Popgeeks Interview: The Knights Behind Dungeons & DoomKnights

The new Switch / Steam game Dungeons & DoomKnights doesn’t just look retro, it’s 100% authentically the real deal. The game was developed in Assembly language on the original NES by Adam Bohn, better known as “Artix,” and Dale Coop (who’s been behind Kubo and other major NES homebrew releases). We caught both of them for an interview about the making of this game and what inspired it.

My first question is for Artix….Dungeons and Doomknights is far from your first game; you’re mainly known for an MMO called AdventureQuest. Take us back to the beginning.

ARTIX: All my life I have been obsessed with video games– my dream was to make one. In 2002, with the goal of getting just 100 people to play it, I created a web game which would be called AdventureQuest. The silly and bizarre game attracted a lot of attention and went viral. Over 200 million accounts were created by players across the world. The original AdventureQuest has been updated every single week with new content for the past 21 years. Talented players from our gaming community joined to form our studio… where we made other crazy video games (…and also action figures, card games, music, calendars, and experimental stuff.)

The team and I also created a ton of fun and funny games including DragonFable, MechQuest, EpicDuel, BattleGems, IdleQuest, and a dozen others. But in 2009 we decided to try our hand at creating MMORPGs. We made a MMORPG version of the original game called AdventureQuest Worlds. To this day it is our biggest and most successful game. It is updated every week too– in fact, this game is updated nearly daily. The player base is awesome and extremely passionate. Our game’s non-stop releases are a strange form of interactive storytelling which feeds of the things the players say on social media and discord. This game was responsible for the concept of Death Ads (sorry!), and had what we believe was the first live musical event in an MMORPG.

Then we made AdventureQuest 3D. Which is cross-platform 3D MMORPG. Cross platform means it runs on phones, tablets, PCs and Macs. It was a super ambitious project. We all had to learn how to do 3D stuff– and publish it to every platform… every week. Because, it is updated every week with new stuff too. A weird trivia fact is the game appears for a moment on the TV show designated survivor. The special musical events in this game included the bands Breaking Benjamin, Alice in Chains, and Korn. Elvira even hosted our 20th anniversary event that spanned the games.

So where did the idea to go super-retro and make something for the NES come from?

ARTIX: In 2019 I was hitting burn out pretty bad. I needed something to rekindle my love of game making….This is when I discovered NESMaker, which is a tool to help create games for the original 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System. I bought the software and joined their Byte-Off 2019 game jam. It was a one month game jam to make a new game for the NES. The game I wanted to create required a lot of custom 6502 assembly language. This is what NES games are coded in. So I searched their forums for someone who could help– and thank goodness I met Dale Coop. We became instant friends. Alongside my artist-friend, Clarion, we worked on the game. (I chain-watched ALL of Twin Peaks for the first time because of Dale Coop. The show is pretty amazing.) The game project was called “Artix: Knight of the Living Dead” and I was so very proud of it… but looking back, it was pretty terrible! LOL. That is an important part of the creative process.

Every year [our company does] “April Fools Jokes” across our games. I thought it would be funny to do a joke were we announced that the next major AdventureQuest game would be exclusively for the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment system! …then thought it would be funnier if we actually did it. So the little game jam project became the prototype for Dungeons & DoomKnights.

I also entered that competition and played your “Artix” demo, and I think you’re being too hard on yourself. There are a lot of bugs and graphical glitches, but it’s surprising how much of the framework for Dungeons & DoomKnights is in there.

So Dale, this is when you entered the picture…

DALE: I joined the NESMaker community in 2018, during a challenging period in my life. The first Byte Off competition brought immense excitement and engagement as I submitted Underground Adventure, a 2-player arcade game. It was during this time that I stumbled upon the Artix demo. Despite the bugs, I immediately saw the incredible potential of the game – its universe, humor, music, and graphics all hinted at the wonderful project to come. Shortly after, Artix asked for my help in fixing the bugs in that demo. It was a true pleasure, and it didn’t stop there.

That marked the beginning of the Dungeons & DoomKnights adventure. Due to my different timezone (editor’s note: Dale lives in France), we could just see each other online for a brief moment and discuss what each of us had done on the project. I’d occasionally get some surprises when Artix tinkered with the code, but it was fun. Working together on the project, we all learned and progressed a lot.

Describe the game you two ended up making.

ARTIX: Dungeons & DoomKnights is a story that takes place in an 8-bit version of the world of AdventureQuest. It features some of the popular characters and locations which was fun for fans of our other games. The game really is a love letter to all of my favorite childhood games. I grew up on the NES.

You play as Artix…who is supposed to be a Paladin. A magical knight of good. You are hunting an evil DoomKnight… the master of the undead, death knights, and liches…. but instead you find a mysterious red haired girl who takes you down a path of unexpected darkness. The game is a Zeldavania….or, as the Homebrew Club coined it, a DaleCoopvania– which means the game switches between adventure and platformer styles of game play. You can buy a house, play as the dog, learn and switch between new powers, and find secrets which are hinted at in the manual. The game also features the Konami code which unlocks all of the powers…but turns your armor red so everyone knows you are cheating. All of these incredible features and the “Save to Cart” functionality are the product of Dale Coop’s incredible handiwork.

