The Knightling from Dutch studio Twirlbound is a joy to play, even if it’s a tad dull around the edges. An open world game with various activities to do, it’s got a nice twist on the formula through its movement and focus on the Knightling’s adopted shield.
You play as Sir Lionstone’s Knightling, a cute little guy who is suddenly thrust into adventure after Lionstone goes missing. With only his shield and a note left to go off, the Knightling must be resourceful and cunning to solve the mystery.
The Knightling Draws You in With Mystery
It’s a fairly basic tale, but that’s fine when there’s a great through-line. The mystery behind Sir Lionstone was genuinely intriguing enough to pull me through the game’s various puzzles and encounters, which was helped by the overall vibe of the game.
I adore that the game is whimsical and charming, without ever resorting to a grating twee. There’s no grating fairy, instead the dulcet tones of the shield.
Magnustego, the shield, will eventually begin chiming in with various quips after an early point in the story. Most of the game is done through this muffled, South Park’s Kenny take on speech, as everyone is wearing helmets. However, Magnustego is fully voiced, and nicely fills in gaps about the story of the world as you clamber about or comment about what you’re up to
Once I heard it the first few times, I thought the repetition was going to get irritating, but it never does; instead only really activates now and then, just long enough to not shut the sound off entirely.
Which would be a shame, as I quite enjoy the airy soundtrack. The game encourages you to be curious about getting around and poking at whatever the location might hold. It’s not dense with stuff, but it has enough collectibles and treasures to discover that I often found myself off course entirely. That soundtrack has that energy to it too, flutes and drifting music back the adventure to complete the whole experience.
Have at ye, Foul Beasts
Throughout the game, you’ll be faced with various combat encounters, which aren’t especially deep. At the start, you’ll be a basic three-hit combo, but this expands into parries and super moves that use a meter.
Combat only ever poses much of a threat if you get swarmed, which the enemies love to do. Pressing down on the D-Pad will let you heal if you have enough food stored, but I found sometimes this didn’t activate, forcing me to retreat instead of moving with the flow of combat.
It’s also one of those games where you’ll quickly get if you’re going to parry or just dodge and block. I could never quite get the timings down for any of the enemies, with only the animation cues to go off. If there was an additional glint or something, I think it’d make parrying a lot more accessible.
Speaking of accessibility, Twirlbound’s work around a color-based puzzle is stupendous. Rather than create a filter or something, they write out in plain English which lever is supposed to be turned, while still obfuscating the entire solution. I found it handy, and I’m not even colorblind.
Side quest? More Like Snooze-Quest
However, the game’s major faults come in the quests. A good portion of them are or feel like fetch quests. Go to A, to go to B, to get something, and then back to A. Sometimes it differs, but for the most part, you’re going to be going back and forth between locations to collect an item and return to repeat it in a different guise.
While I liked the characters I came across, I found myself on autopilot for a lot of the different quests available. The Knightling doesn’t do much in the way of iterating on the concepts its pulling from, instead offering its own twist on modern mechanics. For the most part, if it didn’t drip with its own artistic style, I think this would find itself quickly fading into the background.
Secret Weapons
The Knightling, though, has a unique weapon on its sleeve. That shield isn’t just for smacking enemies over the head with, but makes up part of your traversal repertoire. You can slide on it by jumping and hitting the trigger, making the open fields of the world an absolute blast to explore.
Speeding down a hill, jumping onto a bouncy mushroom, and making my way up to the top of a rock, and then using the unlockable hover to sail directly into the quest giver is never not fun. Much like traversing the world in the most enjoyable part of fellow new release Sword of the Sea, the general movement in the game made me wish this was a little less open world, and more platformer.
Seriously, the Knightling’s movement whenever it gets into the weeds of making you solve a platforming puzzle is so tight and smooth, I want to see what Twirlbound can do with that next.
The puzzles in the game sometimes left me feeling a little stupid. Going back to that color puzzle before, I must have blinked or something, because I don’t think the game showed where the item to get it going was located. As there’s a day and night cycle, it was off to the side, still lit but much darker and behind a wall.
Some of the puzzles explain themselves quite well, but just finding that domino to push that sets off the chain reaction that leads to a solution can sometimes be frustrating to physically find in the game.
Another instance of this, an energy pylon hidden up in the rafters of a room, but it isn’t ever mentioned or signalled out to the player. It’s not a yellow paint situation, it’s just more that if there’s a crucial piece to starting a puzzle, a little more attention given to driving the player’s attention to it would be handy.
The Knightling Review – Final Thoughts
The Knightling is what it is, and what it does, it does very well. It pulls from the modern open-world game motifs and tropes, as well as competing platformers, and I wish it’d lean more into the latter. The Knightling controls so well, and is so much fun to bumble about in, that it started to become a bit of an eye-roller whenever it’d stop me from doing the stuff I bumbled over for.
Despite a few dull edges here and there, The Knightling never overstays its welcome, unless you opt in to chase down every last morsel it offers. Me? I’ll just keep climbing as high as I can go and sliding down for the ninth time.
3 / 5
| The Knightling | |
| Pros | Cons |
| Excellent movement makes exploring a joy to play | A lot of dull design in the side quests |
| Lucious looks and sounds create a comfy vibe | Sometimes puzzles can be a bit confusing to get started |
| Impeccable balance of whimsy that never gets annoying | |
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5
Developer: Twirlbound
Publisher: Sabre Interactive
