Olive Panda Studio isn’t your everyday game development studio; they were founded in 2021 by a group of enthusiastic developers who have a passion for games and what they bring to the world though there’s not much else as to where they’re based. Their main goal according to them is to create good quality games. While they might still be quite young, they wanted to hit the ground running by diving head first into a book adaptation along with self-publish their first release. Between self-publishing and going directly for a book adaptation, both are already major achievements for a young studio, but the proof is in the game that anything is possible when they released Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross on 20 July 2023, a pixel-art based game that relies heavily on RPG and deck-building mechanics.

As mentioned before, Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross is a game adaptation of The Teutonic Knights (Krzyzacy in Polish) by Polish Positivist and 1905 Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz from the 1900’s. Normally, an adaptation like this would be filled to the brim with discrepancies or changes but that’s not the case with Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross. There are a few changes and some of the events aren’t exactly as originally written, but the majority of the story is still there while maintaining the interesting gameplay aspects.

To give a little background on the world in Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross, you’ll have to keep in mind that the original names are also used and can make things a little confusing. Luckily, you’ll have an option in-game to use the simplified names, which are translated into a direct version of your chosen language. As for the world at hand, it’s basically a more interesting retelling of the original book about the life and death struggles, wars, and oppressions that took place between the Polish-Lithuanian people and the Teutonic Knights during the 15th century. For those who don’t know, the Teutonic Knights are essentially Christian Crusaders who were on a lifelong quest to convert anybody in their path to their faith by any means necessary, even if they have to use force.

Yeah, it’s not pretty, and it’s definitely confusing. However, this is where Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross comes in and puts it all into perspective while giving you the reigns to fight the battles to come. Though before all that takes place, when you finally jump into Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross, you’ll be shown a short cinematic to give you a rough idea of what the world is like and how the Teutonic Knights recklessly started wars in the name of faith to fuel their greed and vanity. The wars raged on in Lithuania as countless people were forced to flee or perish at the hands of their oppressors until they started reaching the borders of Poland.

To protect her people, the Polish Queen Jadwiga, who took the throne at the young age of 14, made the decision to marry Jogaila, the Grand Duke of Lithuania. This began a rocky alliance between Poland and Lithuania known as the Union of Krewo, which gave rise to a new line of defence against the Teutonic Knights. However, they refused to accept the marriage, much less the alliance, and chose to resume the war of faith for the sake of trying to get the people to bend to their will.

You’ll finally be introduced to the main protagonist, Zbyszko, and his uncle, Macko. Macko will tell you that recruitment is taking place at Olesnica, and he wants both of you to become Knights because working as laborers will take them more than a lifetime to build Bogdaniec, their current and future home. However, he first wants to test your skills. This is where you’ll be introduced to one of the bigger mechanics for Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross, the world map. When you’re not out battling against everything that stands against you, you’ll get to change your party lineup and deck, accept different quests and spend Talent Points on the Talent Tree.

First off, aside from having your usual story quests to complete, there are a few things to keep in mind. The most notable one is that you’ll also have optional quests in the form of Side Quests from your party members and Random Quests. These come in varying difficulty, which are rated through stars, 1 star being easy and 5 stars indicating that the quest is difficult. Naturally, the more dangerous quests will typically come with better rewards, though the risk isn’t always worth the rewards. It becomes a matter of perspective when it comes to taking on quests; however, you don’t get a choice on story quests, and they’ll have to be completed to reroll Random and Side-Quests.

As for rewards, these come in a semi-limited variety between gold, cards, and relics. Gold is going to be the one resource you’ll always need more of but can’t get enough of. The reason behind this is because gold is used to recruit new party members, heal up your party and buy new cards or relics from the shop. However, these count as shops that you can only find at your camp and they won’t always be available. Just like quests, you’ll have to complete a story quest to reroll which shops are available.

When it comes to building your deck, you’d expect to have a massive array of cards to build a decent sized deck with. This isn’t the case with Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross; instead, the objective with the deck-building mechanic is to keep your deck as small as possible so you can play the right card types and trigger attacks from your party members. While you can run with first and second stage triggers, it’s best to keep your options open for the occasional Ultimate ability from your party members to maximise your damage or gain a few buffs.

