K’nossos, a Point n’ Click Adventure Title by Svarun Games

K’nossos, a Point n’ Click Adventure Title by Svarun Games


ABOUT US
Svarun Games is an independent group of dedicated individuals committed to creating contemporary 2D adventure game titles in the vein of the most well-known classics of the genre. We tend to view the computer games more as an art form than a form of entertainment, more as a labor of love than the means of earning money. We concentrate on creating atmosphere, immersion and quality storytelling.

Our greatest success so far is the completion of the prologue of our first game title - Vsevolod. Contrary to some rumors, the project is, due to immense problems it presented to our small team at the moment, merely put on hold - we plan to tackle the issue immediately upon completion of K’nossos. Prologue of the game may be downloaded here: http://vsevolod.svarungames.com/Vsevolod-Prologue.zip

ABOUT PROJECT
K’nossos is an independent game development endeavor run by Nikola Pacek-Vetnic, the head of Svarun Games, and Nico Blanke, previously of Apeiron Studios engaged in the fan sequel to the cult classic "Day of the Tentacle" (you may find the project here). With this project we are aiming at creating a contemporary 2D Point n’ Click adventure game with strong emphasis on unique atmosphere, immersing puzzles and gripping storyline.

K’nossos emerged as a result of a collision of several fairly diverse streams of thought. Initially, we were inspired by the old-school adventure games, namely those whose mechanics are based on exploration, dialogue, item handling and object manipulation. Artistically, we wanted to set this game in a hand painted world best described as the marriage of art of Vasily Kandinsky and third dimension. Lonely, unsettling, and at times outright bizarre atmosphere of titles such as Kentucky Route Zero was also desirable. Finally, our favorite sci-fi reads like Dune, Chronicles of Amber, A Stranger in a Strange Land, etc. influenced the storyline which provided the kinetic energy needed to set our hero in motion.



Even though the project has set out as a labor of love, we hope to move it into commercial arena as soon as possible. Our hopes are naturally directed at one or other form of crowd funding. However, as such an enterprise requires a substantial following, we are still biding our time before moving onto next phase of our plan. When that moment comes - you will naturally be the first to know.

Given the capabilities of the engine we are using, we are planning to release the game on Windows, OSX and Linux. iOS and Android versions are in consideration.

Even though it is never easy to set any dates to a project such as this one, on the grounds of us being that much engaged with it as we are, we dare give it a try: January 2016 is when we expect to see all the graphical assets complete. Naturally, programming will follow suit and the rest of the project (dialogues, music, SFX) are not considered problematic.



GAMEPLAY
Being a release in the vein of classical adventure games, K’nossos will play much like most of the other titles in the genre. The character, viewed from 3rd person, will traverse the locations presented in side-view.

Left mouse click will be used generally for moving and various interactions (talking, picking up, using, and so on), while the Right mouse click will generally be used for fetching details regarding various items within game world or inventory.

The game will feature a classic inventory and an in-game journal, filled out automatically following the important discoveries made by the player.

Player character will at all times be followed by an Orb which, besides being an important plot element, is also a unique gameplay device. Player will have four of Orb’s abilities at his/her disposal: Heat, Melt, Weld and Cut.

Finally, game also features special zoom areas and mini-games tightly connected to the setting of the location in question.

FEATURES
The game features:
• unique art style
• 3D pre-rendered and subsequently hand painted backgrounds
• locations presented in extremely high resolution (3400x1700, and more)
• 3D pre-rendered characters
• classical Point n’ Click adventure gameplay
• an interesting and immersive storyline
• tons and tons of dialogues and other lines of text
• a cross-genre soundtrack that mixes electronic and classical resources

ENGINE
For our game we have chosen the WME Lite engine. In the words of its author, WME Lite “is a fork of the original Wintermute Engine 1.x. The code has been modified to be easily portable to other platforms.”

The engine, alongside the accompanying documentation, may be freely downloaded at: http://res.dead-code.org/doku.php/wmelite:start

IS THERE A WAY A PERSON COULD HELP YOU OUT?
Yes. We are of course in need of certain professions more than others, but in general we would like to hear what each and every one of you has to say and offer. Please write to nikola.pacek.vetnic@gmail.com

Thankyou for posting. It looks intriguing.

