Knights of San Francisco is a new text-driven RPG out now on Android and iOS

Knights of San Francisco

Mobile phones continue to receive great games, ranging from adaptations of popular console games to original creations that are designed specifically for playing on the go. Knights of San Francisco is just one example of the latter.

Filip Hráček, a writer and programmer, and illustrator Alec Webb created Knights of San Francisco as a labor of love. Their indie studio, Raindead, is headquartered in Prague and San Francisco that was founded in 2015.

Knights of San Francisco is a text-driven role-playing game. You play as a young necromancer who visits the ruins of San Francisco. It is described as an “egamebook.”

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Since it can be finished in around 90 minutes (an “unapologetically fast game,” in Filip’s words), it will provide you with more unforgettable moments than other longer games. Indeed, Knights of San Francisco is more akin to tabletop role-playing games than standard computer RPGs, eschewing statistics and visuals in favor of showing the player what’s going on in the same manner as a Dungeon Master does. Things are always meticulously monitored in the background, of course. Still, there are no large tables to look at or situational charts to learn.

In Knights of San Francisco, I follow what I call ‘social change through escapism. I see two types of games. One type goes for pure fun (e.g., Doom). The other focuses on surfacing important topics (e.g., Depression Quest). It’s rare to see entertainment that lets the audience have escapist fun and at the same time become aware of a deeper message. It’s okay if that message only reaches about one percent of the audience; what matters is that the message is there – and that it can be decoded if so chosen. The whole game is a modern version of the medieval vanitas, except it’s wrapped in a fantasy romp.

Filip Hráček (Founder, Raindead)

Raise the dead, navigate the ruins, and engage in dynamic combat through Natural Language Generation (NLG) in this minimalist, black-and-white RPG with a foreboding setting that pushes egamebooks into uncharted territories. Knights of San Francisco is currently available for $2.99 on the App Store and Google Play.

Watch the Knights of San Francisco trailer below!

Knights of San Francisco Trailer
Knights of San Francisco Trailer

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