‘Terrible Fate’, which went viral back in 2016. The short was well made and actually helped the team with the recognition it needed from prospective development partners in the games industry. “The success of the Terrible Fate film certainly helped when we were pitching Kena,” affirms Grier. “Because we were new to the game development world, most people were not familiar with Ember Lab as a studio. However, we could usually mention the Terrible Fate short and people would instantly recognize the work. This helped us build a bit of an identity as we were trying to share insights about the studio and build excitement around our new project.” Positive associations aside, Kena was still being developed by a green developer without much experience, so making a strong prototype and pitch-deck was important when it came to getting funding, and ultimately led to a team up with PlayStation. “Pitching and fundraising is always hard. When we pitched Kena, we were an unproven team taking on an ambitious project and had never made a game before,” says Grier. “In addition to our pitch materials we had a strong prototype that really helped build some confidence in our team’s abilities. Even with those materials we had a lot of convincing to do and it took us about ten months to secure funding. But, ultimately we found an amazing partner in PlayStation who believed in the team and gave us tremendous support along our journey.”
GAME FEEL PRIORITIES While good animation was a given from Ember Lab, making sure that the game felt good to play was understandably a focus for the studio right from the start. “Character control was a key priority early on. We wanted to make sure playing as Kena felt rewarding, responsive, and fun to control,” says Grier. “Another important aspect was finding ways to make sure Kena’s relationship with her spirit companions felt integrated and
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cohesive. Our goal was to make Kena feel at her best when she and the Rot work together to defeat enemies, solve puzzles, and navigate the world. We put a lot of resources into environmental interactions with the Rot to really bring this home.”
The balance between putting a spotlight on good, high- quality animation and still ensuring that the player would have fun with the gameplay took a while, and play-testing was crucial as they made changes. “Our animation team did an amazing job learning to adjust and improve their animation style to always prioritise player feel and Kena’s responsiveness,” explains Grier. “The team spent a lot of time tuning Kena’s move set and attacks to make sure the character controller felt fluid and fun to play. Testing player feedback and iteration were the key to creating Kena’s move set. It was a detailed process, but one that we felt was critical to the overall quality of the experience.”
The earliest versions of Kena: Bridge of Spirits had lots and lots of resource bars to keep track of, and the development team ultimately simplified the systems. Making things less complex in order to make the combat more satisfying in the moment-to-moment also meant a player’s focus would be more on the beauty of the game world and its inhabitants than a complicated on-screen UI, or the stress of resource management. “We always knew that we wanted to lean towards a subtle UI direction with visual feedback in the world as primary indicators,” says Grier. “It was a goal of ours from the beginning, but we weren’t able to get there initially because we needed to wait until more of the art and environmental assets were complete before we could determine how to integrate this feedback without needing as many complex UI systems. These changes came in toward the end of development and elevated the experience. We were really happy with how the visual
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