Good Knight Bullet Hell Buttclenching Action is out as Early Access demo on Itch io!

Good Knight Bullet Hell!

#ButtClenching Action

"Philippines' Best Desktop and Console Game" - GDAP GameOn 2019 Awards

"Philippines' Most Innovative Game" - GDAP GameOn 2019 Awards

"Best Indie Game of ESGS" - GG Network, 2019

"Most Popular Indie Game of ESGS" - GMA Network, 2018

"A game for the community, by the community" - Gosh Darn Geeky, 2019

Download the early access here: https://tinyurl.com/GoodKnightGame
Its free don't worry no need to pirate! Heck even if you did we would still help you out, all fans are welcome.

COME JOIN US AT DISCORD XD
discord.gg/k8JXm3Z

But we appreciate donations if you guys enjoyed it. As filipino devs we're really having a hard time even paying our rent.

We'll reward everyone who has donated ala crowdfunding (see page).
You don't have money but you want to support? Share it with your friends!, spreading the word is enough.

What is Good Knight Bullet Hell?

A small team of developers, residing in Baguio City in the Philippines, an Iraqi Videogame Artist and Game Designer (Zaid Al-Shaheed), Filipino Game Developer/ Designer (Alex Valdez), Filipina Artist (Jeff Molina), as well as Music Composer (Ramon Nario).

A small team of developers, residing in Baguio City in the Philippines, an Iraqi Videogame Artist and Game Designer (Zaid Al-Shaheed), Filipino Game Developer/ Designer (Alex Valdez), Filipina Artist (Jeff Molina), as well as Music Composer (Ramon Nario).

Zaid is a Bachelor in 3D Animation, and has resided in the Philippines for 6 years, after relocating to the country as a refugee from Iraq. He has been working on game development since 2011; doing concept art, 2D art, 3D art, animation, and more. Zaid has worked on titles such as Loot & Glory, Yurei Ninja, and What Bread!? for Tabletop, IOS, and Android.

Late 2018, Zaid and his friend Alex decided to strike out and work on a game of their own Called Good Knight. It was a humble, small budgeted project, that grew bigger and bigger as it went. We started on trying to get a demo ready for the ESGS event in 2018. The ESGS is one of the biggest gaming conventions in Southeast Asia!

The Electronic Sports and Gaming Summit, otherwise known as the ESGS, combined the elements of competition in gaming with a chance to showcase what set us apart from other games.

Several companies as well as different gaming organizations that organizing e-Sports Tournaments, both local and international, have shown interest in Good Knight, while wanting to sell their latest and upcoming games and or products to the general public.

Recently at the Indie Fiesta at ESGS, Good Knight was featured as one of the highlights of the show. The game attracted a huge audience and was featured on such local news outlets such as SiriusGaming, DaGeeks.com, Whatsageeks.com, and even the Main-stream Media site Gmanetwork.com. The team behind Good Knight have continued their work on the game all the way through Global Game Jam 2019.

Global Game Jam, also referred to as GGJ, is an annual gaming conference, where new and established Gaming Developers get together to show off their new and exciting projects! Inspired by the Nordic Game Jam, and founded by the talented Susan Gold, Ian Schreiber, Gorm Lai, and Foaad Khosmood, it was originally created under the International Game Developers Association, to bring together the elements of Creativity, Collaboration, and Experimentation! At each booth, participants gather and form ideas, small groups, and build new innovative games, with the hopes of presenting them to their peers and the global community at large... Not only doing so collectively, but in a VERY limited time span!

As of 2013, the GGJ has been managed by the Global Game Jam Incorporated. The Current and past Board Directors, which include the founders Elonka Hunin, Lindsay Grace, and Zuraid Buter. During January 2019, the GGJ managed to generate teams in over 860 sites, with over 113 countries participating! These groups, IN ONLY ONE WEEKEND, managed to create 9,010 games! That's crazy!!! During this event, Good Knight won the Site Award, for being the most innovative game at the VR Philippines Global Game Jam "VR Edition". and were able to showcase the game "Mama Mo" at the SM CyberZone, which is an event hosted by the Biggest Megamall in the Philippines!

Good Knight’s Zaid and Alex, have continued working on the project while interested investors backed it originally. A while later, Jeff Molina joined the team as an Assistant Artist, to help flesh out Good Knight. They have been working together, to turn this project into a professionally polished product, that will meet the standards of a Triple A game, using software like Blender Open Source and the Unity Engine. Recently, Ramon Nario, the Fresh Music Talent, joined the team which gave Good Knight a much-needed audio flare! The music he was able to create, has brought Good Knight to a new level of entertainment and quality!

Unfortunately, at this point in development, Team Good Knight and their financial investors had to part ways due to differences in opinion regarding the quality of the game and the development cycle required to bring such a high-quality product to market. Team Good Knight is now back to being a completely Indie product, with no reservations or compromises to our core values!

With ESGS 2019 quickly approaching, Team Good Knight, was worried about how people might receive the game. Thankfully the reception to Good Knight was phenomenal! Over 150 player during our three days at ESGS, played the demo. With high praises of our High Score tracking, many elite gamers tried to break each-other’s scores. This felt like the old arcade days again! The highest quality competitors returned to our booth, time and time again, to surpass each other’s records! Even more exciting than this, was the amount of spectators who peered over each-other’s shoulders, to watch the games in progress, while waiting for their turn!

Gaming Media outlets, as well as Streamers and Pro Players were praising this game for its simplicity to start, yet deep gameplay curve. Bregz Gaming, GG Network, as well as returning independent gamers returned to our booth to attempt one another. All were impressed with the demo. The Taipei Game Show organizers were amazed with Good Knight's re-playability and the fluidity of the combat mechanics. Good Knight was a hit with the Indie arena at ESGS 2019!

