You wake up as a ghost, with no memory of who you were or how you died. The only clue to your past is the empty suit of armour you now possess.
As you explore an abandoned castle and piece together your memories, you’ll uncover your tale: A tale of broken promises, regret, and bonds that last beyond death.
But your story doesn’t have to die with you.
The Last Winter Knight is an atmospheric Gothic visual novel that features:
A melancholy story where you play as a ghostly knight haunting a suit of armour.
Point and click segments that let you explore a lonely castle.*
Hand-drawn artwork that captures a dark fairy tale feel.
A pensive piano soundtrack that subtly shifts depending on where and what you examine.
Multiple endings to uncover: Will you remained trapped in your armour, or finally find peace?
*Accessibility note: Instead of clicking, you can hover over objects and hit -Enter- to interact with them. Text can be advanced with -Space-
This game is a solo project with art, music, story, programming and sound design by ENDYSIS (me!) Thank you so much for checking out my game!
Special thank you to Wanpans Armoury for providing armour foley and Sammy L. for moral support.
Hi friends!
The last festival of the year is here, and it's a big one! I'm happy to announce that Winter Knight was accepted into the first ever Choose Wisely Festival !
As well, the game recently reached 8k wishlists! I'm currently still locked away coding but wanted to sketch something to celebrate. It feels like an incredible number that I didn't think I would ever reach as a solo dev working on my first big game, so I'm so grateful to you all!
Before I head back to my desk, here's a little preview from chapter two:
spooky
I hope you have a great rest of the year, and see you in the next one!
Hello friends!
I've been at work as usual on The Last Winter Knight, but today I have to announce that its release date will now be delayed to quarter one of 2026.
I know that many of you have been looking forward to it, so I'm truly sorry to have to push back its release again. Solo development can be a struggle to juggle with life, and lately I've been feeling burnt out and not in a state to finish it before the end of the year -- much less try to release it during the hectic holiday period!
I think it's been long overdue that I take a real break, and hopefully I'll be refreshed and ready to tackle things again after. I truly hope you understand and as always appreciate your patience.
That doesn't mean I don't have updates about Winter Knight, though...
Progress Update
Sprites for the NPCs are finished, and scripting continues for chapter two.
Armour says a lot about a character, and I tried to put in hints about their history and who they are in their artwork!
Alas, sprites take a lot of time both to draw and program. Sometimes I prefer to add another CG instead of trying to do sprite work -- it's that tedious for me!
Like in Chapter One, your choices influence your outlook and personality, but now they affect relationships as well. Characters may only reveal certain things if they trust you...
Trail of Stars Steam Release
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4006140/Trail_of_Stars/"" style="color:#bb86fc;text-decoration:none;">Trail of Stars , a short side story I made in January of this year with some talented folks is coming to Steam on November 13th!
This was only possible thanks to generous donations from itch players and my patreon supporters; I'm truly grateful for the chance to bring more of my library to a wider audience!
The Steam version will be the same as the Itch release (except with achievements!) so there's nothing new here story-wise. You also don't need to play it to understand Winter Knight's story or vice versa. It's simply a short and (bitter)sweet fairy tale about two young knights-in-training that you can enjoy in a single sitting.
The soundtrack will also be available for free.
Thank you for reading, and happy Halloween!
Hi spooky friends!
Development in August felt like a blur. I feel like I was possessed by something and when I woke up, bleary-eyed and staring upon my screen in the middle of the night, the first chapter of Winter Knight was complete.
Chapter one ended up being longer than I initially planned. The playable demo takes up a bit more than half of it, when I thought it would be more like 3/4ths. Two of the three main branches in it are complete; the third one I'll return to once the other chapters are finished since it's unlikely players will see it on a first playthrough.
Now, onto plans and progress!
Chapter Two Goals
My goal for September is to finish the character sprites + expressions and make revisions to the first part of chapter two.
The Winter Knight rework was actually started out of order: I planned the broad strokes of the story, then delved into rewriting it from the second act. This made it so that when I went back to do the first chapter, I had a crystal clear view of the events that would happen and what the player would know. I did end up changing pieces of the story when I finished chapter one, though, so I now need to edit the second act again and continue where I left off.
Chapter two is a flashback, where you'll be able to see what the castle and its inhabitants looked like while it was still populated...
The full build currently sits at 37k words, which makes it the biggest project I've coded so far by a long shot.
Music and Sound
Though it wasn't anything too crazy or complex, I had a lot of fun with dynamic music and sound in a certain sequence in the second half of chapter one, and hope I'll be able to do similar things in later sequences.
