KOTCL Dev Diaries - the 2025 Wrap-Up!

Knock, Knock, It’s the 2025 Wrap-Up!

Have you ever done this?—I mean, wrapping up the year isn’t simply an excuse for another post—it’s a good opportunity to reflect on everything you’ve done, and commit all of it to memory. We’re all great at making plans, but really bad at taking stock. At least, I definitely am.

Console Release

Personally, I played our game on a PlayStation with a huge TV and was blown away by the quality of the artwork. Our artists are simply the best. And in general, I feel like playing with a game controller, while sprawled on the couch, is somehow nicer than hunching over a computer. Otherwise, everything felt familiar—I don’t recall any other impressions from the console version… Oh wait, I do remember one more: our game is on consoles… wow!

DLC

The full story of Mortis & Co is KOTCL + Nightmares of Millenis, so releasing the DLC was a matter of principle for us. Everyone who’s been with us from the very beginning received the add-on for free.

However, Nightmares of Millenis didn’t live up to our expectations. Not because we expected to blow up the market and make all the money in the world with it, but because we gave the story a beautiful ending and wanted as many people as possible to see it.

Forgive the somewhat grand comparison, but the game and the add-on are like the first and second Terminator movies. The first presents the story and leaves a lot of questions, while the second one dots the i’s and crosses the t’s.

By the way, did you notice that the canonical ending of the add-on is subtly similar to the ending of Terminator 2? Well, that was intentional. If you’ve seen the canonical ending of KOTCL, you’ll immediately understand what I mean. And if you haven’t, then you won’t, which means it’s not a spoiler.

Developer Diaries

I was entrusted with the honorable duty of writing these diaries, and this itself may well be the brightest moment in my outgoing year. I chose a “ statements ” format (I believe the intellectual term is “ confessional writing ”, but to me that word feels overly emotional). If you’ve read The Catcher in the Rye, you know what this format is all about. I picked it because, on the one hand, I do have something to say and want to speak my mind rather than churn out banalities and nonsense. On the other hand, this format is appealing to the audience as well, so there’s no contradiction between the two sides.

Because of the news shortage in recent months, I’ve told you a whole lot of different things about the game universe that never made it into KOTCL. After all, the game itself doesn’t try to explain everything about Midian—it simply exists within it, obeying its rules and logic. The game doesn’t try to explain it all, but why shouldn’t I try to explain it?

Some people even suggested gathering all that information into something like a wiki, or—who knows?—even publishing a book. But today we’re not making plans for the future; we’re wrapping up the year.

Neural Networks

We have tried experimenting with neural networks and received a lot of hate. I understand the reasons for your criticisms, but not so much the reasons for your hate. You have to keep up with the times and try new things. If it works, that’s great. If it doesn’t—well, so be it! Why get worked up? Nerves don’t regenerate. As for neural networks, I can share my personal opinion, but keep in mind:

The author’s opinion may not coincide with that of the editors.

We could’ve developed the game much faster if we’d first tested all our ideas using AI, and only then etched them in stone by hand.

Instead, we regretfully had to throw away a whole bunch of implemented ideas that worked perfectly in theory but in practice turned out to be useless, boring, or simply not fun enough. Of course, AI won’t replace real creators (and it will never make our little diary cozy), but it can absolutely save creators a lot of time and nerves.

And it’s not just about testing. Two interactive entertainment environments immediately come to mind; they were popular back in the day, and I’d like to bring them to your attention in this context.

First: Interactive Fiction

These were text-based quests without graphics, with the game being controlled by typing text on the keyboard. The genre’s heyday was in the 1980s, but Interactive Fiction never achieved worldwide popularity because of the lack of graphics and the technical difficulties of text parsing. Players often had to type the same command over and over again, wording it differently each time, just so the program would recognize it and respond appropriately. Back then this annoyed many people; today it annoys absolutely everyone. You see where I’m going with this? AI begs to be used in such cases, and could breathe new life into interactive fiction.

Second: RPG Maker

A series of games, or rather a game engine that allows you to create RPGs without any AI support. I’ve never heard anyone say that RPG Maker is taking food out of game developers’ mouths. On the contrary, it allows game designers and writers to test their ideas and skills.

Unfortunately, while RPG Maker’s capabilities are impressive, they are fundamentally limited, and its interface scares off beginners. Creating such a tool with AI support is an idea that’s already in the air, and someone will definitely turn it into a finished product. It’s only a matter of time.

Well, that’s all for neural networks; let’s move on.

Rebalancing

Balance has always been a sore spot for our project. Not because it was bad, but because you can’t please everyone and leaving negative comments is much more enjoyable than leaving positive ones. Still, still… there were some constructive ideas hidden in the negative feedback.

While working on the balance, we were walking through uncharted territory, looking for new solutions and running up against new problems. But once we looked at the finished balance in its pure form, it immediately became clear how exactly it should be reworked more to our liking. We decided to name this the director’s cut of balance and rolled up our sleeves.

The testing ground for the rebalance became the public_beta branch. It’s still not too late to jump into it! For those not in the loop, I’ll repeat: only reworked story mode for Persival is there so far. The other modes and characters are still in their vanilla state; their rebalance will come later. But Persival is already very ready. Not ready, ready yet—but very ready.

So, to Wrap-Up…

I don’t really have a verdict. I told you right at the beginning that I’m very bad at this. It seems like we did everything we planned this year, but new ideas keep appearing with new opportunities for implementing them. We keep moving forward; new games await ahead.

Happy upcoming New Year and Merry Christmas—have a proper good time!