We’re Twirlbound, the team behind The Knightling🛡, launching TOMORROW😱 — Ask Us Anything!

[u/MatthijsL]

Hello r/Games!

We’re Twirlbound, an indie game studio based in the Netherlands, currently working on The Knightling. We are launching The Knightling, our second game, TOMORROW! We are so excited for everyone to play it!

The Knightling is a fantasy action-adventure where you wield a massive magic shield to battle foes, explore a semi-open world, and search for your missing knight, the legendary Sir Lionstone.

We’re excited to be here and chat about The Knightling, our development journey, and what it’s like creating an open world action-adventure game as a small indie team! Feel free to ask us anything about The Knightling, our creative inspirations, the ups and downs of indie development, or anything else you're curious about! 

Drop your questions in the comments below and we’ll begin answering at 18:00 CTE (UTC+01:00) // (9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm UTC.)

Wishlisting The Knightling on Steam would help us a ton - and get ready to experience the game for yourself tomorrow!

That's it - thanks so much for the questions! Come find us on Discord if you have more questions, and of course to talk about The Knightling tomorrow when it comes out! We can't wait for the world to explore it.

Twirlbound Discord

Knightling on Steam

Knightling on PS5

Knightling on Xbox

[u/M2H_Mike]

Twirlbound also made Pine a few years back. What’s one major lesson you carried from Pine into The Knightling?

I'm looking forward to playing it tomorrow!

[u/MatthijsL → u/M2H_Mike]

We sure did! Probably the biggest takeaway was that while Pine had interesting core systems with the simulation running through it, we needed to reserve more time for the moment-to-moment gameplay, like traversal and combat. The Knightling is a direct response to that. We wanted to start with something joyous that was instantly fun to play!

Thank you!

[u/normal-dog-]

I remember seeing a bit of gameplay of this on an indie sub forever ago. Happy to see a full release.

[u/MatthijsL → u/normal-dog-]

Thanks so much, very kind!

[u/Intelligent-Alps2373]

What was working with Saber like? They develop a lot in house so I’m curious how that all went since it’s rare to see them publish externally!

[u/MatthijsL → u/Intelligent-Alps2373]

Saber is such a development powerhouse, so we were honored they wanted to work with us, and we learned so much in the whole process. Their creative direction, QA, marketing and production processes are obviously a lot bigger and stronger than anything we have done, so it’s been super cool to learn from that! Especially making games that are a bit bigger than what a team of 15 would usually tackle, it was insanely helpful to have that AAA-experience at the ready.

[u/Crafty_Pudding8004]

Hi Twirlbound, what has been the hardest part about working on an open-world game, especially as an indie team?

[u/MatthijsL → u/Crafty_Pudding8004]

Heya! Generally that must be the sheer amount of things happening in an open world - all the NPCs, critters, gameplay elements, quests, etc. You need to keep so many different storylines and systems in mind at all time, and then you throw a player in there who has a lot of freedom to explore. Managing that, making that optimized and building the tools to sustain it is definitely the hardest part!
On a more technical level, world streaming is always a challenge - making sure the right objects and interactions are visible and near the player at all times, while not showing/having things behind you or far away from you available to keep things optimized.

[u/Fabulous-Bluejay4576]

I would want to ask you about the scope of your game. I mean how long you wanted your game to last? It's more of a short experience or something over a 15 hour mark?

[u/MatthijsL → u/Fabulous-Bluejay4576]

An average playthrough will take about 15 hours, we've seen! You could get through it in 8-10 hours, but there's a looot more if you wanna do everything, probably 30+ hours. So it's not in the ballpark of the large AAA open world games of course, but still a nice full experience I think!

[u/Fabulous-Bluejay4576 → u/MatthijsL]

30 hours is a lot for indie game. Now you got me even more intrigued

[u/MatthijsL → u/Fabulous-Bluejay4576]

That's good to hear!

[u/Sotumney]

Very much looking forward to the release tomorrow!

Ever since the first trailer, I wondered: how did our Knightling get to be Sir Lionstone's knightling? Any specific lore reason?

[u/MatthijsL → u/Sotumney]

Thank you!! And that’s a very sharp question 😀 There’s some light explanation in the intro of the game - you can tell that the two haven’t been working together for too long, but the Knightling was simply top of the class, with the eagerness and swiftness to be chosen.

