[If you would rather watch or listen to this review, you can wait for the video sometime this week as I have all my audio recorded. Additionally, you can check out the gameplay footage I captured from some of my better runs.]
Similar to my review on the Trifox demo, this video showcases footage from a demo only available during Steam’s previous sale, although I had plenty more time to digest the overall gameplay. Additionally, while I was left with the strong impression that Trifox was in the roughest stage of its development, I can confirm from the developer’s own words that Shady Knight is a project nowhere near complete. To give you some idea how rough this build was, I will quote the developer’s own justification for its removal, “If the demo stays up to the full release, [then] the game will be judged based on the available version and for things that have been already improved [upon] or drastically changed […]”
Bearing that information in mind, let’s start by answering two important questions: What is Shady Knight and how much does it successfully execute its ideas thus far? Shady Knight is largely inspired by arcady, combat-intensive games like Superhot or Hotline Miami with gameplay systems you would find in classics such as Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. That game in particular resembles much of Shady Knight’s core combat system, especially with the sheer amount of conveniently placed spikes scattered all over. However, there is a lot more parkour elements here that you would find in later entries by Arkane Studios, and the player’s move-set and the general map design encourages players to create their own paths when scaling these towers. These sorts of players will get the most mileage as perfecting your run and doing it with style are the strongest extrinsic incentives to get you to replay these stages. Although it may surprise you to know that this game lacks a scoring system or a way to save footage of your completed runs, and these two solutions would be enough to motivate more players to “perfect” the stages again and again.
Regardless of those omissions, most of what Shady Knight sets out to do is demonstrated in some tangible manner that you can easily see the bigger picture for how this game will play. However, when you take a closer look at the finer details, you cannot help but to notice several key problems with the core mechanics as well as some peculiar design decisions that get in the way. More importantly, these issues aren’t minor distractions you can ignore with enough time; they favor one approach to combat if your goal is to quickly dispatch your foes.
Before cutting right to that matter, it would be helpful to examine the full extent of your move-set. Your primary controls let you swipe, pick-up and throw objects, block attacks, jump, grab ledges, hop on enemies, kick and slide. Additionally, you can switch from attacking with your sword to throwing it—and you can kick it mid-air too—along with charging up your swings, performing a dive attack, or triggering a temporary slow-motion by sliding and kicking at the same time. This last ability can also be used in mid-air if you switch to the throwing mode, which can help line up your attacks or aim your downward thrusts. Whether or not the game properly teaches you all these maneuvers is something best reserved for the future, but it’s a good example to show how the gameplay can often feel restricted within its own control scheme.
While the sheer number of abilities might make you believe this game suffers from having one too many buttons, the actual problem comes from how many context sensitive actions overlap one another—and often by the smallest, arbitrary changes. All the options I have outlined work with five buttons, which should be more than enough, but there are situations where the layout creates further complications. The simplest example is the fact that the pick-up and slide ability is mapped to the same button, which works well-enough as it is one fluid motion. On the other hand, you can swing your sword quickly or you can charge up your strike with the same button, but if you jump at any time while swinging you will engage the plunge attack. This situation can often result in you taking damage when you decided to jump away, and for the longest time this quirk confused me as it constantly interrupted the flow of combat. Obviously, you could block the attack to avoid damage, but it would be more intuitive to have the right-mouse button block attacks when on the ground and engage the plunge attack when in mid-air.
For a similar solution, you could have a dedicated pick-up and interact button in addition to the default ability to retrieve items when sliding, all without negatively affecting the game. Even with console limitations, there isn’t anything to lose by providing more intuitive options, although I realize that the game may add more mechanics in the future. Regardless, this latter suggestion is a cautious recommendation for now, but these examples should highlight how difficult it can be for developers to cram in as many mechanics as possible while also making them accessible. If anything, this demo should serve as a model in how to smartly design the gameplay around as few buttons as possible, but a little more conveyance would help players spot its own blind spots.
