order. If a team can fully realize all their ideas, something truly special can emerge.