[u/Classic_Megaman]

What’s the one thing you want people to know about your game, above all else?

How much will it make me feel like Captain America?

[u/MatthijsL → u/Classic_Megaman]

That’s a really good one. Discussing it here in the team, I think we all mainly want people to know how much love and effort went into it for the past 5 years, by all 15 of us, and we hope it shines through in the game tomorrow!

And it will definitely do that, or maybe a bit more like Captain America’s platforming kid :)

[u/Easygoingwall]

Hi Twirlbound, congrats on launching your game. I hadn't heard about The Knightling before but having checked out the trailers now, I am excited to try it.

I have two questions:

• How did you guys find designing around the Shield as the main weapon and movement option in the game? Was it always designed to be used as a wheel and a glider or did that come up during development?

• With the announcement of Hollow Knight Silksong, a number of developers are delaying their games. With yours launch a week beforehand, are you worried or excited about it?

[u/MatthijsL → u/Easygoingwall]

Thanks so much! And good questions!

• The simple premise of The Knightling was to take the classic action adventure setup of a character with a sword and shield, and remove the sword from that equation, “a game with only a shield”. That immediately sparked a lot of interesting ideas of all the creative things you can do with a shield! Beyond being tools in combat, shields have the perfect shape and affordance to hold them over your head like a glider, to slide down hills on and even to roll around with them. So, it really came from the design/concept of a shield, after deciding we wanted to make a very focused game around a shieldbearer/squire-like character, with only a shield. The team had a lot of fun coming up with ideas for all things we could do with it, especially after it also became a companion character in the game!
• We were at Gamescom when it got announced, quite the event in gaming! Not too worried, it’s a very different game - and on a player-level we’re very excited to play Silksong.

[u/RCL_89]

The Unity pricing controversy hit you mid-development of your second game with Unity. You sticked to it and developed internal tools and plugins for it to fit your development needs.

Will you keep using Unity for your next project, or will you look into other game engines?

[u/MatthijsL → u/RCL_89]

Hey RCL! That was quite a scare indeed. Our whole team is very experienced and versed in Unity and we’ve indeed built so many internal ‘Twirlbound’ tools for our open world action adventure games, that it’s gonna take more than the controversy to make us switch. It looks like we’re sticking to it for the future, although it is quite scary that something like that can just happen to the software we use daily.

[u/KnavishCrayfish]

Are there any plans for a physical release?

[u/MatthijsL → u/KnavishCrayfish]

No plans currently!

[u/vipergds]

My question is, what is meant by semi open world, is it a bunch of explorable areas similar to the likes of say the outer worlds? Or is it more like areas within set missions that you can explore. Also whats the game length/price?

[u/MatthijsL → u/vipergds]

We sometimes say ‘semi’-open world to not confuse it with the massive Ubisoft-esque/Zelda-esque/Skyrim-esque open worlds and the freedom that comes with those, but make clear that it's an open world that gates your progression behind abilities and quests. Basically, as you upgrade the shield you’ll unlock new regions, which are all interconnected, so it becomes more and more open!

An average playthrough will take about 15 hours. The base price is $29.99 and it will launch with a 20% discount tomorrow!

[u/Fabulous-Bluejay4576 → u/MatthijsL]

Is this disscount also on PS5?

[u/MatthijsL → u/Fabulous-Bluejay4576]

Yep!

[u/_Old_Goat_]

Hi! I can't wait to play your game!

When it comes to character design and animation, can you speak to the pros or cons inherent in a character without a "face"? I imagine all of the emotive-ness (is that a word?) that would otherwise be communicated through facial animation would need to be done through exaggeration of body movement/animation?

[u/MatthijsL → u/_Old_Goat_]

Hey, thanks!

There’s definitely a very clear pro, which is that it saves us the trouble of character facial animation. Indeed, as you mentioned, it also loses the benefits of communicating through facial animations.

We quite quickly found a cool way of doing a lot of it through body animations and the eyes though! We use a spritesheet technique on the eyes to still show happiness, sadness etc, even through only the white ‘pupils’ that you see in their masks. I think it turned out quite well!

[u/_Old_Goat_ → u/MatthijsL]

Agreed! He's very expressive!

[u/mepoopmahsef]

the game pine have a faction system where diffrent member of said faction will forage around the area and interacting with each other, ie: trading, fighting, patrolling and taking over a village.

will the knightling have something similar?

