The evolution of KreatureKind – Valiant Game Studio

Intro
If you have followed the development of KreatureKind during 2022, you might have discovered that… It’s been hard. To follow the development, I mean. This is because the development itself has, in fact, been quite hard. So has trying to find funding for this project. This has meant that energy levels on my side have been quite low throughout the year, and at such times I don’t really prioritize posting on social media and similar (save for the occasional TikTok, I suppose).
This, however, does not mean that nothing has happened with the game! Indeed, another reason why it’s been hard to talk details over the past six months is that the game has undergone some quite major changes, and I didn’t want to share anything before I was sure that this was a direction I wanted to pursue.
Before we continue, let me just clarify what I mean when I say “I” and “we” in this post. I, Anna, am the designer and primary developer behind KreatureKind. It’s pretty much been my baby for the past 2.5 years. During the fall of 2022, I also had an intern called Esteban Morales, who helped me out with the changes we’re about to get into. Several of the ideas originated with him, and he also helped out with a substantial part of the implementation. While he’s sadly not with Valiant anymore (funding did not arrive in time for me to be able to hire him), it’s mainly him alongside myself I’m referring to when I write “we”. Worth noting is of course also that the amazing game art was created by Hannah Idén Gustafsson.
Finally, please note that this game is still very much in development, so all of the below is subject to change! Also, some of the art is still placeholder.
Okay? Okay.
Let’s get into it!
The Narrative
- Overview
  KreatureKind has, as you might expect, always been a game about kindness. It’s supposed to subvert the tropes of the genre by focusing on wholesome interactions rather than killing monsters. At its core, it’s also an environmentalist story. It’s about taking care of yourself, the people around you, and the planet we inhabit. Question is, how do you tell such a story without putting people off? How do you present your message in a way that doesn’t come off as preachy, or on the nose?
- The Old Version
  
  In the earlier version of the game, the main characters all found magic swords, which had been placed in various lakes around the world by a deity you got to meet in one of the first dialogues. These swords were designed to make whatever characteristics their wielders possessed stronger. For the teens in question it would be their empathy, problem solving, meme sharing et cetera that got a boost, rather than their fighting skills. They would then use these empowered skills to help creatures around the world, by first making them happy enough to want to talk to them in a card-battle encounter. At the end of the game, you met a council of politicians, and presented your case to them in an effort to make the world a better place for everyone.
- The Problems
  If you don’t want your narrative to be on the nose, maybe you don’t want to make an environmentalist game be explicitly about trying to save the habitats of its monsters. It felt more than a little bit heavy-handed, to be honest. In addition to this, trying to make monsters happy was, according to some of the feedback I received, quite shallow. Since the first playable characters implemented were all girls, there was also the concern that the game fell into the trope of women healing with love, and basically hugging the problem away. This was definitely something I wanted to avoid. Furthermore, I wanted to more closely mimic the mechanics of an activist movement, and this version of the story was a bit too much “us against the world” rather than inviting people to understand and join you.
- The New Version
  First of all, the game was transported from our real world to a fictional, magical one. The game now tells the story about how the Mana Well, which supplies the world with the Mana needed to cast magic, is running out. If the inhabitants don’t start thinking about how to use magic more effectively, magic will disappear from the world entirely. This is obviously a reference to issues surrounding sustainability in our physical world, while somewhat less on the nose. At least I hope so!
  
  Instead of making monsters happy, your goal is now to make the creatures you meet see your side in an argument. Should you succeed, your standing with the monster’s faction will increase. If you are able to eventually get them all on your side, you just might be able to save magic!
- Further Development
  While I enjoy this new narrative way more and find it easier to come up with interesting ideas related to it, I do hope to work with a writer who can help me get this story across in an effective way. Even though I do consider myself a narrative designer and writer and have consulted as such for others, it’s just too easy to get caught up in the development and just write placeholder dialogues with every intention to revisit them – and then never finding the inspiration to do so.
The Progression
- Overview
  The idea is to make KreatureKind an accessible rougelite – a game in which you do short runs, and where failing isn’t the end of the world. You should feel like you as a player get better at understanding the game, that you get rewarded for making progress, and that the game keeps evolving alongside you.
- The Old Version
  
