I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to try for accountability on actually releasing a game. In that pursuit, I'm reviewing Steam games with no reviews to get an idea of why they failed. Here is the transcript for Pixel Knight:
Welcome to another Adventure Mechanics Side Quest. I'm Chandler. Today we're going to continue the zero review games series on Steam with Pixel Knight. Pixel Knight was released in 2023 under Eross Video Games. It's not their first game, either on Steam or on Itch. They have since released the beginning of another game on Itch a month after releasing Pixel Knight in 2023. So, we aren't talking about developers first game here. Although the developer may be inexperienced, they have released several games before Pixel Knight. It does appear they have gone dormant after their last game in 2023, with no notable updates or new releases since then, however.
But let's talk about the game in question. Pixel Knight is a platforming beat 'em up. In it, you will face platforming challenges on top of fighting various flavors of goomba style monsters. The artwork is very good, although it is missing a lot of transition frames, such as jumping and getting hit. I'm not particulalry surprised, since I was able to find the asset pack used for the skeleton enemy on Itch.io. As such, I'm not going to comment further on the art, since it's likely composed almost entirely from asset packs. The choice of packs do work well together, which is is a point to the designer. I will, however, note that even when you purchase assets, unless the license forbids modification, change them to fit your game, like making jump animations for the main player. I talked about assets more in a previous side quest if you're interested in more of my thoughts on asset packs.
The musical choices in the game are surprisingly upbeat and definitely make the vibe of the game more engaging. I suspect that the music follows art, in that it's likely a "best fit" instead of music composed for the game directly. Like art, that means I'll only be critiquing on how it fits the game. Some of the pairings, such as the level select screen, don't really match the rest of the theming. If the designer chose music more holistically and went for a specific style, then the audio scape may have been a bit better.
There are a lot of additional mechanics in this game that you can engage with, or you can ignore. There is a dash, for example that I never touched while I was testing this game. It shows in the steam trailer, but I never ended up feeling like I had to use it. Overall, this game is a decent representation of an action platformer, but there are a lot of things missing and that is holding the game back.
Let's talk about movement. In an action platformer, you typically have a ramp up to max speed ramp down situation. It makes the game feel like it has weight. This game is all or nothing in terms of speed. And that doesn't feel great. Jumping has no pre or post jump animations, and this makes it feel stilted while jumping. There's no animation of the player in air, either up or down, which only adds to the stilted feel of the movement. I didn't notice jumping itself feeling particularly bad, per se, but it didn't feel great, either. And may the jump gods have mercy on your soul if you want to attack in mid-air. That WILL kill all horizontal momentum and send you to the briny depths. I know it sounds like I am harping on this game's movement, and I am, but it is competing with the likes of Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Abathor, to say nothing of pure platformers like any entry in the Super Mario series. And missing the most fundamental mechanic of the game is going to turn off players at the very start. If the developers spent more time working on how movement felt, I feel like this game would have reached a larger audience alone. Level design needs to be changed as well.
For some reason, the designer has a fetish for blind jumps and jumps just at the edge of the players capability. I know that creates tension, but from level 1 to when I stopped playing, every jump felt like it was going to be my end. And, don't get me started on how the blind jumps we're not telegraphed very well. It even shows one in the steam trailer for this game. If you watch the video and that blind jump doesn't bother you, great, you might enjoy this game. But I don't know very many people that enjoy blind jumps. They weren't fun in platformers in the '90s and they're not fun now.
The one note jumps make all the levels feel absolutely basic. There is just enough detail in the background to not call it a test level. It's not much beyond that, though. If the designer wanted to continue working on this game, he needs to go back and think of the challenges that each level is going to have. The leaps of faith and blind jumps each level gets tiresome very quickly and there's not much beyond running from the left to the right with some borderline unfair jumping challenges in between. If certain levels were dedicated to more interesting challenges, or interactions with the enemies, then I feel like this game would have a lot more to it. I'll save most of my thoughts on the enemies for later, though.
The second part of the game is the combat. It is basic, but it has just enough feedback to the player that it is functional. It's not great, much like the movement was, but it is good enough. The player can strike from head to toe with one click and take out the vast majority of enemies quickly. Most of the enemies will flash when hit and emit a sound along with usually a pain state. This is the very minimum I expect from a game that involves combat. It does not do anything beyond this, though. Yes, there is a dash, but as I said earlier you don't really need it. There is also magic, but again, you don't really need it. There are a lot of stats in this game that you won't ever really care about. There's a lot of mechanics that you won't ever use. Do you get where I'm going with this? The designer put more mechanics in before they fully fleshed out any of the mechanics. They're all functional, but none of them feel great. Even fighting enemies feels bad in the trailer on the same page. It seems like the designer was trying to make it feel like a slower game than it is, especially when you can speed click enemies to death. If I can speed click an enemy to death, why would I want to use dashing or magic? The main solution I can think of is to make the enemies more interesting. But that isn't in the game.
As I said in the beginning, enemies will move left to right on a platform. Once they either hit the edge or the end of their patrol route they will turn around and go to their other edge. This isn't bad for a starting enemy, but as far as I've gotten into the game, every enemy has this behavior. There are no static enemies that provide a combat challenge. There are no real flying enemies, aside from one that is placed slightly above your attack range. On that note, there are no range enemies for that matter. If they are found later in the game, like in the infinite dungeon, they are introduced too late to be relevant. Combat ends up being one note and flat. If there were more variance, it would make the game more engaging. But as it stands, enemies don't add much to the game.
When you visit town, you will experience the trouble with UI. You can open up inventory, magic, or whatever with a single button press. That's not the issue. The issue is when you want to do anything on the windows. I was able to brute force myself into figuring out how to stash things, sell loot, and purchase potions. I never could figure out how to upgrade equipment, however. Sure, you can put your greaves in the upgrade window with components, but how do you actually do the upgrade? The menu doesn't say, nor does it show anything helpful in the controls. This game seems to revel in being obnoxiously obtuse. For instance, you can not only open up the inventory, but you can open up the pets, magic, and trade windows all at once, too! Not the type of thing you want to see in your UI. At all. Having more control explanation, possibly being optional to turn off in each menu, would go a long way towards making them more user friendly and understandable.
Does this game deserve to be put on the no-review list? Maybe. There is an interesting idea here, but it's either not fleshed out enough or not implemented well. Pixel Knight feels like a game that was made by one person that did not get any notable feedback from playtesters before being released. If it did get playtest time, it certainly wasn't blind playtesting. And it made the game so much worse for that. Yes, the game has a low price and yes, it's a relatively short play, but if the developer wanted it to actually find an audience, there needs to be a lot more work done, mechanically, artistically, layout-wise. Considering I'm reviewing it years after the fact, I doubt it will ever reach an audience beyond the morbidly curious. I certainly understand why it has no reviews after examining it, though.
I don't want to bash on this game any more than needed to understand why it's on the no review list, though, so I'll stop here. If you are the developer and want to talk about Pixel Knight, please reach out! I would love to hear what you went through designing this game and what process you had. If you're just a listener and have thoughts on this game or this series, reach out below or on various social media. My handle is @jcsirron. This has been another Adventure Mechanics Side Quest. I'll talk to you next time.