I've joked that because Nameless Knight is a suit of armour, it's been a blessing not having to draw facial expressions. That doesn't mean he isn't an expressive character, however! I put a lot of attention into how he sounds, while trying not to be too distracting (because in real life, suits of armour make a LOT of noise as they move.)
When the main character of your game is a knight...
There's also a different main BGM track for the rest of chapter one, which like the first track also has dynamic layering depending on where you are in the castle.
Art
All the backgrounds for chapter one and most of the ones for chapter two are complete now. I hope you'll enjoy walking through the castle while it was still bustling and seeing what the ruins used to be like...
The sprites that still need to be completed are the Commander's, "Sir Hero" (an older character who appears in chapter two) and a new knight sprite I can use as a base for the various NPC knights.
Here are a few more sneak peeks at chapter one:
Huh, wonder why those crates are there.
September is going to be jam-packed for Winter Knight, with festivals, events and other tasks for me on top of development, so we'll see how far I get. Hopefully I'll get to tell you about it soon!
Have a great week,
-Eli
It's here!
After months of reworking virtually every aspect of the game, I'm so excited to announce that the brand new demo forThe Last Winter Knight is finally playable!
The new demo features:
roughly 13k words or 40+ mins playtime
[/*]one (and a half) endings (for now...)
[/*]a dynamic piano soundtrack (remastered from before!)
[/*]haunting gothic visuals
[/*]updatedartwork and UI
[/*]point and click exploration (expanded from before!)
[/*]a few spooky elements
[/*]a codex feature that tracks your progress, items and personality
[/*]
Whether it's your first time stepping into the knight's sabatons or you've returned after playing the old demo long ago, I hope you enjoy your time with it and would love to know your thoughts!
Thank you for sticking around, and as always, take care!
-Eli
It's almost here!
The Last Winter Knight's new demo will be releasing on June 30th. I'm so excited to show you what the new game is like, and hope you'll enjoy what it has to offer.
The demo will feature a good chunk of chapter one (around 13k words or 40 minutes of playtime).For a discussion of the changes you can see compared to the earliest version,check out my previous update!
Until then, have a good one!
-Eli
Hi spooky friends! It's been a while.
I've been working hard on the game these past few months, but life has also happened (as it tends to do), so I'm sorry about not posting a lengthy update until now! I'm happy to write that I'm at a point where progress is going steady, and a new and improved demo release is on the horizon!
Since deciding to do a rework I've basically rebuilt the game from scratch, thrown out the spaghetti point-and-click code, updated the UI and many of the visuals, and most important of all, dug deep into the rewrite for the story.
So, let me tell you what I've been working on, what you can find in the new demo, and: Why a rework at all?
Story
There was one major issue with the original story. It was a fairy tale--and no, not like the other fairy tales I've made .
A fairy tale in the way we think of today: A simple story too neat and perfect and white and black to be true. It wasn't a bad story; it just didn't fit the what the characters had grown into. They wouldn't act that way any more in the world they inhabited now.
If you've played Trail of Stars , (a side story, and sort of prequel, made for a game jam) you might have seen a peek already at how they've shifted. That game feels very much like a fairy tale, but it's not a kind one. While the characters find some happiness, it's clear they have many struggles ahead of them, and that their innocence won't last forever.
(That's not to say The Last Winter Knight will suddenly become dark and miserable. You can find peace and lay your regrets to rest in the end. )
From first person to second.
A major change you'll notice immediately is a change in perspective. [strike](Yes, I did go and rewrite the entire story in second person.)[/strike]
Nameless Knight is not the most pleasant character's head to be stuck in. He's a little bitter, a little dry, rather sombre and perhaps not a good person. He's also the protagonist of a point-and-click game, narrating everything you click on in the original game in his sombre, dry, ghostly little voice. A great writer could work with that; alas, I am not.
So now there's a separate narrator, and that narrator addresses you.
Nameless Knight still has plenty to say, of course, but now there's a little distance, a little room for you to step in and him to step back [strike]and be less pretentious. [/strike]
Choices
With a new perspective comes more choices for you to play with. Nameless Knight is a set character, but with his memories wiped clean, you can now nudge his perception and personality a bit more. You can be as grumpy as he originally was or someone a bit softer behind that metal shell.
The main purpose this gives is flavour text: Narration may be altered and relationships changed depending on how you see things. But at certain key points, they might lead to something more drastic...
Relationships and Romance
The Last Winter Knight has always been a game about family, and it still is. Some families are formed from romantic bonds, however, and here it's grown beyond subtext to playing a larger role in the story. I wouldn't necessarily call Winter Knight a romance visual novel; there's no love interest for you to pursue. There's only a relationship that existed, long before you donned your armour, that affected you and the people around you.
