The Waking Knot is a psychedelic, improvisational tactics game about keeping pace with an ever-flowing absurd world.
This surreal foaming cosmos of bubbles invites the player to act on instinct and exploit shifting opportunities for creative manoeuvres.
It’s a game that is full of life, with striking, vivid hand-drawn characters and action that syncs to the beat of an intricate electronic soundtrack by Torom.
In their debut game, Bill Owers and Stan Irvin-Wilmot (as Bongle Systems) endeavour to synthesise the thoughtful, emergent micro-puzzles of Into The Breach with the immediacy of Super Hexagon and give rise to something that feels truly novel.
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The core development team is Bill Owers and Stan Irvin-Wilmot, with music and sound design by Tom O’Rourke (Torom). The trio met at the age of 4 where they attended the same primary school in Brighton, UK and have spent much of their time since then enjoying and talking about video games together.
In 2020 Bill and Stan started developing The Waking Knot full time. Bill had spent his time studying Maths and working with statistical models, but had become hooked on the idea of designing a turn-based tactics game that centred on lucid player expression. He started prototyping, investing in the skills that would come to define the project, from programming to writing and illustration - the seeds were sown for the unique visuals and tone present in the work today.
Stan was working as a programmer in the games industry. Following excited discussions with Bill about his progress, he soon got involved. He was excited to join in the creative process and bring a spirited, if gung-ho approach to the tech side of the project. Stan wrote the custom engine that serves as the game’s technical foundations, including an audio backend sporting a custom granular synthesis implementation.
Torom has released music on vinyl and digital for the labels Reel Long Overdub and International Extraterrestrial Music. He is currently based in Leeds and works with audio for games.
