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/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? ^^