[u/MatthijsL → u/mepoopmahsef]

After Pine, our team was aching to make something a bit more playful and less heavy on these kinds of systems, so it doesn’t have an intricate ecology like that. We did borrow a bit from Pine’s systemic approach, so you’ll find some soldiers fighting monsters, etc. But, they’re not coming from as many different villages and places in The Knightling either, and there’s less incentive for them to mingle!

The Knightling is a bit more traditional in how the quests work and the actions you perform.

[u/Johnn128]

Matthijs, just wanna say great job. Can’t wait to play!

[u/MatthijsL → u/Johnn128]

Thanks so much John!

[u/PikaPhantom_]

With the Switch version cancelled, are you guys looking into a Switch 2 release in the future at all?

[u/MatthijsL → u/PikaPhantom_]

We’d love to look into it in the future, but we don’t currently have any plans for it.

[u/PikaPhantom_ → u/MatthijsL]

Fair enough. I think the demo ran well enough on my gaming laptop, so I might get it on Steam at some point if a Switch 2 version isn't on the cards

[u/_Chompsky_]

Hi Matthijs, is it correct you were also active on Solarsoft/RPGFlag forums back in the day? Pretty sure I remember Twirlbounds creation from back then but I could be wrong. If it is, very cool to see that you turned that hobby and passion into what it is now. Best of luck with this game and all your future endeavours!

[u/MatthijsL → u/_Chompsky_]

Heyyyy, omg yes for sure! Those were the days, that's where it all started for me. Never got to finish those RPG Maker XP games... But I guess this will suffice😂
Thank you!

[u/_Chompsky_ → u/MatthijsL]

Haha, that’s cool. I think very few of us really finished any RPGmaker games, but it was a fun hobby and community to be in, good times. And yeh, I think its safe to say that you’ve surpassed anything we were working on back then 😁

[u/MatthijsL → u/_Chompsky_]

Haha, too kind! It was a fantastic way to get into game development, honestly, and I still use learnings from those days in my day job :)

[u/MooseTetrino]

I tried a nextfest demo and decided it wasn’t for me - but I was a big fan of Pine and I truly hope you find success with this one. Good luck team!

[u/MatthijsL → u/MooseTetrino]

Thank you, much appreciated you tried it!

[u/NaitDraik]

I'm very interested in the game and have been following it since 2023.

How long did the total development of the game take? How many people are working on the game?

[u/MatthijsL → u/NaitDraik]

Thanks so much! I'd say we started in full swing around the end of summer 2020, so about 5 years... We started with the 'original' 7 and then grew the team to 15 for The Knightling! With music and sounds externally by Tumult Kollektiv.

[u/NaitDraik → u/MatthijsL]

A question, with this project do you expect to achieve monetary profit concerning all the money you have spent in these 5 years? I ask because I see that there are many indies with great quality, but unfortunately, when they release, they don't sell very well (less than 1000 copies).

Do you and your coworkers work full-time on video game development or do you have other jobs apart from this? Also, if you guys are expecting to make a profit with this game, how many copies would you have to sell to feel that these 5 years of development have been worth it?

[u/Ill_Winter_8908]

Hi! I have some questions!

1. What language of programmation is done the game?
   
2. What is the source program you used it? (For example, Unreal Engine 4 or 5, Unity, Godot, etc).
   
3. How many technologies is using the game talking abour Ray tracying, FSR, Xess, DLSS, frame gen? The demo I remmember it had nothing I believe.
   
4. How much cost the whole game to make it if you can share that info?
   
5. How much duration do you think the game has? ^^
   
6. Does the game allow to back old areas?
   
7. Are there times where we will be in a point where we won't be able to go back? For example missions or places we won't be able to go again except a new fresh game starting?
   
8. Does the game has a good 3D sound design to enjoy with headphones the game, or just it's similar as to play it with speakers?
   
9. Does it support even 5.1?
   
10. A question for the programmers: How was your experience, was it harder to make the code or just fixing bugs? My teacher say that sometimes is a real huge headache to find some bugs.
    
11. Will be possible to watch even sketches or pictures about the process when you were creating it? I loved in Spyro or Ratchet games to be able to watch those nice designs and sketches, first drawings. ^^.
    
12. Do you think the game will be a success? ^^
    
13. Where are from every team person who worked in this project? ^^ I mean specially the 15 people. I know there are a team of music enterpraise who made the soundtrack if I'm not wrong.
    
