Video game genres can be a messy subject to parse. Labels like "shooter" and "RPG" are umbrellas for varied experiences, meanwhile genres named after specific franchises like metroidvania or soulslike often have inconsistent requirements. This becomes tricker for multi-hyphenates like The Knight Witch, a newly released indie game that combines metroidvania-style exploration with twin-stick shoot 'em up combat and deck-building mechanics.The Knight Witch did not start out this way, it was largely the influence of game director Kevin Sarda Perez that led Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team toward its "interesting mix of things." While Perez said The Knight Witch "sounds muddled" using current genre descriptors, he feels the end result could define its own unique genre if someone were to give it a name. Game Rant spoke to Perez, art director Enrique Corts, and programmer Jorge Fernandez Sanchez about designing an industry partnership 10 years in the making.
Super Mega Team's Ever-Expanding Scope
Corts is a true veteran game artist, having gotten his start at Team17 on 2003's Worms 3D. After hitting a number of studios around the world, leaving his mark on titles like Plants vs. Zombies at PopCap, he helped established Super Mega Team around 2010. It opened with a focus on casual mobile games like Pro Zombie Soccer and Supermagical, projects that were "cheap and easy" to take advantage of the new smartphone market. "Pretty much everyone with a computer in their homes could make a game and put it out there to see some sales," he said.
However, the small studio was always interested in "hardcore" console and PC games, starting pre-production on its first non-mobile title Rise & Shine by 2012. Corts said a distaste for the burgeoning "free-to-play" monetization model made it easier to switch over, with Rise & Shine being published by Adult Swim Games in 2017.
Around the same time as Super Mega Team opened, Perez received his Master's in game development and would become a co-founder of Beautifun Games, which debuted with Nihilumbra. He and Corts met as "pioneering indies" in a then-empty industry and talked about the possibility of working together. However, Perez would first move to Tequila Works, becoming lead game designer on Rime and narrative director on the originally Stadia-exclusive Gylt.
Sanchez feels like a child by comparison, joining The Knight Witch in 2020 as his "first baby" since graduating from University. He said he's especially cognizant of his industry veteran mentors considering they had a part in defining his love of gaming. Corts worked on Sony EyeToy games as a senior concept artist for Kuju Entertainment from 2004 to 2006; games Sanchez remembers playing when he was 10 years old.
"It's crazy, I'm constantly improving myself, and probably one day I'll be talking to a little kid that started playing video games with The Knight Witch. I think that's one of the most beautiful things that can happen to you in this industry."
How The Knight Witch Balances Myriad Mechanics
While Corts said Super Mega Team's staff has not grown immensely since the early aughts, its mission and project scope has. The Knight Witch began as a "straightforward shooter" developed by three people, but its ambition and team size grew after landing publisher Team17 (a "funny" full-circle moment for Corts). Perez had seen the three-person demo while at Tequila, and "couldn't stop thinking" about the idea of combining the metroidvania with another card-combat deck-builder that Super Mega Team had on its back burner.
Perez applied for the director position (though he was "offended" to only hear about it through Twitter) and came up with a formal proposal to mesh these genres together by using cards as a reward for exploring.
"Metroidvanias sometimes lack a variety of rewards, you often just pick up something that will let you increase your amount of arrows by one. They're segmented out because you can put rewards everywhere [...] I thought a deck-building system would be a great addition to the genre."
While the idea was "a little weird and hard to understand" at first, prototypes helped The Knight Witch shine. Unlike traditional shmups such as Gradius or DonPachi, each new card isn't a straightforward power-up. There are over 40 spellcards across four styles: Destruction, Conjuration, Weapons, and Trickster. Players have the freedom to build their deck in any way for powerful attacks or benefits like clearing the screen of bullets, but they can also ignore that system and rely on Weapon cards that merely augment its core twin-stick shooter combat.
The Knight Witch's "streamlined" metroidvania design is reminiscent of Iconoclasts or Shantae, according to Perez, with linear story levels that benefit from backtracking as players receive permanent "key-unlock" mechanics like a sword attack. Players will never have to worry about making sure they have the right card, because Super Mega Team felt forcing people to rotate in certain strategies wasn't fun.
In fact, boss encounters were designed and programmed together to make sure they were "challenging" without having one winning strategy. Sanchez said the team knows players might hate certain bosses, but Perez assures that any skill level can overcome the challenge with proper strategizing or use of The Knight Witch's accessibility features and old-school cheats menu.
The Knight Witch Lets People Play Their Way
Focusing on deck-builder elements led The Knight Witch away from other systems that might take up a player's mental load: there are no skill trees or stat-changing inventory items, for example. Experience points are accrued through narrative beats to avoid grinding, and ultimately players are always given the means of catching up to max level. "We're all players, we like metroidvanias - we don't want content to be blocked if you do something wrong or leave an area before you find whatever," Perez said.
Freedom of choice is at the center of The Knight Witch's blended genres, which is exemplified by how all three devs approach deck-building. Corts focuses on Weapons, preferring to shoot his way out of a jam with more "classic" power-ups like triple shots. This "Knight" build is contrasted by Sanchez, who builds "Witch" decks that let him cycle to his highest damage-dealing, most mana-intensive Destruction cards as often as possible.
Perez is somewhat in the middle, having played almost every variant while designing and balancing the game - he said this is the first time he hasn't gotten sick of playing mid-development. He prefers setting up trick shots that chain together lingering bomb or shield attacks, ambushing enemies that come his way to "defeat them the instant they appear with the most style possible."
All three members of Super Mega Team feel the game has had a "refreshing" positive reception leading up to release, especially after preparing Sanchez for the fact that most games receive some vitriol regardless of quality. "After working in the industry for a while, you know that when you put something out in the wild, you'll get some hate," Corts said. Perez feels the studio's focus on putting fans first by allowing them to play however they want is one of The Knight Witch's greatest successes.
"I think when people don't like aspects of the game - which is absolutely normal - they can just ignore it a little and focus on something else. The experience at the end is different for everybody."
The Knight Witch is available now on PC and Switch. PS4, PS5, Windows 10, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S versions are scheduled to release December 2, 2022.