Dear Juni, My land has fallen into an unending winter. I need your help. – Mrs. Soup
Juni from the title screen. All cutscenes featured this style of character design.
An inhabitant of the icy realm.
Beneath the snow, abandoned labs wait patiently.
Endless Winter is a round-robin Knytt Stories level over two years in the making. Many many people have played a part in its development giving the level a slightly eclectic feel. However, the story and the winter theme tie it all together nicely. The gameplay is mostly easy environmental, but there are several points where players can choose a hard challenging path.
Although the game is not very ambitious in scope, the globe spanning collaboration became a beast of a job, especially when the growing sentiment was for one cohesive plot. I initially got on board as a graphics contributor with no intention of doing any level design. As the problems started to arise, I started making suggestions. In the end, as it floundered, I took over.
You can see my hand in the story, which was written around the divergent designs made by many designers before a plot was considered. The key piece of graphics is a winter tileset by Smashy. I created complimentary tilesets to add ice, caves, buildings, and ruins. By request I made a bunker style lab which was so popular the level ended up being filled with labs. My largest contribution is the cutscenes. I enlarged screen shots from the level, but added higher detail characters. This resulted in my most professional looking cutscenes to date.
I want to credit a few people. Bulbapuck started the project and fostered a spirit of creativity through his easy-going direction. Headgrinder kept the project alive in the middle and developed the underlying themes of the plot. Sergio Cornaga helped me tie up the loose ends with some excellent contributions and humor. The majority of the ambient background music is by Sion, and was used through the public license he so graciously attached to it. Complete credits are available at the end of the game.
A final note: This level plays in the official 1.2.1 Knytt Stories release. But, some custom NPCs are more lively with my KS+ mod.
Download Endless Winter 22.7MB