BTS - Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (148) (Patreon)

G'day peeps, hope you're all doing well. It's time to discuss the making-of Klonoa review, the first episode of 2021. The year has been chaotic to start so I was really glad to get this video up as efficiently as I did, so let's get into it.

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How did this episode come to be?
Like I mentioned in the video itself, I've attempted reviews on both Pandemonium and Spider: The Video Game in the past. Two 2.5 titles on the PS1 that unfortunately, failed to capture my interest from the perspective of making a video for them at the time. Fast forward a couple years and one of my closest friends stumbled into a mint copy of Klonoa at a thrift store for MEGA MEGA cheap! My mind had it at $4 but it was actually significantly cheaper. In the end there was a haul of maybe 8 games for a whopping... $12aud. 😳 I used to close Discord while filming just so it wasn't a distraction but for whatever reason on this day, I didn't do that. So thank fucking god, ALWAYS leave it open while working now. And ever since that find in January of 2019, Klonoa has been on my radar to eventually review! So after losing 3 weeks to personal shit, I was just like "Right... what am I in the mood for? Klonoa? DONE!"

General Production Stuff:
Thankfully just about everything ran incredibly smooth on this one. In fact Klonoa may be a contender for the fastest I've EVER completed an episode. Given the game is so simple and short maxing out at 5 hours for a full run. The process of writing a positive script after not writing anything for so long was incredibly daunting before starting, but the entire thing was whipped up in a mere 2 hours. When there are less funnies to make, the tone switches immediately into a more analytical approach to the review. But I like to think I did a good job on getting some humour into the episode as well. The general theme or "narrative" of the episode being I'm the angry guy who hates everything covering this beloved gem. Will I love it or hate it and then despite loving the game, still having my angry gamer moment towards the end. It made for a fun conclusion to the episode. It was another 2 hours to film and record voiceover. If I hadn't been disturbed during the edit process, I could have had it completed in 2 sittings maybe but it took 3 all up. Still though, an incredibly speedy turnaround so it gave me a boost of confidence to know that I can still do that, when 100% in the mood for the topic in question.

A Major Mistake...
So there are a lot of fantastical names in the world of Door to Phantomile, all words I looked up correct pronunciation for as best as I could. However Ghardius, the main villain in the game, I apparently had a moment of dyslexia while writing my script as I had it written Ghaurdis which is drastically wrong. So pronouncing it 'Gar-dis' is what I went with until I stumbled onto a different pronunciation and realized my spelling error. The video was completed at this point so thankfully there was time to go back and make the fix with the new pronounciation 'Gay-di-us' which is also fucking incorrect. So for a third time I managed to get is hopefully correct with 'Guard-ius' so yeah... that was a headache!

Logo Work!
The Door to Phantomile logo is such a masterpiece! Lots of colour, fun bouncy animation and even a catchy little tune to go with it. Any time a game's logo offers so much to work with, it makes the job a lot more important but also easier to produce something of higher quality, despite the additional effort that comes with it.

Thankfully I was able to find a very similar font, as well as "Frankenstein" a few letters together with elements from the original source. Then it was simply a matter of taking all of the individual pieces into a video timeline, keyframing them all using the original logo animation to sample correct timing and it was complete. In my opinion, without question one of the best logos I've ever recreated, if I do say so myself. And all in a matter of an hour or so, which really demonstrates just how efficiently everything came together on this episode!

Video Performance:
Given the cult following of the game and franchise, along with my presentation of "will Jak actually like the game?" I was really hoping this episode to pop off and perform kinda good. Skylanders in 2020 was a MAJOR shock as to how well it performed but you can never really expect to see that. However... I did kind of expect more of Klonoa. Unfortunately despite a massive amount of circulation on social media posts promoting the video, it barely saw any viewership. Worse than recent game testing episodes which have been low. So given how excited I was to just jump in, work on the video, smash it out at a strong quality level, I'll admit it was quite crushing seeing so few care enough to click through and watch the video. Square Eyed Jak in 2021 stumbling out of the gate with a late start. 😔

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That's a WRAP!
It's a real shame this video completely tanked. My paranoid brain likes to jump on things like YouTube's algorithm and debate if that was the cause, given the channel hasn't had any activity in so long... and part of that may be true. But it's not worth dwelling on these things because at the end of the day. The goal was to make a video, enjoy making a video and play a game I've always wanted to try, which I definitely achieved!
Anyway, let me know your thoughts on the episode and if you have any questions regarding the process of production, please don't be shy to ask below! Thanks for reading and as always, I hope you have a great fucking day. Cheers guys!