‘Knytt Underground’ Review – Deceptive Simplicity
Some games are like candy, a sweet, guilty pleasure that delights the taste-buds but ultimately incapable of sating real hunger. Others are full-course meals: delicious, nutritious, and every bit as filling than a Thanksgiving turkey. And then, somewhere between truffles and turkey, there are odd dishes like Nifflas’s Knytt Underground, an adventure-styled platformer with surprising hidden depths.
This “Knytteration,” as the developer calls it, is set five hundred years after humans nearly destroyed and then abandoned the world, leaving its future in the hands of sprites, fairies, and an extremely meta narrator named Nicklas (aka the creator incarnate). The player controls Mi Sprocket, a mute sprite whose adventures become a full-blown Quest with a capital Q when an ancient (and possibly unreliable) prophecy calls upon Mi to save the world. Only by finding and ringing the six bells of fate in time can she prevent the destruction of all. Unless, of course, it’s all just a big scam or something. But better safe than sorry, right?
At first glance, Knytt Underground appears as two-dimensional as the graphics. Yes, folks, it’s another platformer with silhouetted scenery, random environmental puzzles, and possibly a metaphor or two for life, the universe, or something else equally pretentious. The story is disorganized at best, held together by semi-developed (if highly self-aware) characters and amusing but arbitrary mini-quests, many of which are optional. The dialogue, though funny and unabashedly sardonic, leaves something to be desired as well.
And yet by the end, the game proves to be more than the sum of its parts. Rather than follow a single beaten path, Nifflas chose to wade through the muddy waters between making a full-blown roleplaying game and a straightforward platformer. The resulting combination of quest mechanics and physics-based brainteasers makes for a peculiar but highly engaging gameplay experience, with a nice balance between item collection, puzzle solving, and exploration. Added to that are heavy doses of tongue-in-cheek meta humor and genre-spoofing, which quickly turn what would otherwise be a rather run-of-the-mill apocalypse aversion plot into something ultimately more absurd and unpredictable.
Though the puzzles are nothing spectacularly different from what most platformer fans will be familiar with, they are generally well-designed and enjoyable to solve, slightly challenging in terms of timing and precision but not overly complicated to figure out. The solutions tend to be quite beautiful in their execution, often involving sparkly magic effects, gravity-defying magnetism, and/or transforming into a shiny red ball in order to bounce over or through obstacles.
Like the game itself, the world in which it is set is also more than it appears. In contrast to generic platformers, which tend to be relatively restricted in terms of progression, Knytt Underground boasts over 1,800 rooms to discover and an open world to be explored at the player’s leisure. In fact, it’s a shame the character sprites didn’t get as much attention as the environment; much like Lilly Looking Through, they look out of place in such an otherwise pretty world. Despite the planet’s supposed impending doom, both the stunning, otherworldly environmental design and the moody, meditative soundtrack invite the player to stop and smell the (giant) roses, and perhaps take a detour to see where that one path might go. Even if it’s a dead end, it’s sure to lead somewhere interesting.
Though there are only three chapters on the main menu, players will soon find that, once again, not everything is as it seems. Mi can skip around between chapters at will (though this is obviously not advisable for anyone actually trying to follow the storyline), even after game completion, and between each are also “interval” chapters set just left of canon, some of which involve sending Mi on yet more random errands – that is, quests – often to find hidden objects or places at Nicklas’s behest. There is also an extra, unlockable secret ending.
Whether the entire game is some deep, dark metaphor, or simply a silly parody is left up to the player. The fairies point out that people always assume that person plus wings equals magic, yet these fey folk appear incapable of granting wishes – though, as one fairy points out, sometimes even a symbol without power of its own may inspire powerful enough hope to help others make their own wishes come true. Perhaps the game – perhaps all games – are like the fairies; incapable of action, but capable of inspiring others to greatness. Then again, maybe the fairies are just people with wings and games are just pixels and code. When confronted with the question of what the metaphor really is, Nicklas chooses to duck out for tea instead, leaving players to ponder whether there even is an answer, or if the creator was just messing with them after all.
Adventurers seeking answers should visit Ripstone, Gamer’s Gate, or Steam to purchase the full version of Knytt Underground, or head to the official site for more information and a free downloadable demo of the first chapter.
