Candle Knight

I was so disappointed not to enjoy this - From the brief look I got, the artistic style looked great, the music seemed great, and the combat was challenging and rewarding. But, for some reason the camera is hard locked to the player character, so every jump lurches the camera upwards with the player and I was immediately nauseous.

It is painfull to give this game a negative review as there's a lot of charm and potential here, but candleknight is one of the least polished games i've ever played. There's so many bugs in this game, it's almost as if it wasn't properly playtested. Bugs ranging from a gamebreaking one that required a restart, losing an hour of progress in the process, to a bossfight coming to a halt because the AI completely froze. In fact enemy AI often breaks, freezing them in place, this even happened to my player character once, where i couldn't move anymore and had to quit out of the game. Ledge detection, input delay and hitboxes are also very finnicky. The performance is also nothing to write home about, with frequent stuttering when loading into an area or respawning. So the game is rough but these issues can be fixed with a lot of patches, but is it fun when it works? Sorta yeah, but the game design is odd. There's this gameplay system called the 'ignis gauge' which fills up as you get in hits on enemies. The fuller the gauge the more damage you deal but also the more damage you take. Sounds like an interesting system that rewards skillfull play until you realize that in about 8 hits you've filled up your gauge and it barely depletes so you're pretty much stuck on high ignis every fight. What's worse is that you deal barely any damage with an empty gauge but with a full gauge any boss or enemy can two or three shot you. The system is terribly unbalanced and you have almost no control over it. The health upgrades feel meaningless because of this as well, since one health point doesn't make a difference on high ignis. This ignis system makes the game frustratingly difficult at times. It's not that bosses or enemies are hard, but it feels like you're fighting the ignis system moreso than you are fighting them. The attacks are telegraphed well enough most of the time but you still get hit every now and then. Healing is also out of the question as this uses a rare consumable potion that takes around 2 full seconds to use and restores only about a third of your healthbar? Getting hit thus feels incredibly punishing so bossfights and even regular enemies require you to play very carefully. Luckily you don't lose anything on death and picking up your corpse fully restores your HP. There's only a handfull of bosses but they're genuinly pretty fun, albeit unbalanced due to the ignis sytem or outright broken due to some bug. Still these are the highlight of the game. Regular enemies on the other hand are very basic and there's only a small selection of foes recycled across the levels. This makes the relatively basic combat get old after a while, because even though it controls pretty well, there's not enough variety to keep you engaged. The story does not fill this void either because it's vague, stereotypical and plagued by bad writing. The bosses and NPC's speak out nonsense that tries to be cool & complex but instead amounts to a bunch of gibberish that really misses the mark. They really did try too hard with the writing and it comes off a bit cringeworthy in the end. The level design starts off pretty strong but in my opinion really goes downhill in the later parts of the game. Levels have some branching paths that either lead to a meaningless upgrade/consumable or unlock a shortcut that really isn't that much of a shortcut to begin with. The levels are convoluted and without a map to keep track it's pretty hard to see where you've been or have to go. They do play with perspective a bit which is cool but the wonky camera movements drag this down. The camera snaps very abruptly at times which i can imagine to be nausseating for some people. The movement is also very akward, since there's no transition frames between wall climbing and jumping so your character snaps from one animtion to the next. If you wall climb and jump off the character also jumps that way instead of the way you're inputting, so if you dash after a wall jump the character sometimes jumps the other way, which makes the controls feel sluggish. Luckily the platforming is really easy and simple albeit a bit boring. There's no unique or creative movement here, just a double jump, stomp and wall climb. You can use your ignis bar to fire a projectile at least, which is kinda creative as it fits in thematically with the candle knight. So the game's buggy, contradictory in it's design and sort of basic, but there's also some good to be had. The visuals for one are really good in this game, the models have a certain charm to them that sorta harkens back to old school ps2 games. The soundtrack is also VERY good, i'm not joking. I'm actually gonna pick up the soundtrack seperately when it goes on sale, because i want it and also want to support these devs a bit. Because even though the game is poorly made, you can still see the creativity and love that went into it. It's just a shame that they couldn't polish it up some more to reach the heights it could have reached on a bigger budget.

