Trivia / Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom

• Acting for Two:
  • In the Maherian version, Kevin Bréro voices both Kayenne and Ayron, and Florence Ricaud voices both Mingane and Irys.
  • In the English version, Tamara Ryan voices both Chado and Mingane, Cristina Milizia voices both Poky and Sabba, Kiel Adams voices both Askel and an Adoryan general, and John Doe and Sean Chiplock voice four characters each: Doe voices Kayenne, Meos, King Ranahel and an Adoryan soldier, and Chiplock voices Ayron, Nashoba, Reize and a Mantarian villager. This results in several instances of Talking to Himself.
• Adaptation First: In non-French-speaking countries, since The Shiness was only published in French while The Lightning Kingdom and Crossroad are the only parts of the franchise that were translated into other languages.
• Amateur Cast: Most of the Maherian version's voice actors were unknown, freshly-graduated voice acting students, though a few were professionals, most notably Brigitte Lecordier, mainly known for voicing young Goku and Gohan in the Dragon Ball franchise, who voiced Poky.
• Blooper:
  • Nashoba's outfit changes between the non-animated cutscene where Kayenne introduces him to Rosalya and the animated cutscene immediately following it where Poky unties Chado: in the former, he wears a sleeve on his left arm, not in the latter, where he suddenly gains Handwraps of Awesome and a Badass Cape instead.
  • In the Maherian version, the cutscene where Poky realizes that Irys/Kaorys accidentally killed her sister uses the wrong Maherian line if Kaorys is the one who kills Irys, Chado asks Poky how Kaorys is in both versions.
  • In the English version, Chado's name is used instead of Poky's in one line when the party flies aboard Xaham's ship for the first time, so Chado says "Chado! Look! Buttons everywhere! Everywhere!" to himself.
  • Ayron's name is only spoken twice in the Maherian version, both times by Chado, the first time, it's pronounced /eʁɔn/ ("eh-ron" with a guttural R), but the second time, it's pronounced /ajɾɔn/ ("eye-ron" with a tapped R). His name's pronunciation was presumably changed at some point during the development, and one of the lines was already recorded and wasn't updated.
• Christmas Rushed: Made pretty obvious by the numerous Game-Breaking Bugs and missing promised features and the fact that the cutscenes in Maherian aren't even included in the game and must be downloaded separately. Worse, this happened despite years of Schedule Slips.
• Creator Killer: The game's delays left Enigami so indebted that when it was finally released, it failed to make back its budget. The studio went into liquidation within three months of the game's release, Samir Rebib went back to being a game artist for other studios such as Game Atelier while Hazem Hawash hasn't scored another game since and virtually disappeared.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Chado and Poky are voiced by actresses in both versions, Mathilde Boureau and Brigitte Lecordier in Maherian and Tamara Ryan and Cristina Milizia in English.
• Cut Song:
  • Several, such as this battle theme which was used for a preview of the game at the Toulouse Game Show in 2013 and doesn't appear in the final game. Some of them can still be found in the game's files.
  • Inverted with some short tracks that can be heard in the game's cutscenes but are missing from the official soundtrack, like this one, which plays if either Ajoss or Vrynn dies.
• Doing It for the Art: Samir Rebib started imagining the Shiness universe in the '90s when he was seven, the game and the manga before it were passion projects he spent more than two decades of his life trying to get made.
• Dummied Out: A mysterious human character called "the stranger" appeared in an early trailer and a demo before being removed from the game, his model and textures are still in the game's files.
• Early Draft Tie-In:
  • Crossroad was obviously based on an earlier version of the game's plot, judging by the blatant continuity errors between the two. This might be why the manga's seventh chapter was never released, since according to previews, it would have differed drastically from the game's story.
  • The Maherian guide seems to also be an example to some extent, as it contains some words for things not found in the final game. Curiously, it's also an inversion, since many Maherian lines in the game use an outdated version of the language, which was retooled during the development, whereas the guide uses the final version.
• Executive Meddling: The game's voices were intended to only be in Maherian, but the publisher Focus Entertainment had the cutscenes dubbed into English anyway, possibly to make the game more marketable.
• Inspiration for the Work:
  • Samir Rebib named Dragon Ball, YuYu Hakusho, Sonic the Hedgehog and Ganbare Goemon as his main inspirations for The Shiness.
