Knightin’+ is a top-down dungeon crawler with puzzle elements. You play as Sir Lootalot, a hero of sorts who is searching the dungeons for loot. There is some comedy in the writing of the story which will raise few smiles. It feels like an old school Zelda game in looks, and partially in controls. The 8-bit graphics are quite charming but isn’t much difference in the look of each dungeon. There is quite a bit of enemy variety and each has different attacks and need to be tackled in different ways. The music and sound in the games are quite standard and not very memorable.
The story is quite thin on the ground, and from the off, you can see the depth of the game. You see the world map and that there are 4 or so dungeons to the game. Each dungeon has a counter of the things you find within so you know when you have fully completed one, although it’s not a requirement to actually complete the game – or to unlock achievements. You will find powerups, keys, treasure chests and bosses on each of the dungeons as you would expect from a dungeon crawler.
The gameplay, however, is a bit mixed in its delivery. The button layout is simple and navigation is as you would expect from an old-style 8bit top-down dungeon crawler. The issue is that they have gone too retro in the controls in that there is no diagonal attacking, making the game tricky at times for the wrong reasons. While you can only attack in the 4 main directions, the enemy can attack you from a diagonal angle. This means you have to line yourself up correctly before you can hit an enemy which can make things feel unfair. There are plenty of examples out there that get this element right, and to have things stripped back to such a degree in Knightin’+ feels a bit too old school for my liking.
The traps in the game are quite generic and provide a small test to your timing skill. The best part of the game however are the puzzle elements. These come in the form of block shifting puzzles, light switch puzzles, boss battle patterns, lighting lanterns with magic. Though it’s not all roses, because then we come to the infuriating warp portals. They really went to town on the warp portals, which is what adds the most challenge to proceedings – almost more so than the bosses. Each dungeon contains several floors and on each of these floors, you need to search for the treasure chests which is the main loot of the game.
Each chest can contain either gold, keys or artefacts that provide powerups. In each dungeon there are locked doors which you unlock with the keys you find or buy, checkpoints where you will respawn should you die, shops where you can buy things like health or powerups and warp portals which take you to other parts of the floor. Once you have found everything you need to in the dungeon, you should be able to locate the boss room.
The boss fights start off initially tricky until you can work out their attack patterns. The key is to take things slowly as you just cannot rush attack any of the bosses. As there are only 4 or so dungeons in the game the game is quite short and will struggle to have any replay value once completed.
Conclusion
Knightin’+ is a fun dungeon scrolling adventure with some interesting challenging puzzle elements – and some infuriating warp puzzles. The game does look and feel like a retro dungeon crawler but the attack controls let the game down somewhat,and it is far too short. For those who would like a quick, fun dungeon crawler you can complete in an hour or so to bag some achievements, this might be a game to pick up, but if you’re after something more substantial then you’re better off looking elsewhere.
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