Because Dale Coop is in France and I am in the USA we would sync in the mornings. I learned how to code in assembly language during the project– much to Dale Coop’s horror as he frequently BEGGED me to stop editing things. When I would create things it would almost always break other things. By the end of the game project, with Dale Coop’s mentorship I got good enough to make features. For example I coded the secret where if you kneel with the orb, you get teleported to the area where you can paint your armor different colors.

What were some of the challenges you faced in building the game? What was the most difficult part of it?

DALE: My memory isn’t very reliable, but one of the first big challenges was implementing the saving system. I crashed the game numerous times before finally achieving something functional. I recall that initially, the saving was done at checkpoints, but it didn’t work well. We decided to use a text box (“Wanna save: yes / no”), and Artix came up with the brilliant idea of using a book, which worked really well!

Another significant challenge we quickly encountered was the limitation on the number of monsters in the project (we didn’t have enough objects and tilesets). To address this, I implemented a “skins” system, allowing us to use the same objects (often NPCs) but with different tilesets (graphics). To achieve this, I added new tilesets manually into unused data banks, and during monster loading, a piece of code takes care of using the correct customized tilesets.

When we added the platformer screens to the game, it was quite a nightmare. We had to deal with tile collision issues at the edges when transitioning from one screen to another. I remember spending days or even weeks on that. Most of the time I was working by night… or early morning. I was often tired. but it was really fun and exciting to work on the project so many cool things to implement, new ideas to try (because, yeah, Artix had a ton of ideas). We faced many other issues, bugs, and hurdles throughout the project.

Within the time it took for you to develop Dungeons & DoomKnights, NESMaker updated itself with a new version. You used 4.1, which was buggier than 4.5 and probably added a lot of extra work. I can tell it’s 4.1 because it takes longer for the text boxes to draw and undraw themselves. Did you consider moving the project to 4.5 and rebuilding there, or was the project already too far along for that?

DALE: For D&Dk, we based it on a custom module (my 2 player module) that included numerous fixes from myself. However, we heavily modified it for the project since we didn’t need the 2-player aspect and made other adjustments. By the time version 4.5 was released, the game was already finished, if I recall correctly. Upgrading to the new version was not under discussion. Our engine is quite robust for our purposes, having nearly everything we need. The main advantage of NESmaker 4.5 lies in its left-right scrolling engine and the 8x8px screens but we didn’t need that for that project. Maybe for another one in the future.

One of the more unorthodox elements of Dungeons & DoomKnights is that B is “slash” and A is “dog.” As in, you push the button and a Pomeranian sprints out and keeps running until he hits one enemy or fetches one key. You put a similar idea into one of your later Byte-Off demos, NecroNancy, which let you conjure a cat named “Skello Kitty” in a similar fashion. Was the dog in D&Dk inspired by the cat in NecroNancy?

ARTIX: The dog was inspired by Daimyo, my real life dog. He came into my life in 2001 as I was starting to create the original AdventureQuest. He has appeared in every major game I created. Oddly enough, the Moglin Twilly is inspred by him too. I wanted him as a pet in Dungeons & DoomKnights, but due to technical limitations made summoning him a skill “Fetch!” The mechanic was interesting because in Adventure mode screens he always turns left when hitting a wall. But in Platformer screens, he runs straight only turning around when colliding. Skello Kitty is actually a reskin of Daimyo with a jump added so give it a fun mechanic (and let it hop walls).

Daimyo passed away in 2017. I really miss him.

Anything else about the game’s development you think we might find interesting?

ARTIX: Dungeons & DoomKnights had a lot of help from the NESMaker community. The full list can be seen on the official credits. The game’s physical release was interesting. Because of Covid we could not bring in help from the studio — so my children and I flashed the boards, screwed together the carts, and put together the boxes. I also made a magazine to thank backers for their patience… because the project went weeeeelllll into overtime. You can read the magazine on DungeonsAndDoomKnights.com as well as the instruction manual.

Meanwhile, Jongaar, who did our music, created an entire album of Heavy Metal versions of the songs from the game. It is glorious. Both the 8-bit and Heavy Metal versions of the soundtrack are available on Apple Music, Spotify, and any other major music service. Or you can hear it on Youtube:

Now the game is out, and not just on the NES. How has the reception been?

I am extremely grateful the final game was met with a lot of love. It is scary releasing a passion project into the world…. when you put so much of yourself into something, it is scary to think how you would feel it people do not like it. Thank goodness there are so many awesome people out there who share love for the same things I do. Retroformat Magazine issue #15 reviewed the game and gave us a 9.5/10. CoolSh#t magazine reviewed us and gave us a 100%…. which is bonkers.

To leave things for now, what do you have planned for the future?

ARTIX: Hyped for Byte-Off IV! [editor’s note: it started February 9 and runs until March 17] My time is limited because I am working on www.AQ2D.com — a cross-platform remake of the MMO. But I have never missed a Byte-Off yet. NESMaker game jams are like jello…and there is always room for Jello.

DALE: Each Byte Off is a not-to-be-missed event; it’s a celebration, a gathering of community members. I’m eager and hopeful to find some time to participate this year as well. I’m currently working on finalizing my game, Chibi Monster Brawl, and concurrently collaborating on a few other NES projects. It’s an exciting time, and I look forward to welcoming new people to our community to create new games for the NES.

Dungeons & DoomKnights is available now on Steam and the Switch eShop.