Knight's Story Straddles Multiple Gameplay Mechanics

Knight's Story is a Facebook game that blends exploration, building and combat gameplay. The game is developer Anute.com's first Facebook game in a planned range of games that will share the same universe and art style. Knight's Story is currently in open beta and has reached 1,990 monthly active users and 356 daily active users on our data service tracking application, AppData. The game places players in the role of a male or female knight, the colors of whom can be customized in a relatively robust character creation system. Anute intends this avatar to be transferable between Knight's Story and their future games. Players start with a bare plot of land and two half-finished buildings which can be completed immediately to provide an initial income of coins and keys. Coins are spent on both building materials and items which the player's knight can use in the field. Keys are used to open areas on the map and can be traded with other players. Different players obtain differently-colored keys, so much of the social aspect of the game comes from collecting enough friends to cover all possible key colors. Outside their city, players can explore grid-based maps one square at a time to uncover items, coins, experience points and non-playable characters who need assistance. Sometimes this is a simple matter of bringing them an item they need, while at other times it requires defeating an adversary through a very simple turn-based combat system. As is the norm for this type of game, everything costs energy except moving through already-explored squares. This energy is used both for exploration and building, so players will need to plan their energy use in advance if they want to expand their castle as well as make discoveries in the world. The game is monetized primarily through the sale of premium items and batches of virtual currency. The most obvious form of payment is Facebook Credits, but virtual currency can also be bought in batches with PayPal, direct payment and offer walls. Some building materials and energy-restoring items can only be acquired via Facebook Credits. Anute believes that the genre-spanning gameplay of Knight's Story makes it stand out in a field of similar games. "At the moment you can build your city, travel and fight," says Angel Maze of Anute. "In most other games, you usually only do one or two of these. We tried to include multiple different mechanics." Maze says the game has a clear expansion strategy, with the introduction of an Arena area for players to battle each other planned for mid May. New buildings, maps, characters and regions are also planned to be rolled out gradually and keep people interested. Soon, players will also be able to trade with their friends for quest items as well as keys, which will add another layer to in-game social interaction. Knight's Story open beta launched on February 23. You can follow its progress on AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

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Knight's Story Straddles Multiple Gameplay Mechanics

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