Cute Knight - Kishi Kawaii - README

General Gameplay Information

Character Information

Keyboard Shortcuts

Additional User Configuration

Troubleshooting

## General Gameplay Information

Welcome to the world of Cute Knight!

You play an orphaned girl turned out on her own into a world of medieval fantasy. It is your job to guide your character to a happy future. She can earn money by working at various jobs, earn promotions after working at a location long enough, educate herself by taking classes at the local university, and pursue fame and fortune by fighting monsters in the dungeon beneath the town slums.

When your character reaches her twenty-first birthday, she will settle into a permanent career. If she spends all her time learning to cook and clean, she might become a maid or a housewife. If she spends all her time in the dungeon, she might become a hero. It's up to you! Play the game again and make different decisions to reach a different ending.

There are also a variety of Special Endings hidden in the game. These are events that allow the game to end early. Special endings include romances like marrying the prince, or secrets like uncovering your TRUE identity! Who were your parents, and how did you end up in that orphanage all those years ago? Finding the truth will take many games and a lot of detective work!

When you begin a game, you first select a name and birth month for your character. The month that you choose will affect the skills that you start the game with. Any character can learn any skill, but obviously it's easier to succeed as a chef if you start the game with skill in cooking. If you have Hints switched on (they are on by default) you will see some suggestions of what skills are associated with each month.

As you enter the town to begin the game, you will see several buttons and a small town map in the bottom-right of your screen. Move your mouse over these buildings to see what locations in town you can travel to, then left-click on a location to visit it.

Basic information about your character is displayed in the top-right corner of the screen. Keep an eye on your HP (Health) and MP (Magic) bars as you play.

## Character Information

On the main screen, there are also three buttons that give you basic information about your character. The first is Skills. Click this button to see your current character statistics. You will see a bar in red followed by a number. This is your base skill. On some stats, you may see an additional pink or green bar, and a number in parentheses. This is your modified skill, reflecting a bonus (pink) or penalty (olive green) that you are currently experiencing. These modifiers can come from items you are wearing, potions you have drunk, or special secrets.

Strength is used in physical jobs like moving heavy objects. It is also important for breaking down locked doors in the dungeon. A percentage of your Strength score is added to the damage you do with weapons. Therefore, a high Strength is useful to a fighter.

Stamina represents your general health. Your Stamina score is your maximum HP. As time passes, your HP bar will go down and you will need to rest in order to regain health. Having more Stamina means being able to work longer before needing to take a break.

Mind represents intelligence. Having a good Mind score is important in learning to use magic, as well as taking important jobs for your future career.

Luck is a very useful thing! A Lucky character is more likely to hit when attacking a monster, and less likely to BE hit in return. Luck can be used to unlock doors, or find extra treasures. Luck also represents general flexibility, and is important for a dancer or other performer.

Charm is how appealing you are to others. A Charming character will make friends easily and be able to persuade people to give her things.

Cooking and Cleaning are useful basic job skills.

Crafting is the art of making or identifying items. If you find magical items in the dungeon, you will need a certain amount of Crafting skill to be able to tell what they do. If you don't know what an item is, you can't sell it for a good price, and you may not know how to use it. Similarly, Brewing is the skill of making or identifying potions. You can drink a potion even if you don't know what it does, but you might not like the results!

Taming is the art of making friends with animals. A character with good Taming skills may be able to convince monsters in the dungeon to let her pass without a fight. However, not everything can be tamed.

Combat is the skill of defending yourself in battle. This stat can be raised by wearing armor. A good Combat score means that monsters are less likely to hit you.

Weapons is the skill of attacking. A good Weapons skill makes you more likely to hit the target. You must purchase and equip a weapon in order to train in this skill, and you may need to buy different weapons as the game progresses in order to keep learning.

Magic is your basic rating of magical power, and affects how much damage you can do with a magical attack.

Spells shows how many magical charms you have learned so far. See the section on Charms for more information.