To NO surprise, Good Knight - Bullet Hell is now a GameOn 2019 Nominee!

Good Knight is a One-Button Bullet Hell! It is set in a Gothic Steampunk Philippines! A Spanish Knight set his foot into this unique hell, and the only thing keeping him from death is a unique gameplay mechanic which sets a completely new twist on the Bullet Hell genre of games. With a simple, yet unique control scheme, you evade "bullets" by tapping a single button. This button changes the directions of the Knight while simultaneously slashing any and all enemies that get to close. You can even hold the button down and aim Projectiles at the enemy with the analog stick. Good Knight is a mix between Skill based games that rely on focus and muscle memory, combined with Puzzle elements that really brought the Bullet Hell genre to the next level!

The Good Knight Team is preparing for Crowd-funded backing via IndieGogo and Itch.io campaigns, which will be able to allow us to continue development of Good Kngiht. We are currently planning on bringing this wonderfully fun game to Steam, the Nintendo Switch, the PS4, and Android phones and tablets.

For more information on the Good Knight Team or the Good Knight Game, please visit the following pages:

FaceBook : https://www.facebook.com/GoodKnightGame
Twitter : https://twitter.com/GoodKnightHell

Written by Zaid Al-Shaheed
Edit by Corey Krattli

Good Knight Character Development Process.

GOOD KNIGHT KNIGHT Creation Process!!!

Hello there! 

After like Ages of no posting and just can't keep up to update the blog! here is some good post showcasing the whole process of Developing the Knight Protagonist of GoodKnight Game.

Early Prototype :

In the Beginning we were not sure which direction we are going with when it comes to art style or design, it was a bit more of experimental stage, so I took a direction which I was more comfortable with, Designing a simple character that will show nice flat shaded style to give a 2D illusion for a 3D model.

Started the model with a simple blocking of the character silhouette to get as close as possible to the concept, from there I just Painted it inside Blender with High Opacity Straight Curve Brush.

After that moved to rigging using Rigify tools in blender in Legacy mode as it did not need a complex rig for the model, removed the fingers from the rig as well and Rigging was done, nothing too complex. 

Animation was very simple fun looking run cycle with lots of energy to give the character that feel of urgency as he is after all Running away from a storm of bullets coming to his direction, and with a couple of few other animations for having the option to do something else and the model was ready for Unity.


After we got a positive reception for the Prototype and we had more time to think of where the game over all look and feel is going, we decided to redesign the knight from the ground out but still few elements of the old design are still intact. 

Concept Art :

The head was the iconic look of the Knight, the Horns, the Visor and hidden face were the major elements that we wanted to keep.

We started with Many rough sketches exploring different designs while we still kept in mind those elements ( the Horns, The visor and the face ) 

After finding out our design, we did a quick coloring for the concept to make sure everything looks and feels right, and we kept polishing and tweaking the design until we found what we wanted.

Modeling :

I used Blender 2.79 for the process

Started the modeling process using a rough model sheet to give the estimate over all proportions as a guide. 

Blocked the model and kept it as lowpoly as possible as one of the main target platform is Mobile as much as we want it for PC and for performance, as the game needs more processing power for the bullets and collision detection so we kept it as low as it can be while it still looks clean and polished.

For my workflow to sculpting is I give the lowpoly as much major details as possible, from topology flow for deformation to silhouette and where the light will cast shadow for the major areas.

Applying Multi-Tris Modifier and sculpting the character's details while not affecting the silhouette much as that was finalized in the Modeling process.

I use the Multi-Res Modifier for the sculpt to help me speed things up as I usually end up skipping retopology all together if we are 100% sure that this is the concept and no major changes are needed.

To Fine out more about Multi-Res modifier aka ( Multi Resolution ) visit this link : Multiresolution Blender Doc

Texturing :

After Sculpting all the details, Unwrapped the character using UV maps for different parts ( Body, Helm, cloth ) to give it more details in the baking process and as he is the main character he needs a bit more Juice power to bring out his flashy look.

Applied baking the maps from Blender internal engine using Bake From MultiTris option, Baking Ambient Occlusion, Normal and Displacement map to get as much details as possible from the Sculpt.

Taking those Maps to Clip Studio Paint and Applying Gradient Map to different to get as close as possible to the concept's feel and look, followed by Paint over, shifting between Blender and Clip Studio Paint to the Texture. 

The model was starting to look good and polished and we called the model done.

Rigging :

Again Rigging was simple, I used Blender Rigify in Legacy Mode and removed the fingers, applied the rig to the model in Separate parts ( Belt, Helmet, Visor, cloth, etc ) with Automatic weights, doing that will help the algorithm have a more accurate weight and saves the pain of doing paintweights but might have some minor cleaning, some times if there are over lapping parts the algorithm will get confused when Automatic Paint weight is applied.

Animation : 

Followed the Similar idea for the Run as I did for the previous Prototype Knight "simple fun looking run cycle with lots of energy to give the character that feel of urgency".

Added few other animations such as a jump animation to filp the character's direction and Death animation and few more for variation, and the Knight was Good to GO!, you saw what I did there? Knight? Good? XD sorry for that.

So this is the Pipeline that is followed for all of our assets in general, I hope that was helpful or at least interesting read to help you with your next project. 

Follow us for more GoodKnight updates on Twitter and Facebook 

Twitter :  https://twitter.com/GoodKnightTTI

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/GoodKnightGame

And you can check out our teaser trailer here : GoodKnight Game Teaser Trailer

Here is the Knight with a Glorious Stache when I was testing Blender 2.8 :D

and Have a Fantastic Day Ahead!