Game Reviews

Star Knight - Starry starry knight, cut your enemies blue and red

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iOS
| Star Knight
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Star Knight - Starry starry knight, cut your enemies blue and red
|
iOS
| Star Knight

Star Knight is an interesting one. It's a reasonably hardcore hack-and-slash platformer with an art style that's not too far from the likes of Limbo and Badland.

But where those two were more about puzzle solving, here there's a slight shift in focus. The core of the game is violence - you're a knight, after all - and while there are some tricky puzzles and dangerous leaps, you'll spend a lot of your time mashing the attack button.

And it's a lot of fun. There's nothing particularly new here, but everything is polished nicely, and there's enough spark that you'll find yourself losing hours in the cartoony world it builds.

What do you do then?

Well, you run through a series of levels, collecting gold, slicing up monsters with your massive sword, and trying to get to the exit without falling into a pit of spikes.

It's pretty standard stuff, but it's engaging all the same. There are wall jumps, bounce pads, crumbling blocks, and all the usual accoutrements that come along with 2D platformers.

But on top of that there's a reasonably interesting squodge of violence. Butchering the podgy monsters that populate the levels is a lot of fun, and while the combo system isn't particularly in-depth, you can learn powerful new moves by spending the tokens hidden in each level.

The controls are solid enough - especially on an iPad. You're darting around with ease, and you'll rarely find yourself missing a jump because your finger was in the wrong place.

There's a decent level of challenge here as well, although it's not as cruel as some platformers on the App Store. And that's partially thanks to the solid check point system, and no limit to the retries you can take on a level.

That's not to say that you won't feel that sometimes you're bashing your head against a brick wall - especially when it comes to the first boss fight - but upgrading your weapons and learning the patterns of your enemies will set you in good stead.

Sounds like this has a pretty old-skool vibe

Yeah, you're right. There's a 16bit twang here, not so much in the presentation, but in the way the game feels when you play it.

And that's not a bad thing. You're going to have a lot of fun playing this one and, quite frankly, that's more than can be said for a lot of the games on the App Store.

It's slick, it's fast, and it knows exactly what it is. And if that's how you like your platformers, then Star Knight is well worth the asking price.

Star Knight - Starry starry knight, cut your enemies blue and red

A sharp and enjoyable hack and slash platformer that's never any less than solid
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.