  Early on, KreatureKind wasn’t really a roguelike at all. If you failed an encounter, you could just try again. The focus was on following the story – which was told in a fairly linear way. The world, as mentioned above, took place in our IRL one, with each chapter unlocking a new continent. You were also able to recruit a new teen at the start of each chapter, and it would end with either meeting their parents or a politician.
- The Problems
  The above approach was frankly quite stiff and boring. You would go through the same story in the same order every time you played the game, and you would always meet the same constellation of pre-defined opponents on each continent. Even if I did plan more monsters and as such more to choose from, it still didn’t quite cut it. Also, you didn’t have to choose between taking rewards or heading onto the next encounter directly, because the same encounters would still be waiting for you no matter what (you got more points at the end of an encounter if you forfeited the rewards, but that was it). The fact that it wasn’t really a roguelite, unless you opted into an all-or-nothing mode we called Ironman, also broke the convention of the genre – which is not necessarily an issue, but it felt like it didn’t quite fit.
- The New Version
  The current version of the game takes place on two maps – a World Map, and an Encounter map. On the World Map, you can see your currently unlocked factions (they are unlocked when the previous one has been fully convinced to see your point), and decide where to head next. When a faction has been fully convinced, you sometimes also get the possibility to recruit a new Teen (by completing a special Encounter Map).
  
  When you choose a node on the World Map, you head into an Encounter Map. Here, you see a small version of the type of map you might recognize from games such as Slay the Spire. You could make the comparison that you have just started a new “Run”. In this map, you can go to Regular and Elite encounters, as well as visit a Merchant or get a Random Encounter (where you unlock exclusive perks etc). Every Encounter Map ends with a Boss. Should you complete this map, you get increased standing with the Faction in question, and/or recruit a new Teen to your team.
  
  Worth mentioning is also that the first time you start a new game – a new Campaign, let’s call it – you will get a stripped-down version of the Encounter map with a set of predefined encounters. This is the tutorial map, which will introduce the mechanics of the game one by one in a controlled way (at least that’s the goal).
The In-game Experience
- The HP
  - The Old Version
    
    The characters in KreatureKind used to have an arbitrary amount of HP, ranging from something like 70 to hundreds upon hundreds. This was all placed into a single HP bar, which for monsters went up when you as a player tried to make them happy (HP was Happiness Points), and down if they made themselves or the Teens sad.
  - The Problems
    The feedback given by playtesters was, among other things, that the HP felt arbitrary. It’s hard to quickly calculate quickly how much a certain percentage of an odd value is, and how much that is in relation to a character’s total HP. Basically, it was unnecessarily precise, and also didn’t allow for a particularly dynamic gameplay.
  - The New Version
    