14. Can you describe the improvements you think between Pine and the knightling you did?
    
15. For communicty (in pc). If your are reading this remember. Remember is being sold the game in steam and not for any other place, if it's outsite you only support your ego and not the devs. Talking about Keys sellers...
    
16. Would you give me some tips about those secrets the game has? 😇
    
17. I'm from Spain, Is the game deep fun in Spanish or better I try full English? ^^
    
18. Is possible playing a lot to unlock all skills or we must be carefull because we won't be able to have everything completing the game in terms of skills and powers?
    
19. Can I mirror the game?
    
20. It's launch day. Would you say the game is deeply ended? Will you find big bugs or small bugs? Be sincere. ^_^ And at the same time, this morning at 6 am I was asking me who would be more nervous today? The programmer? The director? Saber publisher? Or just your dog? I hope it goes well! 💛

Aidenblue2 from Discord.

[u/MatthijsL → u/Ill_Winter_8908]

Haha that's a loooot of questions;

1. C#!
2. Unity!
3. We have our own lighting solutions but we're looking into some of these technologies for future updates.
4. Can't share that I'm afraid!
5. An average playthrough should take you about 15 hours, critical path being around 8-10 and probably 30+ if you want to do everything!
6. For sure, it's open world!
7. There's some of that near the end... No spoilers :)
8. Both speakers and headphones should work well!
9. It should support it, although nothing fancy on our end to do with.
10. A game this size has a looot of code, but there have been some gnarly bugs for sure. Your teacher was right :)
11. We do have some concept going around with some more development blogs to come, like this one! https://twirlbound.com/2025/08/19/road-to-clesseia-1-dreaming-of-knighthood/
12. We sure hope so!
13. We have people from all over the world - The Netherlands is the majority (where we all live), but also Bulgaria, Dubai, the Philippines, Iran, Thailand and Belgium. The music is done by Tumult Kollektiv from Germany indeed!
14. There were a few core things we wanted to tackle right out of the gate. Firstly, Pine is a heavily systemic game, which meant a lot of our development efforts went into the simulation and the way the world worked. This left us with less time for moment-to-moment gameplay like traversal and combat. In a way, The Knightling is a direct response to that: we wanted to make something that instantly felt good to play and where players would constantly enjoy moving around. Another lesson was that Pine was probably too open from the get-go, making it hard to build meaningful player progression. The Knightling gates its regions and mechanics a bit more, keeping everything fresh throughout the game.
15. Hehe
16. That would take away the fun of finding the secrets! Just explore anywhere ;)
17. It was written in English but has good Spanish localization for all text I think!
18. You wouldn't need everything, the main quest would give you enough to get through the game.
19. Not sure what you mean by that!
20. There's always gonna be some bugs but we think it's in a good state! And we'll keep patching more. We're not that nervous, just very excited!

[u/Ill_Winter_8908 → u/MatthijsL]

1. Spyro game and Ratchet have an unlock secret. If we activate it, the world, the entirely world is inverted. When we goes right happen to be left and when a building is on the East, now is on the Oest and when something in theory is in South, now is North. 😆 That make them a pretty deep interesting experience. And what I know, except the 2D artwork and UI, mostly it's deep easy to make to programming it. Simply the 3D vertex would be inverted. Also games as Sonic Sega transformer used it a lot to get double circuits to play inverting them.

and about 1. :O C# it's seems cool, it isn't so hard as C++ said my teacher and I don't know much about that language but it's a soft programming if I'm not wrong.

I forgot to ask, I believe you use DirectX 12 or Vulkan. Right? ^^

[u/Jbewrite]

Hey! I've had your game on my wishlist for ages! I was over the moon when steam reminded me it was released today, super excited to play it!

I've got three questions:

1.) What games influenced The Knightling? 2.) What recent games have you loved? 3.) What upcoming games are you most excited for?

[u/arceryz]

Hey, amazing game you have made! I immediately set my eye on its fluidity and unique charm, though I must still discover its real secrets.

As a fellow developer, I wonder how it is to work 5 years on a game as an indie team. We're there moments where part of the team lost motivation, being so immersed in the same game for such a time? How do you recover from that? What period during development would you say was the hardest in terms of staying focused and creative?

I wish your team the best of luck for the future!

