Horned Knight

Thanks to titles like Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Ghosts 'N Goblins Resurrection and even Sir Lovelot, I think it's fair to say that knights are the go-to hero for great side-scrolling action games. But just as what goes up must come down, every great trend eventually runs its course. In what feels like a concerted effort to hasten the death of this trend, I present to you an awful new platformer called Horned Knight. This is a 2D action game that trips, stumbles and falls into so many terrible design decisions that you'll be embarrassed to wear a suit of armor ever again. Just about the only redeeming quality found in this game is the ability to earn all the trophies and achievements in around five minutes. Unfortunately, that's five minutes of your life you'll never get back.

Described by the developer as a "challenging 2D action-platformer where you must overcome fears, enemies and traps," Horned Knight is somehow even more generic than advertised. It's the kind throwback game that assumes that simply using pixel graphics and a chiptunes soundtrack will be enough to mask the horrendous gameplay, amateurish level designs, frustrating bosses and repetitive backgrounds. It's the kind of half-assed experience that makes me doubt the developer understands why people love old games and the neo-retro movement.

You play the titular horned knight, who is tasked with going through 32 almost identical stages in an effort to rid the castle of a small assortment of ghouls and monsters. We have a trusty sword for protection and a dash move that will get us over spikes and tall obstacles. Aside from jumping and occasionally pushing a box around, this is the entire extent of the knight's abilities. You slash up the castle's creatures, jump on floating platforms, avoid falling in lava and, well, that's pretty much it. If you've played a 2D platformer before, then you've already seen every single part of this game.

The truth is, you don't even need to play past the first few stages to see just about everything this game has to offer. You'll be feeling a real sense of deja vu after only a few levels, since the challenging obstacles and enemies start to repeat almost immediately. It becomes painfully clear that every stage is going to have the same type of spike trap, the same kind of blind jumping section, the same kind of lava pit and so on so forth. Even the enemy placement is predictable to a fault. And this is not one of those situations where the repetitive level designs are made more tolerable by the varied backgrounds, because all 32 stages are set inside the castle. Sure, the background changes color with each new world, but it's not enough to keep the game fresh.

On top of the multiple levels, the developer also promises "responsive controls and puzzle-like combat." This feels like false advertising, because the loose gameplay is anything but responsive and the combat is more puzzling than puzzle-like. Your only weapon is a sword with no range, which means that you're going to need to get up close and person if you want to kill the fireball-wielding skeletons and fireball-wielding snakes. And because of the awful collision detection, you'll end up taking unwanted damage when trying to get close enough to attack. The good news is that you'll earn some health back every time you kill five or six enemies. And if you somehow still die, the game is good about the liberal checkpoints, which makes completing each stage a little too easy.

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When it comes down to it, I take issue with a lot of the bullet points used to sell Horned Knight. Does it have "beautiful pixel art"? No, this is one of the worst looking throwback games I've reviewed in a long time. The characters, enemies and backgrounds are simultaneously ugly and unremarkable. Is the castle "amazingly diverse" and filled with "different environments"? Only if you consider a slight color shift to be a dramatic change. What about the "exciting action gameplay"? Horned Knight may be an action game, but it's definitely not exciting. It also doesn't have "tons of monsters or "tight controls," and don't even get me started on the so-called "intense boss battles." None of this describes the experience I had while playing through the 32 increasingly lame stages. It's almost as if they are describing a completely different (and much better) game.

Often when I trash a game like this, people will defend it for being cheap or made by a small team of inexperienced developers. The truth is, I think the creator of this game has a lot of potential as a developer and hope to see him hone and improve his craft going forward. But even at $6, you should not buy this game. Yes, it's cheap and it's made by a small crew, but that also describes a whole bunch of other, much better games that deserve your money instead. Sir Lovelot is four dollars more expensive and infinitely better. And that's not the only one, because you will frequently find great throwback platformers on sale for even cheaper than $6, with most of them offering better graphics, gameplay and levels than Horned Knight. I would rather get impaled in a spike pit than play this awful game one minute longer.