Koudelka

About Koudelka

Koudelka (1999) is Sacnoth's gothic horror RPG for the PlayStation, created by former Square composer Hiroki Kikuta, in which a Romani psychic explores a haunted Welsh monastery in 1898, and the forerunner of Shadow Hearts.

Koudelka in Depth

Play moves between story scenes, exploration with puzzles, and battles. Exploration resembles early Resident Evil: Koudelka, a 3D model, moves through pre-rendered backgrounds seen from fixed camera angles, collecting a limited number of items and weapons. Random encounters lead to turn-based battles on a grid, where the three characters and their enemies move a square and act each turn with physical and magical attacks, status effects and healing. Weapons break after a number of uses, battles give experience and points to raise attributes, and weapons and abilities strengthen with use.

In 1898, near Aberystwyth, the Romani psychic Koudelka Iasant is drawn by a mysterious voice to Nemeton, a former monastery turned mansion now infested with monsters. With the adventurer Edward Plunkett and the Catholic bishop James O'Flaherty, sent by the Vatican to recover the Émigré Document, a book of Celtic rituals for immortality and raising the dead, she uncovers how Nemeton's owner used it to resurrect his murdered wife Elaine as a monster. The cast includes the caretakers Ogden and Bessy Hartman, who poison their guests, the ghost of an executed girl and a still-living Roger Bacon. Three endings depend on the player's actions.

Making Koudelka

Kikuta, composer of Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3, wanted to direct but could not progress beyond composing at Square, so with SNK's funding he founded Sacnoth in 1997 with other Square staff and became the game's director, producer, writer and composer. He planned real-time battles with free movement, but staff who kept Square's traditional ideas built the turn-based grid instead, which he later regretted. The team researched British history and travelled to Pembrokeshire to study scenery and church architecture, and Yūji Iwahara drew over 100 character sketches. The score, arranged with Nick Ingman, used ambient sounds and church music influences.

SNK released it in Japan on 16 December 1999 and Infogrames in the West in 2000. It was "moderately successful" in Japan, and reviews were mixed: critics praised its atmosphere, cut-scenes and localisation but found the battles slow, the difficulty uneven and the weapon durability frustrating. Kikuta then left Sacnoth, and his planned sequels were never made; instead it led to Shadow Hearts, set after Koudelka's bad ending.