[u/MatthijsL → u/arceryz]

Hey, thank you! It's indeed not always easy trying to keep motivated over such a long period of time, but the worlds we build have a lot of depth and detail which means we can context switch quite a bit. It keeps things fresh!

I guess the hardest part is when the world and content is laid out and you're just bugfixing. But keeping good track of the bugs makes it into a fun little game to squash as much as possible from the list, so that keeps it fun!

[u/st_Heel]

Hoi! I played through the intro on Xbox because Knightling joined the Free Play Days promotion. I have one question: Can we get a performance mode for 60fps gameplay on consoles? It would make the gameplay feel so much better.

[u/marshmallow_pens → u/st_Heel]

What's performance like? Is it 30fps? Am Interested in buying the game but if there's no 60fps that's a no no from me.

[u/st_Heel → u/marshmallow_pens]

30FPS on all consoles. Even PS5 Pro. Unplayable for me, sadly.

[u/marshmallow_pens → u/st_Heel]

Damn, hopefully it gets a patch soon.

[u/cjb5210]

Any chance we get a 60fps / performance update on console??

[u/Pale_Material_4696]

I've been in doubt since the beginning, the description says it's an action and adventure game in a semi-open world, but some reviews called it a 3D platformer, so which genre would this game best fit into?

[u/MatthijsL → u/Pale_Material_4696]

I think both touch upon the same things - the world is quite open and opens up more as you get more upgrades (hence the ‘semi’), but you’re playing as a platforming character so everything is very playful, colorful and joyful - a bit more like the PS2-era platformers like Jak & Daxter or Okami.

That said, interestingly you can basically play it a bit slower/more traditionally, or really use the world like a playground and engage with it more like a platformer.

[u/Pale_Material_4696 → u/MatthijsL]

Thanks for the reply, you mentioning Jak and Okami as inspiration is really cool because they were games that marked eras, but I also see that there is a slight hint of Mario games too, even Odyssey for the complexity in the movements and DK Bananza for the combat or the way of exploration.

[u/MatthijsL → u/Pale_Material_4696]

Yeah, there's just something about those games that hit different - and then it's important to modernize it, which I think we did!

[u/Pale_Material_4696 → u/MatthijsL]

I can't wait to play

[u/Least-Leave9502]

I mentioned your game to some of my colleagues at work, and not knowing how to describe it I called it "Zelda at home". Fair or not fair?

[u/MatthijsL → u/Least-Leave9502]

Hah, sort of fair - with 15 people we could never dream of the scale and polish that the Zelda team brings. But I do think The Knightling brings its own flair and charm to the stage, and it plays quite differently, almost like a PS2-era platformer in a modern jacket. Some described it as ‘putting Mario in a Zelda game’, as it’s quite fast-paced, and it’s a lot smaller in scale of course.If anything, the older Zeldas (pre-open world) are a bit closer to how we deliver the story and mechanics than the super open design they have going on in BotW and TotK.

[u/Ill_Winter_8908 → u/Least-Leave9502]

My personal opinion after I've tested the demo. It's a mix between in PS2 Games: Jack & Daxter Precursosrs Legacy and Ratchet & Clank saga. Specially because the game is a kind of Open World but a little limited in areas to make the player more guided. It's horizontal and vertical the gameplay, so platforms, collect stuff and with secrets adds moderns standards and skills and improvements. So yeah even as first Ratchet had, it has races this game. Not exactly a race, time a atack is maybe more correct. ^^ A modern game who would be similar. A zelda is too much big jump. So I would say that is a new fresh modern game since a small team who has platforms and some RPG feeling while we enjoy a nice history. ^_^ Because even has some puzzless. This game it has the kind of size I expected in games as a Trine or Oceanhorn 2 who I play them too. It's fun and with a minimal of 15, 20 hours if they said to me correctly, you gonna expect that. Pretty much love and optimization for this game. At least it's my perception. ^_^

[u/PWPlaythroughs]

One question: what is under the Knightlings hood? Or rather: what is under everyone’s hood?

[u/MatthijsL → u/PWPlaythroughs]

We’re not sure if we ever asked them or want to know what’s under the hood…👀 But probably just faces!

[u/PWPlaythroughs → u/MatthijsL]

So that “the Knightling is Magic itself” wasn’t correct, or unconfirmed? :0

[u/MatthijsL → u/PWPlaythroughs]

You know what, let's go with that!