Level and XP reflect how much progress you have made through the dungeon.

Sin reflects things that you have done that could be considered bad. If your Sin is high, you will have a bad reputation, and other people may not wish to hire you or associate with you.

Dream reflects your character's current state of optimism. Don't let her run out of dreams, or she'll give up! Dream is gained by doing well at a task, winning prizes, or anything that might make your character feel good about herself. Dream is lost by doing poorly, being tired and unhealthy, and losing fights.

The second button on the main screen we will look at is Outfit.

This screen shows you your inventory - the items you have collected in the game. There are also four 'outfit' slots where you can wear and use an item - Armor, Necklace, Ring, and Weapon. Left-click on an item to equip it. Right click on an item in one of the four slots to remove it. Not all items can be worn.

Hold your mouse over the icon of an object to see its name and description. If you do not have enough skill in Crafting or Brewing to identify the object, you will see many question marks. You must raise your skill in order to find out what that object is.

Only items that are in your inventory (not being worn) can be identified, sold at the store, or combined at the Crafting forge. You must remove items before selling them. Of course, after buying new armor or weapons, you must also remember to put them on before using them!

The third button on the main screen is Charms.

This leads you to the game's magical system. If you are playing a magic-user character, you will slowly gain more and more cards in this display. You can choose up to three cards at a time to have as your active charms. These charms will be used when you attack monsters with magic.

Left-click on a card to move it to your Cards Selected, then hover your mouse over the selected card to see its name and description. Each card contains one to three Elements that describe the kind of damage that charm can do. A Fire card will not be very useful against a monster that likes fire, or can't be burned. Different cards will do different amounts of damage against different monsters. You will need to experiment a lot to find the combinations that work best for you.

In the Wizard's Duel, you can also match card against card with other wizards! There are many different cards, so figuring out what beats what will take some magic on your part!

## Keyboard Shortcuts

Here are some additional functions you can use to play the game.

ESC - Shows or hides the Game Options. Hit once to make them appear. Hit again to make them disappear.

CTRL + L - Brings up the Load Game function.

CTRL + S - Brings up the Save Game function.

## Additional User Configuration

If you want to pre-configure your game before running it, open up the file called "settings.ini" in your main gameplay folder. You should see something that looks like this:

    [Game]
    Sound Effects Off=0
    Music Off=0
    Hints Off=0
    Fullscreen=0
    Game Speed=1

If you have not yet played the game, the file will be blank.

These are the values that are loaded by the game when it runs. These functions can all be controlled by option buttons inside the game. If you want to start the game with sound switched off, change the Sound Effects Off and Music Off values to 1.

If you want the game to launch fullscreen instead of in a window, change Fullscreen to 1. This will automatically set your resolution to 640x480 when the game runs.

Set Hints Off to 1 if you don't want hint popups.

Game Speed can be set to either 0, 1, or 2. 0 is the slowest, 2 is the fastest.

## Troubleshooting

I can't get the game to run! I get an error about not enough memory or lowering the color depth?

Does your graphics card meet the suggested 16MB of memory? If not, you may be unable to play the preferred version of the game. If you are sure your card has enough memory, try updating the graphics drivers.

I can't get the game to run! I get an error about D3D8.DLL?

You need to download an updated version of Direct X from the Microsoft website. Your version is out of date.

I can't get the game to run! The message just says "unexpected error"?

Check to be sure you meet all the game requirements and all your graphics and sound drivers are up to date. Then open up settings.ini and try setting SoundOff to 1. Some sound drivers produce errors that can upset the game and turning off the sound may allow the game to run.

The game runs, but the text is distorted and unreadable.

You may have a ProSavage graphics card. These cards are out of date and no longer supported by their manufacturer. Unfortunately, they have some errors with Direct X text processing.

The game runs, but I see strange green and/or pink boxes around the characters.

Try updating your graphics drivers. If that doesn't work, use the Windows Desktop Properties to change your color settings to 16-bit color.