As mentioned before, your party members need to be triggered to attack. This is a bit of an odd way to handle things, but it’s also a nice change of pace when compared to other deck-builders and turn-based strategy games. To keep it simple, you only control the attacks of Zbysko through the cards you are dealt during a battle and they come in several different types, namely – ATK (Attack), SPT (Spirit), MAG (Magic), PROPS and ONE. Attack cards are obvious as to what their role is, Spirit cards are meant for support like healing and armour, Magic cards can do damage or have some supportive effects, and Props cards are meant purely for debuffs like Weakness and Bleed. Lastly, we have ONE cards, these are one-time use cards that can be mixed into your deck and are meant to be used only when necessary.

At the start of your turn, you’ll be given 5 energy and 5 cards. Most cards only need 1 energy to be used but there are cards with a higher cost and effects from cards or relics that can raise your energy. Triggering a party member attack is really dependent on the cards you play, though you’ll need to play a card type that matches with their first trigger to build up to further effects from them.

As an example – Your healer needs you to play 1 Spirit card for the first trigger, then 1 more Spirit and a Magic card for the second ability instead. This does make things a little tricky since you only get 5 cards per turn and you’ll need matching cards to reach a party member’s ultimate. It’s a bit of luck of the draw combined with other effects to draw more cards and increase your energy. Unfortunately, you can’t hold on to more than 2 cards at the end of your turn, so you’ll need to discard the rest to be reshuffled into your draw deck.

When it comes to battle in Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross, you’ll come across a literal mountain of effects in the form of buffs, debuffs and damage over time. While there are cards that can cancel or remove them, it’s better to try and end the fight as quickly as possible to avoid taking unnecessary damage. Sadly, if your party takes damage, they don’t heal after a fight. You’ll have to use cards, party member abilities or pay gold to a healer in camp to heal your party if she’s available. However, buffs can also be a major saving grace when you have the right relics, as they’ll give you a much-needed edge.

Speaking of Relics, these are a godsend even if you are limited to 10 at a time. Your relics might start off a little weak or boring at first, this changes very quickly as you progress and build your team. Relics come in all shapes and sizes, but best of all, they come with all kinds of benefits that can permanently buff your party or have certain conditions before their effects kick in. You’ll need to be careful and keep your deck in mind when you choose Relics.

As mentioned before, you’ll also have a Talent Tree, it’s similar to a skill tree, but it comes with one major drawback. Even after release, it looks like only some of the beneficial effects from the Talent Tree work or take hold while others are just there. These would make a huge difference in the long run and could give the game a bit more flare, sadly, we can’t always have what we want, even if it’s right there. Luckily, this is only a slight drawback and just makes life a little more difficult.

With this really odd bug in mind, Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross does make up for it with the soundtrack, somewhat. The soundtrack for the game is actually really well done with the use of epic orchestral music mixed with some more mellow traditional, unfortunately, it does get a bit overbearing after a while due to the lack of diversity in the music that can make it rather repetitive at times. One other thing to take note of is that Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross is not voiced, get your reading glasses on, there’s a lot to read but it goes really well with the game’s design.

Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross features an incredibly detailed pixel art design on the visual front. However, what sets it apart from others with the same art style in mind is that it uses simple and much more complex pixel art designs depending on the size of the character or object. Smaller objects or characters will have simpler pixel art designs, while larger means much more complex and detailed. There is a very clear attention to detail with each character you’ll see and it shows just as well with the world design itself.

Overall, Krzyzacy - The Knights of the Cross is an interesting deck-builder turn-based strategy, and the developers definitely went above and beyond with recreating a century-old story into a game while preserving a good majority of the details. Even though there is that one issue with the Talent Tree and a few small translation mishaps, the game still maintains its ability to keep you sucked in and immersed for much longer than most games like it would.

Jay Claassen (@R3GR3T_3NVY)
Editor, NoobFeed