    The new design for the HP, in particular, I want to credit to Esteban. Here, the HP per character is drastically reduced, to the point where you can easily compare two cards with just a glance. 3 HP is definitely less than 4 HP. In this iteration of the narrative, we actually call it CP – Conviction Points – instead of HP. These are sorted into Segments, which represent different arguments the character in question has to support their viewpoint. While in a certain segment, the character has Resistance against one Type of cards, is Vulnerable against another, and casts stronger cards if they belong to the third Type. This makes the experience much more clear and easy to follow, and once you figure out how Vulnerability/Resistance/Focus works, every choice of card to cast matters if you really want to min/max your output.
- The Cards
  - The Old Version
    As you can see in the above screenshot, all the cards used to belong to a Type, which was seen on the middle of the card. The color of the card depended on the target for the card (shown above is yellow for an offensive card, for example), which was reinforced by a little arrow pointing in the corresponding direction as well as an explanation text. Most cards had an effect, as in a way they affected HP (as it was still called), and a… status? Some other cool thing that happened, basically. All cards belonged to one of the three Types: Physical, Emotional, and Tech.
    The names of the cards were themed with cheering up the opponents, such as “Hug” and “Send cute cat video”
  - The Problems
    The biggest problem was simply that the cards didn’t feel distinct, and it was not an interesting experience to pick out which card to cast. It was unclear what the Types meant and how to use them efficiently. There were also too many types of targets. Some cards affected only the current Teen, some all Teens, some any Teen but not the current one – and so on. Depending on the target, the card got stronger or weaker. This was just unnecessarily complex and confusing, and didn’t really add anything to the experience. The similarity in color was also a problem – cards could do vastly different things, but still have the same color (as seen in the example above).
  - The New Version
    To address some of these issues, I went back to the very first iteration of the cards in the game. Now, just like back then, cards can either be a Base card of a certain Type, or an Ability Card. Only Ability cards can do things like freeze a target so they can’t use their next turn, and Base cards only affect the target’s HP (at this point called CP). A major change from the original design is that cards can be infused with other cards to change their behavior. For example, an AOE card needs to be infused with other cards, thus sacrificing them, in order to add targets. The player will then have to value each card individually, and determine if it’s more valuable on its own or infused into another card.
    The names now tie into making arguments in a discussion instead of cheering someone up, where Base Cards are simple arguments, and Ability Cards are more specific, for example “Study Argumentation Technique”. The new Types, to tie into the new narrative, are Rational, Factual and Emotional. Ability cards don’t have a Type.
  - Further Development
    I would love to give each of the cards unique visual designs, with hand-drawn art for all of them. This is something of a pipedream at the moment, and relies heavily on my ability to secure funding for art of that magnitude. Making them unique in the way of for example having all Mitra’s cards be themed to her love of writing in addition to the card Type would be a more realistic ambition, and something I will try to strive for. Also, I want to work with a UX designer and UI artist who can help make the cards as well as the rest of the game look as good and intuitive as possible.
The Cast
- The Designs
  - The Old Version
    
    As mentioned above – the playable characters in the game used to be three girls called Riley, Yui and Mitra. Since the idea for the game originally sprung from me and the people I made Pendula Swing with reading about two separate instances where young girls found swords in lakes, giving the protagonists a female gender felt natural.
  - The Problems
    There’s a fine line to walk when you want to create an inclusive and wholesome experience. As mentioned above, one issue that came to light was that the game fell into the trope of women healing monsters with their love, which has been criticized – and rightfully so. I also got the feedback that there was a lack of body positive inclusion in the main cast, which I will openly admit has been a blind-spot on my side. Finally, the inclusion of swords no longer worked with the new story, meaning the characters needed an update.
  - The New Version
    
    These days, I no longer refer to the protagonists as “Girls”, but “Teens” – because there are four new ones being added to the game. Two of these identify as boys, and the other two non-binary (genderfluid and agender, respectively). Placeholder art has been implemented to represent these in the game, until I have proper art for them. They have all been equipped with magical items related to their special interests (their Modes of Magic) rather than swords, such as Yui holding a Wacom pen instead of a katana.
  - Further Development
    When there is space in the budget to pay for art, the aim is to ask for updated versions of the existing teens, because I need a replacement for at the very least Riley’s sword. The lack of body type variation is something I also want to address – especially among the characters who identify as female, as that has traditionally been the demographic most affected by harmful body standards.
    Furthermore, I realized how weird it became in the context of the rewritten story, that the teens are all human in a world of magic and wondrous monsters. I would therefore like to give them maybe horns, a tail, or why not wings.
- The Roles
  - The Old Version
    Previously, the characters in the game all had quite similar cards. While they had some differences between them, that came across as flavor more than anything. For example, they were all able to both heal and dish out “damage” (aka happiness), but Mitra was the only one who could place so called “Figurines” into play, which are similar to for example Imps in Monster Train (the more of them you have, the better they become).
  - The Problems
    A central design principle that I have tried to follow, and initially failed at, when creating KreatureKind is that all choices should feel interesting and meaningful. When you were asked to choose between very similar characters, or, as was the case early on, you couldn’t even choose which teens to use because there were only three, the player was robbed of that. The characters were just too similar.
  - The New Version
    
