CharacterBank set out to work on Knights of Fiona aiming to take what they learned from Ruinsmagus into a more expansive and ambitious role-playing game.

Part of that journey involves making it multiplayer.

“ Ruinsmagus was a full single-player experience when we launched it, and we heard a lot from players about wanting to keep playing and exploring that world, so creating this large world that players could keep visiting was our biggest goal with this experience,” explains Shuto Mikami, the CEO of CharacterBank, on the origins of this new title. “Plus, with that previous game, the actual gameplay is almost more linked to a shooter game in how you played it, and we wanted to create something that felt more like an RPG. Using magic that didn’t feel like shooting bullets, swordplay, bows, introducing these styles that allow the game to feel more like this genre.”

I jumped into Knights of Fiona for the first time in an exclusive demo at the studio’s offices in Kyoto, Japan, looking at their effort to build something that feels like a true, traditional RPG adventure. I can see similarities to the hub world of Ruinsmagus and this title, but this time the hub is one continuous and larger town that feels more alive, even in these early stages. We were still required to warp to some locations of the town, but that should change with further development.

Rather than feeling limited to just you and a very small cast of characters, you have a team of party members and a supporting cast each as visually distinct and personality-driven as the last. The train station, the main starting point for a lot of missions, has moving trains and a large space to explore.

It’s when jumping into the quests themselves that the distinctions and evolution of this experience compared to CharacterBank’s prior work becomes most apparent. As Mikami notes, the first thing that stands out in the gameplay loop compared to Ruinsmagus is just how much additional depth and variety exists in terms of combat. You have bows, swords of all sizes, mage staffs and more at your disposal, and not only does each class feel distinctly unique to one another, weapons within those same classes feel unique and can be further upgraded to improve their strength and suit your style.

Firing an arrow, for example, requires a full-bodied, two-handed pull back of the bow. Aim and fire with the assistance of a guide for the arrow’s flight path, which allows us to attack from a safe distance countered by the slower nature of these weapons. Using swords of all sizes has a distinct feel and heft despite the typical limitations of the virtual form that makes it impossible to differentiate the weight of a virtual object, instead built into how you swing these weapons and approach combat. If magic can feel the closest to the combat of Ruinsmagus, the way you aim and the various spells that differ between staffs allow for a degree of control and variety. Even then, more than just swinging aimlessly, you have multiple actions assigned to various buttons for varied attacks, and everything from positioning to learning attack patterns is important for victory.

The game further encourages you to switch between these weapons, not just because of the weapons themselves but everything to do with upgrades and passive abilities that support your loadout. These come in the form of cards received randomly as rewards after each quest as well as from the in-game shop. These cards will also impact passive abilities that can improve base strength and introduce additional augmentations to your weapon’s abilities. You can further merge weapon cards to improve the level and experience of weapons beyond merely using them in action to essentially craft new weapons, and place passive cards in open slots to give you an edge in battle. The rarity and power of these cards increases based on difficulty chosen for each quest, with encouragement to revisit quests to get these abilities.

Gameplay focuses on fun over realism in combat and mechanic design, he explains. “We brought in the real weapons to try so we had an idea of how we wanted to replicate the feel of them in the game. That being said, one of the things we were considerate about was that, when we were designing for the sword and the bow, was that it wasn’t too technical. We want to make sure this is accessible for casual players and people who just want to jump in and experience this world.”

Which is important when creating a multiplayer experience you can play with friends. Another distinct characteristic of Knights of Fiona is that this is an online game at its core. All quests are taken on as a party, whether CPUs or online with friends, and you can engage in proximity voice chat and explore the hub world together also. Playing the game with just a few of the developers at their offices, lots of the fun of the experience was derived merely by exploring and talking amongst ourselves, just as much as it was fighting through hordes and large boss fights.

How you approach missions varies wildly based on your party and the quest itself. Playing through most of the first chapter including its finale during our session, we experienced the story as we saw off the first major threat, going from fighting early low-level hordes in open fields as we learned to gain the trust of the town to fighting off against the game’s first boss, an angry fire-breathing dragon. This set-piece is a clear statement of intent for the team’s ambition as we rush through waves of enemies and projectiles on the burning bridge that enters the town, only to come across a large bright-red dragon with eyes intent to kill, breathing fire and shaking the world with every attack. With a group you can split duties and distract the dragon, while alone you’re faced with a battle of wits and agility, not just strength.

