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feedback impacted the immersion of gameplay.” While Kena started out on Unity, development soon shifted over to Unreal Engine for a myriad of reasons, including a focus on art, and a lack of code know-how. “Ultimately, we looked to Unreal because at the time it had more tools for artists to create content,” explains Grier. “The workflow in Unreal shared some similarities to our VFX pipelines and our team picked it up relatively quickly. The introduction of the blueprint tools in the engine also allowed us to prototype quickly and effectively without the need for significant engineering support. “During the prototype development, our team was very small and unfortunately, we did not have any programmers in-house at the studio. Ultimately, we needed a really strong engineering team to create the game but prior to funding we had to work with what we had. Unreal allowed us to maximise the strengths of our prototype team.”


STARTING OVER


“If we had to start over again on Kena, I’d do a lot of things differently,” muses Grier. “As a first game, we made plenty of mistakes, but the most important thing is to learn from them. If we were to start over, we’d try to plan features in more detail on paper before standing up certain systems. Iteration is much easier in this phase. We also would have loved to dedicate more resources that could empower artists and designers.


your game, as they do when getting things right at the beginning.


“The last 10-15%, to get the game up to shipping


quality, is going to be really hard and will take longer than expected. Try to build in contingency for that last push,” says Grier. “Also, as an indie developer, you can’t forget about allotting time to marketing your game. Plan ahead for trailers and promotional content. Don’t underestimate the amount of time needed to create quality marketing materials. They are really important to help tell your story and share what makes your game worth playing.”


Grier has been vocal in other interviews about the fact that the studio often delayed QA on Kena in order to present higher quality software to testers, which he admits was probably a mistake.


“During development we often found ourselves feeling like we needed to push back playtesting to ‘sneak’ features in, or polish elements of the game,” he explains. “It’s always a balance, but we definitely waited too long while working on Kena. So, one of the obvious learnings for us was to get people playing the game even when it feels too early. Another learning was the feedback even on unfinished features can be really helpful to guide decisions later in development.”


“We did a lot of tedious work on Kena that could have been mitigated by investment in better tools early on. We’re also very used to verbal communication working well with a small team, but going through development during COVID really exposed the limitations of our communication style. We learned the value of effective documentation throughout development, but we really wish we had started documenting things more thoroughly early on.”


Other lessons learned involve planning just as much for at the end of development when you have to sell


Overall though, the studio co-founder is happy with the way Kena has been received by players. Sadly, he’s also tight-lipped on what the studio is working on next, outside of confirming what might be obvious – that the team has already started throwing ideas around. “It was amazing to see the positive response from players and fans – it definitely made it all worth it,” explains Grier. “In particular, many players expressed an interest in exploring more of the world, the history, and Kena’s backstory, which really touched us given the game’s focus on story and character. It gives us more confidence to continue diving deep next time, and continue pushing those aspects forward.


“While we supported Kena last year for our Steam launch and Anniversary DLC we continued exploring new concepts and ideas for our next project. We have not settled on exactly what we are going to develop but we are definitely excited to continue making more games.”


February/March 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 57


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