YoIn 2002, a group of five Italians appeared in the local media: they were going to be the first company in the country to develop a game for Nintendo’s popular handheld, the Game Boy Advance. The group put together a few hundred euros and some computers to prepare the project. They had no experience in creating games. They didn’t even have a programmer. All they had was a love of video games, a shared hatred of working for bosses, and boundless optimism.
For the next two years, the group worked tirelessly. The nights were long and the team barely took any time off. It was an exhausting time, but they were determined to create an ambitious game with complex features. It was called Kien. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s because it never came to light – until now. The action platformer didn’t see the light of day until this year, when most of the original team had already left. Only one member of the group of five remained: the game’s designer, Fabio Belsanti, who never lost faith in the project.
Kien currently holds the record for the longest-delayed video game in history: 22 years eclipses the 15-year delay of the infamous Duke Nukem Forever, a shooter that was delayed so long it became a meme. After all this time, people can now purchase Kien on a Game Boy Advance cartridge.
The game begins by asking the player to choose between its two protagonists: a warrior and a priestess. The warrior can use a sword to kill his enemies, and there are plenty of them. I died repeatedly in that first level. Armored skulls abound, and they revive after a while. You can’t let your guard down in Kien, which may be why Belsanti compares it to a primal Dark Souls. It’s reminiscent of that weird game you took a chance on as a kid, maybe because the design seemed cool, or maybe it was the only thing left on the shelves at your local movie rental store.
Of course, the game was never planned for release for several decades. The game had been finished years ago and several publishers had expressed interest in it. Once one was chosen, things changed for Belsanti after Kien’s chosen publisher conducted a market analysis that determined his game was too risky to support. At the time, each Game Boy cartridge cost $15 to produce.
“The amount of capital required just to print the initial copies was daunting, especially since the chances of commercial success were low, based on industry trends at the time,” Belsanti told the Guardian.
But despite this setback, Belsanti clung to hope. He had attended university in Tuscany, where he spent a year digging through archives of unpublished books from the 15th century. These were exciting stories about a mercenary company from the early Italian Renaissance, involving knights, soldiers, and squires, but due to their age, these stories had been lost to time. Kien draws inspiration from these tales, the unusual graphical style of early Japanese games, and action games like Turrican. Despite its age, Belsanti sees Kien as something of a pioneer, similar to games like Dark Souls. The non-linear fantasy game is unforgiving, but players are rewarded with a captivating story about a lost civilization.
While Kien languished in development limbo, the company founded by Belsanti, AgeOfGames, had to find a way to survive. “The capitalist system is a ruthless meat grinder,” he says, “which I have adapted to out of necessity, but I don’t like.” The company found a niche in educational games. One of its biggest hits so far has been ScacciaRischi, a platform game developed for Italy’s INAIL, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping people prevent injuries and illnesses at work. It has been played by tens of thousands of students and has tackled topics such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
AgeOfGames could have continued down this path permanently, but a shift in the video game industry suddenly made Kien a possibility again. Over the past five years, a boom in the retro gaming scene has revived interest in old hardware and rare games, which can fetch thousands of dollars on the resale market. Not only have GBA cartridge production costs dropped, but companies have also stepped up to meet this demand.
“I think we are in a phase similar to the vinyl or cassette revival for music,” Belsanti muses, “a return to earlier, more primitive forms of the medium driven by the nostalgia of the generations who lived through those times and the curiosity of those who came after that technology.”
After the newsletter promotion
Kein’s new editor, Incube8specializes in producing games for classic consoles and is backing Kien. The game is now sold in a striking translucent gray cartridge. The game box also includes a multi-page manual, a package that has all but disappeared from modern games.
“On a romantic level, the idea of releasing the game on its original console is simply magical,” says Belsanti. “Seeing Kien come to life on the same platform it was designed for is a dream come true.”
AgeOfGames is already working on a spiritual successor. Just as he did more than 20 years ago, Belsanti is hopeful that the public will see the value of a game like Kien, even if it doesn’t have advanced graphics or fancy frills.
“The power of the video game experience can be, not always but in some cases, much more intense and powerful in older video games made with limited graphic and technical resources,” says Belsanti. “I will never forget the thrill I felt when I saw the covers of my Philips Videopac or Spectrum ZX or Commodore 64 video games, which had nothing to do with the pixels that appeared on the screen. My imagination created a bridge between the artwork and the pixels, and filled every boundary and every absence with fantastic stories.”