I have only cleared the second boss so take my early thoughts with a grain of salt! Overall, I think the most unique thing about this game is the combat system. The Ignis Meter going up and giving you more damage as you play more aggressively feel great, but it does balance itself by making you more vunerable to damage so if you are like me and are too used to hack and slash games, well, you might die quite a few times! This game is the first one released from this studio so all bugs and minor problems I encountered are understandable; what I find the most appealing though is that I can find the work and passion put in this game in everything. From the artstyle to the level design to how the Devs try their best to communicate with players and work together to further polish something anyone can look back with fondness. I specially recommend this game for people who dream of making their own games. Now that it's possible and your dream is within grasp, you just have to take a risk the same way the candle knight does when he starts winning ignition. You may stomp and get hit hard by obstacles, but that's just part of the journey!

This game feels incomplete. the controls have a slow response, you will find yourself hitting the same button a couple times to execute one action. the background music is low, slow and not engaging at all. this game feels off in so many ways. not worth the price not even discounted.

Candle Knight is a very fun and interesting game Has some really interesting mechanics, as well as a fantastic artstyle, being able to explore a castle from the perspective of such a small character is very cool Recommend this game if you're a fan of platformers and metroidvania styled games

Enjoying the game.. it is a slow progression to getting upgrades, but it's still a good time. Combat takes a little getting used to. Also, for the devs -- Something From Nothing - Fully upgrade the shield achievement triggered randomly somewhere right before the King boss. Great job otherwise!

Fun game with great visuals, I'm usually not very fond of darker environments, but here they work very well due to the main character being a candle, so it compliments the setting nicely. I was able to test the game months before it was released, and I see that the things I mentioned back then were addressed, I'm happy to see the game turned out even better.

机翻严重，导致我教程都没看懂，流畅性有点差感觉是优化问题，画风很好看建议亮度调高

Me hizo sentir que estafaron al amigo que me regaló el juego y por desgracia no se puede devolver. El combate está del kul0. Aburre estar sólo saltando entre plataformas donde apenas y hay enemigos (y de esos pocos unos cuántos que ni se mueven, se quedan parados pensando en la inmortalidad del cangrejo). Y luego hay unos que tienen el texto arriba de su cantidad de salud y el estado de su animación xD. Mejor le hubieran pagado bien a los becarios que colaboraron en el proyecto en vez de pagar con "experiencia" para que salga algo bien. Mi última queja es que no puedo darle una calificación menor a "no lo recomiendo". Aaaaaaah se crean, buen juego, espero sea el último.

Honestly, this is one of the worst games I have ever played from a game perspective. I got lured in by the aesthetic. It looks great...and that's about it. Music is okay, platforming is acceptable. Story is meh. But my god, the combat, if you can call it that, is absolutely horrendous. It is sloppy and floaty as all hell, and retardedly unforgiving in a very frustrating way. It felt like an absolute chore to play this damn game. Enemies take many hits to kill and yet the player character can die in one or two hits if at full ignition, which you need to be able to deal damage anyway, because even with sword upgrades the player damage feels lackluster as hell without ignition. And the shield feels absolutely useless. It's incredibly unreliable and can't block all attacks. At least it can block projectiles, I suppose. But trying to use it mid combat is very janky and not at all smooth. All that considered, enemy encounters can just be entirely run past if you so desire, save for a few locked arenas. There are just 4 sword upgrades and 2 shield upgrades, and that's it, aside from 2 different consumables from the merchant. The game is very rudimentary and basic all around, especially considering the combat. There are definitely a couple bugs too. Sometimes I would just get stuck and be unable to move or attack for a moment. I also fell out of the map a couple times with the levels involving the sliding books. And seriously, making the player press keys some 20 times just to skip a cutscene is ridiculous. At least you can skip cutscenes, I suppose. Feels like this game wanted to be like Dark Souls too much, and failed badly. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.