Now, as I’ve mentioned before, the biggest problem with the demo is how the game steers you toward one approach to every stage, which feels like the antithesis to its own free-form design. Admittedly, there isn’t much to say about the level-design itself other than a couple hidden places off the intended path. What I’m more concerned with are the objectives you’re meant to complete. Based on the three available stages, each level involves scaling towers while finding secret skulls, avoiding damage and reaching the goal in the shortest time. Even within these three goals, there is some internal conflict for the player when the game doesn’t have something to unify all these motivations. This issue is why the scoring system I mentioned previously would serve more than as a meaningless inclusion for die-hards; you would have some quantifiable way to measure the importance of each goal, and you would give the player another obstacle to consider by focusing on which priorities are important.
To describe this situation in a less convoluted manner for your benefit, imagine you are midway through a stage without taking any damage. Do you wander off the intended route for a secret to get more points? Is that decision worth the added time needed to complete the stage or the risk of getting harmed? Would it cost you more to avoid the secret or to risk getting hit? Furthermore, could you have reached this part of the level from another angle, and could you have earned more points by taking out the enemy encounters along the way while also getting the secret? All these considerations are only a microcosm of the potential you could add to this game with one meaningful inclusion, but you could take this idea even further if you implemented it with a robust scoring system for combat.
Before we continue any further, I want to broaden my perspective for a moment as I realize this section has mainly focused around my own arm-chair game developer ideas. The purpose isn’t to make the game exactly how I envision it to be; I’m providing explanations and hypothetical examples as a player to help inform the developer why the demo lacks a cohesive objective. It’s possible that the developer doesn’t care for scoring systems or the idea is something planned for the future. Regardless, my point is that some players will want something more tangible if you want them to replay these stages, so my focus on this problem has less to do with what is wrong and more to do with what is missing.
So now that we’ve examined the controls, the level-design and the game’s priorities, let’s discuss the combat system in more depth. As I’ve already touched on the topic, the controls and the mechanics are functional, although the more immediate problem is how much health the enemies have. The long and short of the matter is that enemies take way too many hits with your sword, so you often rely on other creative solutions around you. What would take three swings to kill one enemy can be swiftly resolved with one kick to a spike-wall. Now the developer has touched on this topic about the demo’s balance and the overpowered nature of certain methods, so I hope this problem will be resolved. However, despite the demo’s flaws on this matter, it does succeed at making the combat system engaging while keeping things relatively simple, which is thanks in no small part to the environmental destruction system.
Much like Superhot, if you examine Shady Knight’s combat system in isolation, you will quickly realize how one-dimensional this game is to play, but that would omit how much the environment serves a vital role. While your weaponry is limited to swords and barrels, you also have wooden boards, spikes on walls, fire, boxes on top of scaffolds, and the sky as other means to dispatch enemies. The real purpose for these alternatives is to provide useful distractions for the simplistic melee mechanics, and it also allows players to show off their own ingenuity in combat. Considering that one kick to a wooden board will kill any enemy, the demo heavily encourages you to make the most of this system if you want to quickly resolve any fight. However, I don’t believe the game needs to hamper your weapons in order to encourage more players to be creative when they fight. Going back to my past suggestion, you could look at Bulletstorm as an example in using the scoring system to promote more stylish kills while still providing the player an effective arsenal. Again, this suggestion is an extension with what you already do in the game, but you also provide a clearer methodology for the player in how to be the best.
So, this review accidentally spiraled out into a rather exhaustive look at Shady Knight, but if I had to summarize the whole experience in one word it would be potential. Obviously, a demo is designed to promote the idea of a game, which doesn’t always translate into its final execution. For all I know the final game could have these same issues or it may undergo a drastic revision all together, but this demo’s overall vision, however distorted it may be from total clarity, is one that you don’t have to look too hard to find a brighter future. (God, that is the schmaltziest thing I’ve written in some time; I’m allowed to throw shade at myself, right?)
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