We can all point and joke about the laughing stock that was Duke Nukem: Forever. The game was in development for close to 15 years, and when it was released, it was deemed one of the worst video games ever made. After such a long development cycle, the team and fans must have experienced a new meaning to the word disappointment. However, another game has been in the works longer than Duke Nukem: Forever and Beyond Good & Evil 2. The game is called Kien. It is now available on the Incube8 Games website. The only caveat is that it is available for the Game Boy Advance! Something more outrageous than the chosen system is the story of its inception.
ENTHUSIASM:
The Game Boy Advance is a legendary handheld console released in 2001. A year later, five Italians, including Game Designer Fabio Belsanti, had a dream. Their dream was to create their own game for the GBA. The team had no prior experience designing or programming a video game. However, they all had a shared enthusiasm and a passion for games. Little did the team realise that this dream would slowly progress into a journey that spans more than two decades.
Time went on, and the team constantly worked, rarely taking time off. The idea was to build a game that featured innovative RPG mechanics (for the time) in a medieval setting. Belsanti researched books about folkloric tales of soldiers, knights and the battles they engaged in. These stories date back to the Italian Renaissance.
ONLY ONE LEFT:
Development on Kien slowly withered. Of the original team, four of them had abandoned the project. The only man still actively working on the game was Belsanti. Even after founding his company, AgeOfGames, and creating games for PC like Fantasy Kommander: Eukarion Wars, King Island and some educational games, Belsanti never gave up on Kien. The project had been in the works since 2002, and he was determined to complete it.
Belsanti continued developing the game. He eventually reached the arduous task of finding a publisher to distribute Kien. In 2004, Belsanti and some of his team met with several publishers. Due to the game not being a Nintendo IP, publishers feared it would not sell well. On top of that, criticism towards the difficulty turned publishers off Kien.
The longer the team went without interest, the harder it would be to sell the game. The GBA discontinued in 2009, so he needed a publisher who had enough faith in the project that they were willing to risk the likelihood of Kien being a commercial failure. In the meantime, Belsanti continued his work with AgeOfGames.
RETRO REVIVAL:
The saving grace was the revival of retro games over the past few years. Indie developers have taken the pixel art style of the NES and SNES and applied it to modern games. Examples include Shovel Knight, Dead Cells, Undertale, Celeste, and Enter the Gungeon. Not only has pixel art made a revival, but also retro games and consoles, including the Game Boy Advance. Second-hand marketplaces are awash with retro systems and games that can fetch a pretty penny for the seller. Because of the revival of retro gaming, the cost of producing a game on GBA cartridges has significantly dropped, and new companies have formed to distribute new games for classic consoles. After all this time, Kien finally had a chance.
One publisher that specialises in bringing new games to retro consoles is Incube8 Games. They have several projects coming in the future, but for now, they are bringing Kien to the GBA.
“On a romantic level, the thought of releasing the game on its original console is simply magical,” says Belsanti.
"To see Kien come to life on the very platform it was designed for is a dream come true.”
WHAT IS THE GAME?:
Belsanti likens the game to Castlevania and Dark Souls due to its non-linear level design and gruelling but satisfying difficulty. The action RPG elements are evident from the title screen, where you play as either a Warrior or a Priestess. Reviewers have noted the difficulty curve of the game but praised it for its complexity, Japanese-anime-inspired art direction, and the setting.
If you still have a functioning Game Boy Advance, it is worth checking out Kien. It is available on the Incube8 Games website. After 22 years in the making, the game deserves all the attention it gets and is more than worth a playthrough.
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