It’s impressive, but only a small idea of what’s to come. Enemies of world-ending, literally titanic proportions are being teased, to such a scale that simply looking up at them in VR makes you feel like an ant, and I can barely even speculate how you would overcome their might. It’s promised to be longer but varied in setting as you trek out on a globe-trotting adventure in order to save it, even if your home in Gallia remains a hub. All with a rich cast of characters to support you along.

While the core story will have a definitive ending, it’s possible to replay missions on new difficulties for new weapons and ability cards, and while the team haven’t confirmed definitive plans at this stage, they’re open to the idea of much more.

According to the game’s director, HOI, multiplayer and online elements are about more than merely keeping players coming back, but creating something that can stick with people. Talking about their hopes for the game, they noted, “I want people to finish this game and think, I want to spend more time in this world, I want to get to know these characters more, about their relationships, what other adventures they may go on and the like. I want people wanting to learn more about this world. Lately, as soon as a game, a manga or an anime has finished, it’s forgotten by the next weekend, which is a little sad considering the love and work that went into it. Whether on their own or with other players, we want people to keep coming back to experience more in this place.”

In an introductory prologue, we arrived in this place unaware of the dangers it was soon to face in the oncoming war. Its people are losing hope, and that’s where you come in. You end up entrusted with leading the resistance to this fight by the leaders of Gallia, including some of its ruling figures like the large, tree-like Kelnund and Leonhardt, make allies with the knight Geisenberg, and find support from characters in the town like the purple-skinned alchemist Nebulous Babbege.

With characters, each design is as distinct as they are intriguing, soaked in a visual design conveying a history beyond what we are privy to in this adventure. Lots of time was spent on the design process before a line of code was made from design to even assigning characters their own Myers-Briggs-style personality types, HOI explains. “I often find that if you think about the story and create the world before you think about its characters, you end up creating characters that feel like gods in their world, which isn’t a good thing. So the first thing we would consider with every character is what is their personality, what are their motivations, what are their desires, what or who do they love, things like that.

“For example, we’d consider the role that a character is expected to take upon, how they feel about that role, the pressures elsewhere, things like that. The characters would be born from considering their internal emotions based on the life they have around them. Who could they talk to about these things? What are their more immediate problems and concerns? When it came to thinking about the setting, well, Gallia is a very medieval-inspired setting, so we considered philosophies of the time, what would the internal political debates of the location be, what sort of world and ruling would we have here, what does class division look like in this setting, we’d consider all of this from the earliest stages.

“Then we would bring in the designers. Maybe we would have some rough sketches of the settings, characters and ideas, but the designers would help to brush them up and help build them out further, or the designers would create it all from scratch based on the original designs. We also have a bigger cast, which helps. In Ruinsmagus, we had Iris as our main character, but she also had to be a guide for the player, she had a lot of roles to fill. Fiona started in this place, but with more characters we could think more about how she would react to different things and then give her deeper character development from there.”

Another distinct characteristic of Knights of Fiona is that this is an online game at its core. All quests are taken on as a party, whether CPUs or online with friends, and you can engage in proximity voice chat and explore the hub world together also. Playing the game with just a few of the developers at the office, so much fun was derived just by exploring and talking and having fun in this area. While the core story will have a definitive ending, it’s possible to replay missions on new difficulties for new weapons and ability cards, and while the team haven’t confirmed definitive plans at this stage, they’re open to the idea of new stories, time-exclusive skins and more to support the online service and to keep the game as something to return to with friends.

Even in this early stage, the game feels alive. The opening hub town includes lots of areas to explore and create your own fun. While not currently active due to the game not yet launching to the public, community integration in the town hall exists in the form of a notice board to allow fanart shared in Discord with players.

Currently in place of fan art are doodles from the staff, and you can see the love for these characters in all the fun sketches made by the team (with particular love for my own early favorite Nebulous Babbege). You can feel the love for this game, this world, and what it means to the team behind it in all the subtle details in the town and world, the care and refinement in card art for weapons and abilities and in the art in the town, and how much it means. For director HOI creating the story, he mentioned that one of the key inspirations was the challenge and responsibility of creating a new game and the expectations, something that weaves its way into the world and ideas driving Knights of Fiona.

Beyond simply being something new and much fun to play through even at this early stage, you can feel that this is the game that CharacterBank as a studio have been working toward for some time. It brings across ideas from much of their other works, builds beyond what they were able to achieve in Ruinsmagus, and charts ambitious ground for RPGs in VR. To support post-launch additional content the team is launching a Kickstarter campaign.

With everything considered, it's a tall order. If the team can fully deliver on all of its ideas, we could be in for something truly special.