LoL: K'Sante's Development Story

League of Legends K'Sante has had a long process of his development.

The developer team wanted to bring something fresh to the game and worked hard on him.

His design, gameplay, and how he interacts with the new items. K'Sante is a step in the right direction for Riot Games.

His lore also brings a newfound sense of belonging and ties in nicely with his pride.

So, let's look at K'Sante's development story and how the Riot Games dev team felt about him along the way.

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K'Sante's role

The dev team for K'Sante first looked at the role of the champion.

Although tanks are crucial to the game, they can often become victimised and counter-picked pretty fast.

This is why K'Sante can take a more proactive approach to his transformation.

Game designer Buike “AzuBK” Ndefo-Dahl talks about this with...

"Our goal from the beginning was to create a tank who was very skill-reliant—meaning that he has a very high skill ceiling. I had the idea that this tank would have a moment where he says, ‘I’m going to get this done myself.’ And we just went from there"

Monster hunting weapons and K'Sante

Senior concept artist Justin “Riot Earp” Albers talked about the design of his weapon with...

"Something that I hope is unique about Nazumah’s take on monster hunting is that they take the essence or characteristics of the monsters they slay and imbue their weapons, clothing, and general goods with it, opposed to just wielding bones and wearing leather outright”

Additionally, K’Sante’s weapons (called ntofos) draw from an unusual source of inspiration: tonfas.

West Africa meets League of Legends

Speaking on the inspiration for K'Sante's design, Buike “AzuBK” Ndefo-Dahl states...

"There’s no Black champion like Garen who faces problems, but isn’t defined by them. No one is in charge. And so we wanted to create a Black character like that. Someone who has issues, yes, but someone in charge of their situation in life and their destiny, a paragon of Nazumah"

Buike also draws from his own Ghanaian heritage to inspire his developer team to get everything accurate.

However, looking at Ghanaian fashion designers, photographers, and artists helped the team to really detail the champion.