Games
The '80s style adventure Knights and Bikes is finally coming out this summer. We sat down with developers Foam Sword Games to explore how they built a gorgeous coming-of-age story.
There aren't many feelings that match the sensation of flying by on two wheels, the wind in your hair and power at your feet. Gliding through neighborhoods, over forest trails and past hundreds of houses on a bike is a staple of so many childhoods. It's what Knights and Bikes is all about.
"We started talking years ago, sat outside the pub in England. We were talking about making something that was like Goonies as an RPG, where you would help a bunch of kids with different abilities have a grand adventure and have that coming of age feeling," says Foam Sword Games's Rex Crowle, who also worked on LittleBigPlanet. "That still underpins the whole project."
Knights and Bikes is a co-op adventure game that follows two kids, Nessa and Demelza, as they hunt for treasure and help islanders on the fictional British island of Penfurzy. The duo must complete challenges, explore different parts of the island and uncover mysteries in order to save their home. It originally raised over $125,000 on Kickstarter in early 2016, but is nearly at our doorstep. Knights and Bikes is coming to PC and PS4 this Summer, although other platforms may come later.
Every bit of Knights and Bikes, from customisable parts for your bike to the variety of environments you can explore across the island, was inspired by Crowle and his development partner Moo Yu's childhood memories. The structure of the game itself, where a new challenge can pop up at any minute, comes from how unpredictable kids can be.
"We wanted to capture that feeling of being a kid. One of the things kids don't have is a slow progression of thoughts," Crowle says. "Whatever they have is what they do, one thing after the next. All these competitions pop-up in the game, like the kids racing each other to the gift shop. A race track and finish line pop-up out of nowhere, making it feel so imaginative."
A tourist hotspot
Knights and Bikes takes place in Penfurzy, a fictional island based off a lesser known city in the United Kingdom. "The island itself is made up, but it's very much a place," Crowle explains. "It's based on Cornwall, a very beautiful part of the UK. It's where King Arthur is said to have lived. If you go and visit that as a kid, your mind just goes racing. You think 'where would the round table be?'"
Knights and Bikes' gorgeous hand-painted visuals do the island setting well. Bright reds and blues are sunken to deeper shades, as if they were under coastal pressure from salt and wind. It feels like a worn version of an English island that hasn't left the '80s.
"It's a big tourist spot, a lot of people trying to commercialise that beauty," Crowle says. "We tried to capitalise on that. It's got dense woodland, clifftops and little tourist attractions to visit, or break into. We set the game at the end of the summer in 1987, when all the tourists have gone home and the island is your kingdom."
You get to explore that kingdom over a six-day span that the game is set during, each day presents a new area of the island to explore. Some days focus on walking through the woods, while others are done completely on the back of a bike. The strength of Knights and Bikes is in its varied types of gameplay.
Bikes and knights
As the title Knights and Bikes would suggest, bicycles are a significant part of the adventure. Crowle and Yu originally envisioned Knights and Bikes to be like Earthbound with bikes. Once they learned that Earthbound actually had bikes when it originally came out in 1994, even though they could only go in four directions, they knew their bikes had to be far more fluid and exciting to ride.
"It feels different when you're on a bike. You're empowered," Yu says. "You can just boost through enemies when you're on your bike, where you have to improvise more when you're on foot when you fight, doing stuff like throwing frisbees."
"Earthbound is one of my specific memories. I'd forgotten they had bikes in the game," Crowle adds. "I thought we were making Earthbound with bikes and I got a bit sad, but our bikes would have far more versatility."
Bikes, a fantastical English island and a charming story all go back to Crowle and Yu's past. They've put part of themselves into the game to help make it an intimate adventure on two wheels. "Nostalgic is a heavy thing. We wanted to go into childhood and touch those universal points of coming of age," Crowle says. "Some of those things you realise you do keep in your life later on. We're still working in the game industry and games were a big part of our lives when we were kids. It's about trying to capture that feeling again."
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