  • Hazem Hawash named Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda, Joe Hisaishi and Yoko Kanno as his major influences for the game's sountrack.
  • Rebib and Hawash named Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm as their main inspiration for the game's combat system, as well as many notable RPGs such as Secret of Mana, Xenoblade Chronicles and Skies of Arcadia as major influences.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Only the French version of the tie-in manga Crossroad was fully archived by the Wayback Machine, most of the English version is missing.
  • The Maherian language guide was only given to some backers and was never made public.
  • Some pages of the game's old websites weren't archived, so the extra lore and the details about the game's development they contained are now lost.
  • When Samir Rebib started working on the game, his original manga The Shiness no longer satisfied him, so he shut its website down, he now refuses to republish it, as he feels it hasn't aged well. While part of the website was archived by the Wayback Machine, the manga's pages weren't (except page 38 of volume 2◊, of all things) and no backups are known to exist. The first few chapters of the manga were also published in the fanzine Fantaizine, but copies of it are extremely rare nowadays, some issues might be entirely lost.
  • Similarly, Rebib's other pre-The Lightning Kingdom creations such as the game Inside The Shiness are no longer officially available anywhere.
• Lying Creator: The final game is missing several promised features such as a multiplayer mode, Italian and Portuguese translations, a world changing depending on your choices or a sidequest requiring you to learn some Maherian (though it was arguably for the better in the latter's case, as the Maherian dictionary was only given to some backers). Furthermore, the game never had a DRM-free release on GOG.com despite an announcement it would.
• Manual Misprint: A non-game example, the Maherian guide contains some contradictions, for instance, the words for "left" and "right" are mixed up in an example. It also incorrectly converts 1326 into the duodecimal number 986 (actually 1398) rather than the correct 926.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The combat system was originally turn-based, the designers didn't decide to add the fighting game elements until they saw a gameplay video of Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm.
• Missing Trailer Scene: Several trailers, such as the one made for the game's Kickstarter campaign, show Chado and Terra's first meeting as an animated cutscene. It happens offscreen in the final game.
• No Dub for You: The game's text is available in French, English, European Spanish and German, but the cutscenes' voices are only available in English, or in Maherian in the PC version with a DLC. Voices outside of cutscenes are only available in Maherian, a remnant of the fact that all voices were originally intended to only be in Maherian.
• Non-Singing Voice: Rosalya is voiced by Sophie Clavaizolle in the Maherian version, but her song "Maherian Dreams" is sung by Marion Chauvel. This also applies in the English version, in which Rosalya is voiced by Brianna Knickerbocker, since both versions use the exact same song sung by Chauvel.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content:
  • The NPC Feindar Fourbépines's surname^note a portmanteau of the French words fourbes épines, meaning "deceitful thorns" was submitted by a fan during a contest held by Enigami.
  • The Bonus Boss Reize Seatlan was created by the backer Seizui and appeared in several other games Seizui backed.
  • The NPC Rimite and the Bonus Boss Rennerd were designed by a backer named Jeff.
• One-Book Author:
  • The Lightning Kingdom was the only game Enigami made before going defunct.
  • The franchise as a whole is the only thing Samir Rebib is known for creating.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • A few old names were not updated everywhere in the game's script, for instance Kimpao was mistakenly called by its old name Hika in one sentence in the French version. Gendys was also called Adorn for most of the game's development, and every instance of "Gendys" in both written and spoken Maherian is actually still "Adorn".
  • Kayenne's name is meant to be a Pun on cayenne peppers, which made sense in The Shiness as he was a fire shi user, but he was changed to an air shi user in the game.
• The Other Marty: Poky was intended to be voiced by Sophie Asencio, her voice can be heard in an early trailer. She was recast with the famous voice actress Brigitte Lecordier in 2016.
• Pre-Order Bonus: The Maherian guide and some exclusive skins could only be obtained by backing the game on Kickstarter. As the guide was never made public and quite a few backers never even received their bonuses due to the mishandled campaign, information about the language became nearly impossible to find.
• Schedule Slip: The game was announced in 2011 for a 2013 release, which was then pushed back to 2015, then 2016. It was finally released in 2017. This resulted in the final game using outdated graphics, and critics noticed.
• Self-Adaptation: Samir Rebib cofounded Enigami just so that an adaptation of his manga The Shiness could be made.