Thanks for letting us know. Please keep us informed of your progress. The art work is fantastic

Best of luck with your endeaver.

hatshepsut

@Gelert: Pleasure's all ours.

@hatshepsut: You're welcome. Thank you for the compliment and kind wishes!

Here is a fragment of our weekly media release, please check the full package at our Facebook page which you may find here: https://www.facebook.com/SvarunGames



Also, guys at Adventure Gamers were kind enough to dedicate an article to our effort, read the whole thing here: http://www.adventuregamers.com/news/view/27956

Another week, another art release:

After not hearing from us for quite a while, we are happy to get back to you with some important news.

During the past few months, the K'nossos project has seen some major positive changes and developments. First and most important of all, a dear friend and a long-time collaborator Nico Blanke (associated with numerous indie adventure titles, the most famous of which is probably "The Return of the Tentacle") has joined the project as a programmer. He has been working hard on the game lately, and we expect to soon be able to present at least the in-game footage, if not an actual playable demo to the public.

Character-wise, we have abandoned the pre-rendered 3D char approach and are now investigating he possibilities of using a hand-drawn character, similar to what we did in our previous title "Vsevolod". We'll keep you updated as we make (or don't make) progress.

Location design and 3d modelling has moved well beyond the half-way milestone for the entire game. We are currently keeping ourselves busy with Chapter IV.

And the last but not least, we got the project website going which you may visit at: http://www.svarungames.com/



All in all, things are looking good, we are moving along and would be happy to see you all at the end of the journey. Until next major news release, enjoy!

[Svarun Games]

Thanks for the update. It's looking good.

hatshepsut

Thanks hatshepsut, we're doing our best

A new K'nossos track is up on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/nikolapacekvetnic/knossos-bronea

And another (hopefully) delicious snippet for you all, our first YouTube upload! Enjoy, comment, share:

Hello guys!

Hope you've all been doing well, it's time for our (more or less) regular weekly update.

So, after a great many days of painstaking modeling, animating, rendering, compositing and assembling, we can finally present you with the in-game appearance of the opening location of K'nossos - this time in moving images! Please check out the video on YouTube:


In other news, we are spending the upcoming weekend shooting footage of our player character, which will be followed by material from the set as well as the introduction of our latest addition to the team, who will be engaging himself with the character design and animation.

Best of luck to you and thank you for your attention!

Excellent job, good luck with this project. Kudos on mastering the WME engine. I tried it, but found it a bit complicated for my feeble brain. Keep us posted

Thanks, man I am (THANK GOD) not doing the programming bit - my experiences are pretty much the same Luckily, Nico Blanke of Apeiron Studios, our programmer, has been tampering with it for almost ten years as far as I know, so I guess there are few secrets left for him in that avenue... We'll be updating you with the progress, thank you for the attention, means a world to us!

Hello everyone!

Another (hopefully) tasty late night preview has been whipped up for you, just so we end a productive week on a high note Have look at our WIP Chapter IV location, still in early modelling stages obviously:


And this is how it would appear in-game more or less:

More updates on this as we go, be sure to visit all our media outlets to keep yourself in the loop.

Wow, almost a year with no updates... Although it's not very responsible of us, that doesn't mean we've been idly sitting at our desks for 12 months sipping tea. On the contrary!

In short, almost all of the locations are modeled and are now being rendered and painter/processed in 2D; we are well into building the Prologue section of the game, with Tutorial being completed and playable; a video showing Tutorial run is due soon, we are actually completing the SFX and then we are ready to go.

To make sure you don't fall out of the loop even when we mess up (which we promise not to in the future), join us at Facebook and Twitter:
https://www.facebook.com/SvarunGames
https://twitter.com/SvarunGames

Enjoy our new Teaser video showing sights and sounds of Prologue section of K'NOSSOS:


Full track is available over at our composer's SoundCloud:
[K'NOSSOS] Official Soundtrack, by Nikola Pacek-Vetnic - Awakening (@SoundCloud)

New music video / teaser video dual-class creation by Svarun Games and its K'NOSSOS team is up:


And in case you can't be bothered with any more videos today, here's a link to the track:
K'NOSSOS Official Soundtrack - Cryonics @ SoundCloud

The first gameplay video of K’NOSSOS is live on YouTube! Enjoy!

Hey guys, we just uploaded our Imgur with a bunch of pictures, check 'em out: https://imgur.com/a/KxTPO