It’s now been more than a year since White Knuckle began its ascent in Early Access, and in that time, anticipation for its 1.0 release has steadily grown, making it one of our most eagerly awaited upcoming releases.
Following the game’s major Anniversary Update, which landed last month, we had the opportunity to speak with Quinn Steagall (Animation & Prop Lead), Holly Jencka (Lead Developer & Visual Designer), and Jack Folkner (Sound Designer & Creative Editor).
In our conversation, we touched on the Anniversary Update, the impact of Early Access feedback, and what’s still to come for this climbing horror roguelite.
RL: For those who are unfamiliar, can you tell us what White Knuckle is?
Holly: White Knuckle is a Horror Speed-Climbing Roguelike, set in an expansive underground megastructure that is kind of like a mix of Aperture Science, Black Mesa, and the SCP foundation.
The game is.. weird, to be frank, and describing all of it’s weirdness in a single paragraph is challenging, but here goes:
You climb using both your hands, which can grab separately from each other. Each hand has it’s own stamina, which drains while you climb and regenerates when resting. Why do you climb? Well, the ocean of partially dissolved human corpses is bubbling up from below and it really wants to dissolve you into it, so you need to make sure that can’t happen. Even worse, the way out of this hole is through kilometers of extremely climbable semi-randomized concrete architecture, containing dangerous crushers, exotic wildlife, and supernatural encounters. To aid you in this endeavor is a collection of upgrades and tools that will define each run, each attempt to escape.
Will you make it?
RL: What were the biggest challenges in designing tension and fear in a game that’s primarily about climbing rather than combat?
Holly: Climbing is a naturally tension filled activity, the act of dangling over a deadly drop pumps our brains with cortisol, a result of our ancient ancestry as arboreal apes swinging through the canopy. Even without horror, climbing games build tension around the threat of the fall, the threat of losing progress. We kicked it up a notch of course, by adding in creatures and hazards to make those climbs even more stressful and moment to moment, but fortunately for us the core gameplay does a ton of the heavy lifting.
Jack: An early challenge was figuring out exactly what the conditions needed to be to kill the player during a run. Teeth was supposed to be a pursuer that followed you through the entirety of the game, but we realized it would be useful to also have a kill plane under him so a more lethal fall was still possible, to prevent more awkward moments in the game with Teeth’s positioning. When he was moved to his own section of the game, it allowed us to iterate on the design of levels more and create more enemy types, and we got to retain our more immediate threat/ failstate.
RL: Was the core climbing mechanic something that came together quickly, or did it go through many iterations before it felt right?
Holly: The core climbing mechanic was born from my first night of prototyping the idea that was in my head. Mechanically it was exactly the same on that night as it is now, though certainly far less refined, and I knew from those initial tests that it had potential. I spent three months slowly honing in on the exact feel that the game currently has. Over that time the player controls got tighter and faster, because to me the sense of speed felt really engaging and provided an interesting base to develop a game around.
RL: With the game being in Early Access, how have you balanced community feedback with your own vision?
Jack: Community feedback has been hugely insightful for a few reasons. A very important reason is finding gaps when it comes to accessibility and quality of life features we may overlook during development. We got good feedback early on for incorporating things like high visibility handholds and item shimmer.
When it comes to balancing the vision, we don’t have to expend a ton of energy. Personally, I’ve read a lot of ideas for perks, items and balance changes that we considered months before that person wrote their suggestion. That’s not to say it’s not appreciated! It does also give us the ability to gauge interest in gameplay features or narrative elements. We can stay two steps ahead of the community by conceptualizing moments that still fit the game, but end up being completely unexpected a good amount of the time.
RL: How do you manage to create such interesting items and artifacts with the limited mechanics of climbing?
Quinn: In some ways, being constrained to every item/artifact needing a climbing related movement skill is a huge boon. We take a couple player attributes/abilities we want to play around with, then think of a chain of interactions we think would be fun. At times the items/artifacts design themselves from this group of building blocks.
Holly: One of the requirements I’ve (selfishly) demanded with every item is that they need to be one handed, so that you can always be climbing with the other hand. The simplicity of controls also forces us to be creative and to design the core of items to be as uncomplicated and engaging as possible, which lets players focus on the thing that really matters with the game: the climb.
RL: You recently launched an Anniversary Update. What has been the reaction from players so far and what can they look forward to in the future?
Quinn: Player feedback so far has been great on all fronts! Our largest stress point, the economy rework has been accepted by the larger community with players reasoning for the change mirroring our own.
Holly: Players have received the update very positively! People like the Trinkets and Bindings, they like facility upgrades, and as Quinn said despite it being a big shift they like the new economy! It’s always a risk to do such sweeping changes across the entire game even though that’s what early access is for, so I’m incredibly grateful to our community for being as rad as they are.
There’s a lot to look forward to in the future, we have the Nest region update planned for May/June, and two more major campaign regions coming after that on the road to 1.0. There’s also just a ton of other features we want to pack into this game, things like seeded runs, more challenge maps, more seasonal events, and on and on and on. One of the wonderful things about White Knuckle is that both the formula and setting really lends itself to experimentation and weirdness, and if players can expect anything then I think they should expect to be constantly surprised.
RL: When can we expect a Teeth plushy?
Holly: The moment we have a Teeth plushy in the works I will be singing about it to the world. Our community has also been demanding a Teeth body pillow, so hopefully we can make that happen too.
Personally, I want roach plushies, for all the different shiny variants, so I can lay in a bed covered in alien bugs and act like I’m being devoured alive. Grubs too, actually if we can just plushify every alien horror in this game I think we can all just retire and move into one of those old abandoned missile silos.
RL: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! Now to save you scrolling back up for the link, head this way for the Steam page for White Knuckle.
