Sir Lovealot Review

Sir Lovealot is a fast-paced, humorous platformer featuring four sets of appealing pixel art-filled levels. The game was developed and published by Pixel.lu, and it stars a knight who’s always on the lookout for love and in constant need of a place to rest his head each night. Sir Lovealot might be small in size but his libido is off the charts, and it’s your job to help him satiate this lust and find his true love.

It’s unclear whether Sir Lovealot was born with that name or if it was bestowed upon him due to his never-ending string of dalliances. The premise in Sir Lovealot is simple; the loving knight is looking for his one true love. Each level starts with the knight being booted out the front door of a tower-shaped house (either there is only one architect in the land or they all studied at the same school). He must then find a flower to give to the next woman he visits. If he shows up empty-handed the maiden in that level’s tower will not lower her hair for him to climb up – for some reason he can only use the front door when leaving a tower in the morning, but fortunately, all the damsels of Lululand have long Rapunzel-like hair. 

There is an overworld map with four areas; Jungleland, Swampland, Spookyland, and Volcanoland. There is a winding path that goes through all four, and the levels appear as dots on the path. Each level consists of usually three or four screens, some earlier ones have less while later levels have more. The goal is to collect trinkets for the next maiden you will visit. Each land adds an extra trinket that can be found within, so the Jungleland just has daisies, the Swampland has daisies and rings, Spookyland has the first two types of trinkets plus diamonds, and Volcano has four trinkets in each level with the addition of lollipops. There are also coins scattered throughout, as well as hidden goose eggs that can be found in secret areas.

When you complete an area (reaching the maiden at the end of a level after having found at least the daisy) you get a percentage and score based on trinkets found, coins collected, goose eggs discovered, player deaths, and total time. I’m sure some players will want to replay levels to increase their percentages and scores, but in the long run, it doesn’t really affect the completion of the game. There are forty levels in total. Some of the levels have punny sounding names like “In the Hair Tonight” and “The Hairytale Goes On”. Others have silly names related to the area you are in or previous levels. The final level in each of the first three areas provides a slight change of pace, forcing you to outrun a giant boulder as you make your way across the level; however, I would have liked to see something different for each one to give the game a little more variety. The final level features a boss fight against a dragon. I would have liked to see them implement a few more boss encounters with other medieval stereotypes.

The gameplay is mostly a familiar platforming experience. You have a regular jump that doesn’t take you very high off the ground but the distance you can travel side to side feels right, especially when taking into account that Sir Lovealot also has a double jump. There are various platforming perils that exist in the game, like saw blades, falling rocks, spikes, as well as a few enemies that must be avoided or eliminated. Sir Lovealot has a short-ranged gun-like attack that can be used to kill enemies and hit buttons on walls. If you hold the attack button down the projectiles fire at machinegun-like speed, but you cannot move while firing like this. Sir Lovealot can only take one hit before dying; fortunately when you do fall you restart at the beginning of that screen and all the enemies you killed do not respawn. In addition, any items you collected remain in your inventory. This can be used to your advantage at times because some levels require you to backtrack to get to that nights’ maiden, so once you pick up the trinkets you need on one side of a screen you can die and respawn back on the other side. There is no tutorial in the game so it took me a while to realize that the Y button can be used to dash while in the air during a regular jump (you cannot dash after double jumping). The dash can also be used anytime underwater which is very useful in certain sections.

The pixel art style is one of the game’s highlights. It has its own distinct style that would fit somewhere just above what is typical in a 16-bit game. The colors are bright and vibrant but the shading is probably what makes the art stand out the most. It has a cartoony look to it as a whole and this really adds to the overall lighthearted feeling of the game. One element of the art design I really liked was how the time of day changes in each level, starting with the level brightly lit and then getting slightly darker until it is close to dusk. At first, I thought it might have to do with the amount of time it takes for you to complete the level, but after replaying some levels I learned that it switches at certain sections of each level. The first art you see when you start the game is a picture of two opposing towers each with a damsel hanging out the top window, and Sir Lovealot is holding on to the blonde maiden’s hair. After showing the developer and publisher logos the art comes back up but this time it is pixel art and to me, it looks much better. I hope this studio and its artists make more games with pixel art in the future.

The soundtrack fits well with the setting and gameplay. For the most part, it sounds like your typical lighthearted medieval or renaissance fair-style music, but gets a little more upbeat, increasing in tempo during more hazardous levels. Some of the sound effects really stand out and add to the overall humor of the game. Each level starts with a rooster crow as Sir Lovealot gets booted out the front door. The sounds for jumping, shooting, and pretty much everything else fit nicely but the sound effect for dash might just be perfect – a little Zwhiip! each time.

Conclusion

Sir Lovealot might seem like he’s always on the lookout for love but if you’re on the lookout for a solid, fast-paced, 2D action platformer, then you have found a match. Its fantastic pixel art and familiar gameplay that’s both challenging and forgiving make this title worth your time. It’s only a few hours in length but is filled with funny fantasy tropes and gameplay that is easy to pick up.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.