Hello ladies and gentlemen, today I'll be telling you how this game came to be and what I had in mind when creating it.
So what was I thinking when I decided to make Knight Estate? My first game. After many years of trying and failing to become a game developer, I finally decided to give it another attempt.
It's pretty common in the game dev community to be advised that you shouldn't make your "dream game" as your first game. And that advice stands even if you’ve got tons of programming experience or "non-solo" game dev experience, mainly because you might not be able to properly estimate the scope of the project.
But here’s the thing. It’s hard to expect people to care about a game I openly admit wasn’t something I cared deeply about myself. From the get-go, I knew I wasn’t going to make a small game just for the sake of it, or because I had no experience. It had to be something I liked, complex, or at least something inspired by projects I loved.
That’s when I knew I was in hot soup. Due to my background as an artist, it would’ve probably made more sense to make a game that relied heavily on visuals and animation. I probably would’ve had an easier time. But instead, I had this fire in me to make a game rich in mechanics. Those are the kinds of games I love, strategy and all that.
So I got to work. At the time, as I’ve said a million times, I was really inspired by Crusader Kings 3. I had also been playing around with some "similar" mobile games, and the one that stood out to me in terms of mechanics was BitLife. I wanted to borrow BitLife's controls and mix them with the depth of CK3.
And of course, being an artist, I couldn’t just leave it there. I needed to add some flair. The characters had to look realistic, not cartoonish. The UI needed to feel polished, with shiny metallic touches and bits of wooden design here and there. Since the game would have a map, I wanted it to look beautiful, but I didn’t want to go full 3D. So I made a map with topographical shading, added cloud textures that hovered above it, and I thought it looked really cool. That cloud effect is straight from CK3.
Here’s the funny part. Most of the graphics were done, but the game barely worked. My artistic side had clearly taken the wheel. It was just so easy to avoid coding by making more visuals. In the beginning, I really struggled to put my drawing tablet aside and focus on the code. It felt completely unnatural.
Another fun fact, I spent from May to July 2024 trying to come up with a name. At one point, I had named the game Gloryhound. Looking back, I’m very glad I changed it to Knight Estate.
In Part 2, I’ll tell you all about the chaos that followed when I finally brought in people to test the game.