• Stillborn Franchise: The game ends with a Sequel Hook and was intended to be the first part of an Episodic Game. Unfortunately, the game's mixed reception and disappointing sales killed the studio, and even though the publisher grabbed the game's rights, they never considered having a sequel made for the aforementioned reasons. Worse, Samir Rebib lost the rights to the franchise for several years and was unable to make a Sequel in Another Medium to finish the story.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Samir Rebib was planning to remake The Shiness a few years after dropping it, but Hazem Hawash convinced him to make the game instead. He also briefly tried his hand at making an Isekai story in the Shiness universe titled Zaki, but changed his mind after only 13 pages.
  • While working on the aforementioned remake, Rebib shared some ideas he had for it, many didn't make it into the game, like an Evil Counterpart of the Shiness known as Shiross or Chado's goal being to see his deceased sister again.
  • According to a comment from a developer on YouTube, only a quarter of the Gendys Plain was completed and the game's playtime had to be halved due to budget constraints.
  • Early versions of the real-time combat system featured Sneak Attacks and used Quick Time Events to get initiative at the beginning of a fight.
  • A seventh chapter for Crossroad was teased but never released, possibly because its story was deviating too much from the game's: according to previews, Ayron was intended to appear much earlier, find Poky after the Asanao's crash and learn from him that Chado was summoned by Terra.
  • The reason why Mahera exploded, the overexploitation of the shi, was originally going to be explained to Chado by Terra in the opening, and Samir Rebib stated during the game's development that the exploitation of nature would be one of the plot's main themes. The final game completely lacks that theme and never explains what happened to the planet due to the shortened story. In fact, the game states that Poky somehow built a shi generator to power the Asanao-3, which means that the shi is renewable.
  • Mingane's bio on the game's defunct website stated that Kayenne disagreed with her choice to become a warrior and isn't on good terms with her master Nashoba for this reason. This was dropped in the final game.
  • Mingane was playable in a demo of the scrapped multiplayer mode. Whether she was ever meant to be playable in single player mode is unknown.
  • Dynastion, a boss designed by Reno Lemaire, was teased in 2014 before being removed from the final game for unknown reasons.
  • The lost city of Adorn, a dungeon which appeared to be an early and very different version of Meos's palace, was shown in early teasers before being replaced with the palace's final version.
  • A photo from a devlog post◊ showed an artist working on the model of a shelk who never appeared in the final game, possibly one of Nalluka's mentioned but never seen elders.
  • Maherian was first meant to be pure Simlish to make dubbing unnecessary, the conlangers Déborah Lebon and Clément Michard, who were originally hired to devise a way to generate gibberish for the game, eventually convinced the team to let them create a functional Conlang instead.
  • Mathilde Boureau was originally going to voice both Chado and Rosalya. She only voices Chado in the final game.
  • Early in the game's development, Askel's name was Youra, as seen in this early trailer. This wasn't his first renaming, as his name was Youko in The Shiness^note Samir Rebib changed it because he realized that it was almost identical to the feminine Japanese name Yōko and because it was too similar to Yōko Kurama's. Quite a few other names underwent similar changes first from the manga to the game then during the game's development, for instance the manga was set on a planet called Orion, which was first renamed Météora for the game, then Mahera for the final version.
  • Some old concept art◊ shows that the Isolitos were intended to look different from each other, budget constraints presumably forced the studio to make them Ditto Aliens instead.
  • "Riding an Amos", the theme that plays when the player is riding an amos, was first intended to be Chado's theme.
  • An early artwork showed that Fox, a shelk from The Shiness, was meant to appear in the game. Interestingly, this artwork was actually used for the final game, but Fox was erased from it.
  • One might wonder why there's a giant chair in front of the Gromiz Lair's entrance. This is because a gigantic gromiz berserker was supposed to sit on it according to some old concept art, but he wasn't implemented, so the chair stays empty for the whole game.
  • Old concept art reveals that Ajoss was first intended to be an archer, his model's quiver was repurposed as a large bag when this idea was scrapped.
• Working Title: The game was originally announced under the French title Shiness – Chapitre 1 : Le Royaume Étincelant ("Shiness – Chapter 1: The Sparkling Kingdom"). According to an artist's portfolio, "The Wind Kingdom" was also used very early in the game's development.

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