Glue Knight

Glue Knight is a hateful combination of screen presses, cheap looking visuals, and swear words. It's a platformer powered by misery, a retro throwback that drips with angst and death and grinning moronic knights who won't do what they're told.

Quite often it's too hard, and while the retro aesthetic clicks most of the time, there are moments when everything just looks a bit shonky.

It's still an entertaining game, but it's essentially built out of difficulty spikes, and being repeatedly stabbed in the heart can become a little tiring.

Dark knight

You play a spritely knight with a sword, the ability to jump pretty high, and an overwhelming desire to cross treacherous platforms in order to steal large gems.

Tapping the left of the screen sends you jumping into the air. You can hold the screen to jump higher or tap on it again to plunge downwards with your weapon.

If you tap the right of the screen you swing your sword. Push down on the screen and you'll cling to the ground, letting you run around the edge of platforms without falling to your doom.

Most of the levels last about a minute, but you're unlikely to finish any of them in the first few tries. You need to learn pretty intricate combinations of taps and presses, and time them all just right, if you want to succeed.

Sometimes you'll get past a particularly tricky section only to be mashed in the face by an enemy knight you've not encountered before. It's cruel, it's infuriating, and it'll make some people toss the game aside.

Glued to it?

But if you're looking for something laced with a cyanide flavoured challenge, there's a lot here to like. Glue Knight is unflinchingly difficult, and it does it pretty darn well.

Sometimes the different elements on show look like they're from completely different games, and while there are a lot of levels, bashing your head against the same one over and over isn't particularly fun.

Glue Knight manages to just about stand up to scrutiny though. It's not perfect, but it scratches a particularly sado-masochistic itch with sharpened, poison dipped nails.