Art and Visuals
My art style has changed a lot since I first started the game, enough that I definitely do not feel happy leaving the original sprites as is LOL. So, most sprites have gotten a rework to not only have updated art, but to better reflect the characters' personalities and be more consistent.
Some in game art has also been updated [strike]to look like I spent more than 5 minutes on it.[/strike]
As you can see from screenshots throughout this post, the UI has gotten an update as well (and thanks to coding improvements, the textbox no longer blinks in and out, huzzah!)
I announced the new cover art in December (which you can see on the main game page), but it's been changed to reflect the character-driven focus of the story and fit the new art style.
CG Graphics
Important scenes and memories now have lovely little illustrations instead of character silhouettes just standing around. I hope you enjoy them.
Sound and Music
The sound and music should remain basically unchanged from before. There was a bug in the previous build however, where audio would go out of sync, so I am looking for a cleaner way to add the dynamic layers to hopefully fix it. Two new character motifs will also be added in the new demo.
The Demo
So when will the demo come out?
I initially wanted to release it in early June, but there are two reasons I'm hesitant to now: One is a new feature, the codex, and the other is testing, testing, testing.
[h3]
The Codex[/h3]
The new story comes with more characters, details and dates as well as personality stats and items. To make it easier on the player, I feel that having a compendium for it all is a necessary feature. But programming it? That's going to be a lot of work.
An option might be to just not include the codex and hope it won't be too much of a problem, since the demo is a fairly short experience. Or, I could have a very simplified one that's basically an inventory screen...
Variables, variables, variables
Variables for the knight's personality, as well as what objects you have and haven't seen, play a bigger role than in the previous version, and more variables always means more testing. The flow of the story itself? That also needs testing. Do items disappear and appear in your inventory when they should? Better test that too.
So when will the demo come out? Probably somewhere in June, and definitely this summer.
Full Game Features:
Some things that I want to include in the final game likely won't be in the demo. These include:
Controller Support
The game can really only be completed with a mouse right now. You can hover over objects and hit
I do plan to tackle full controller support for the final game, but finagling with features is something that kills motivation and momentum for me, so I'll sadly be saving it for later down the line.
Voice over???
Most of my games don't have voice acting for (mostly logistical) reasons. It's a very big time and cost investment (and I am one very tired dev with many plates to juggle who pays for everything out of pocket haha... ). I'm seriously considering investing in it for The Last Winter Knight, however, just because I consider sound such an important aspect of the game.
This game deals heavily with memory. Nameless Knight doesn't have a voice anymore; he can only recall what he sounded like, and what the people around him did. What would the game be like if it reflected that feeling?
I'll have to see what the final script ends up like, and whether I can find someone to potentially handle casting, for it to be a possibility. Feel free to let me know how you feel about it, however, and if you would (or wouldn't) enjoy it.
Hi friends!
While I was working out some tricky bits in the script I realised that this story has transformed quite considerably from the one I originally set out to tell. Ive gotten to know these characters much better and as they developed, their motivations and beliefs have changed as well.
In short, I feel like giving the story a simple edit now just isnt enough. What Winter Knight needs is a fairly significant rewrite. The overall themes, mood and atmosphere wont change, but I hope these revisions will do a lot to improve the pacing and add depth to the mysteryand result in a more satisfying experience in the end!
Because of this, the release date is now a bit of a question mark as I work through these changes while navigating some personal/family responsibilities, but you can bet Im still trying to finish it as soon as I can.
Secondly, I will be removing the current demo two weeks from now (December 20th) as it no longer accurately reflects the final story.
Ill add a new, up to date one eventually, but theres no current ETA.
If you'd still like to play the current demo, please do so before December 20th!
Im sorry for the inconvenience, and am really, truly grateful for your patience!
Here's a preview of the brand new key art and some screenshots with a UI update:
Thanks again for your support, and until next time, take care!
-Eli
1.06 Patch Notes:
- Minor text updates
- Exits should now be more visible when hovering over them
- Reduced the number of clicks needed on the locked door to see what happens when you try to leave your armour
The Last Winter Knight's demo is now playable! You can now experience the first chapter of this Gothic visual novel, that includes:
- ~40 mins - 1 hr playtime
- 2 (and a half) endings to find
- Plenty of artwork to interact with and rooms to explore
- A haunting piano OST that you can replay through the music box feature
I hope you enjoy it, and of course, if you have any feedback or encounter any issues, please let me know! I'll also be posting a walkthrough shortly if you need a guide to any of the endings.
Cheers,
-Eli
Minimum Setup
- OS: Ubuntu 16.04+
- Processor: 2.0 Ghz 64-bit Intel-compatibleMemory: 2 GB RAM
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: OpenGL 3.0
- Storage: 1 GB available space
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