    To remedy this, I went back to the basics. Each of the seven currently planned characters was placed onto the “holy trinity”, meaning the balance between Tank, DPS and Healer commonly seen in RPGs etc. Three characters are squarely in one corner, three are somewhere between two of them, and one is placed in the middle of all three. To help the mindset, they were then assigned classic role-playing classes such as Barbarian and Cleric – although these will not be mentioned in-game. With this done, it was far easier to find interesting ways of playing each character. With the help of Esteban, I started working out different playstyles you might want to focus on for each character, and designed cards accordingly. Even though this process is still very much ongoing, it’s already obvious how much this has helped the characters feel interesting and unique.
    Each “class” in the diagram above has a corresponding Faction, as they represent what I call a Mode of Magic – a way in which these characters cast spells in this world. This means that, for example, Yui casts spells by creating art, and Quinn is a code wiz! The focus of the gameplay is however still on verbal communication, not magic.
The Opponents
- Overview
  Fun fact – a very interesting part of working with KreatureKind has been trying to find a language that doesn’t refer to “damage” and other violent words even though the gameplay is similar to that of other games in the genre in which you kill. One example of this is choosing to call them “opponents” instead of “enemies” – because they are not evil or anything, you are just on opposing sides of a discussion.
- The Old Version
  In the earlier version, the opponents were handcrafted and put in a specific place on the World Map. You would for example meet a vampire in Romania, and a bigfoot-type ape called Barmanou in Pakistan. Some monsters spoke only broken English, while others, like the Dropbear of Australia, made animal noises.
- The Problems
  When the game world changed, so did the opponents. They needed to be more dynamic, and not just show up once on the map in a predefined place.
- The New Version
  Opponents now come in many different shapes and forms, and they take part of their appearance from their respective Faction. A Cook will for example wear a chef’s hat or hold a spatula, while a musician might be wearing headphones.
  All opponents, humanoid or not, now speak English. This is in part because it is quite hard to have a deep discussion with someone who doesn’t speak your language, and also because the dynamic nature of the new characters is less central to match a certain dialogue to a specific opponent – they now depend on the faction instead.
  There is one thing that I will miss though. Before, there was a connection between the geographical location in the world and the monster you met, which meant that you could learn more about the folklore of a certain region. This is no longer the case, which is a bit of a shame – but the sum is still definitely on the positive side in my opinion.
Pets/Plushies
- Overview
  As you might be aware, many roguelikes contain certain items that you can hold onto for a longer period of time, such as even when you die. These might come in the form of for example artifacts. To allow the player to advance and gain benefits that affect the gameplay, I wanted something similar in KreatureKind.
- The Old Version
  In the previous version of the game, the artifact type object took the form of pets. These were various animals, ranging from mundane to fantastical, some of which were animated.
- The Problems
  Honestly, a game about environmental issues in which you find random animals and bring them with you felt… Weird. There wasn’t enough space to show that it was consensual, meaning these live and probably sentient beings were essentially treated as a commodity for your own benefit. It ended up sounding a bit too exploitative to my taste.
- The New Version
  
  In the current version, these artifact type objects are instead Plushies – because who doesn’t like a stuffed animal? Right now they’re mostly versions of different animals people tend to like IRL, such as axolotl and shiba inu. I’m thinking it would be fun to actually turn some of the monsters you meet into plushies though! Thoughts?
Wrap-up
I could go on forever, and there is so much else I could mention in regards to where I want to take this project. Long story short, the game has been completely overhauled – and there is still a lot to be done. I’m personally very pleased with the current direction, and the game is increasingly feeling like a viable, commercial game. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, though – what do you like and dislike about this new approach, and what are some things you would like to see in the game in future?