Shady Knight

Ah, yes. Grappling chains, swords, bows, and weirdly strong kicks. What more could you ask for?

Buy it. Right now.

tuff

A fun and unique movement game that is pretty satisfying when you get it down. Shady Knight's game-play is pretty exhilarating and is very fun when you nail down a certain flow. Its different from other movement games as its more focused on melee. However, I feel like as they add more shield types to enemies, it just messes with the pacing of the game.

Just as fun and challenging as I remember the Demo being

Pretty cool game or something.

This game really has a lot to be proud of. The ambiance, the style, the art, the artistic direction as a whole is really well handled, reminds me of an old game called revenge of the titans a bit, I really like the whole back and red aspect of the game itself, how green, the protagonist's color contrasts with all this through the chain and various elements you can use but not the enemies. The gameplay itself also does a lot right, the combat is snappy, rewarding and in my opinion not too hard to get good enough at to flow trough the levels in a satisfying and impressive way. There are some trickier levels that slowed down my progression a bit, but I think trying to lock in a specific path from start to finish will naturally make things harder so that might be on me. I do have a little gripe with the chain, as it could I think come out a bit faster so that catching yourself while falling would be a bit easier and catching enemies at ledge when getting thrown out would be more possible, but the chain itself is such a wonderful mechanic I'm honestly not even mad. When I first tried the prototype for this game on itch.io I was pumped to see it one day fully released, safe to say I'm not disappointed at all.

super baller

Shady Knight is a game all about flow: the movement is buttery smooth, the combat is creatively opportunistic and the music complements the gameplay rather than taking the forefront. Your entire moveset is available right from the start, but so much of it is contextual that you're not confronted with it all at once. This helps to ease the player into the game while still allowing you to explore all the niche little tricks that Shady Knight has to offer. To further help guide the player, Shady Knight also comes with a built-in slow-motion feature called Focus which is an excellent learning tool that gives the player more time to think about their moves at the cost of draining your style point meter. While in Focus, you can also read writing on certain walls that give you little nudges on what moves you can try without forcing you into any specific playstyle. There's even a training arena with even more tips and lots of room for experimentation! There are what feels like a near infinite amount of ways to go about any combat encounter, which gives the game a combat-sandbox feel which I personally adore. Do you engage the enemy directly? Do you use the environment (barrels, spikes, fire sources etc.) to your advantage? Maybe you parry an enemy attack to stagger them, just to then kick them so hard that they slam into a wall, after which you throw your weapon and pin them to the wall. Most enemies drop weapons on death, which can be dashed to from a distance to smoothly transition from fighting to parkour as you now fly through the air looking for your next target. Performing parkour moves like the aforementioned weapon dash or the ubiquitous wall-kick actually powers up a portion of your moveset, which furthermore emphasises the ebb and flow cycle of parkour and combat. Visually the game looks great, though there's a notable lack of variety to the level visuals and the structures (most levels are towers, where you aim to reach the Orb at the top). The game's Quickmap editor allows users to create and share their own levels, which helps a lot for the replayability and exploration of different more unique level structures. Other than that though, from a completionist's perspective, the game is quite short. The main campaign can be done in a couple hours, and after that you will mostly be returning to old levels to get better scores, find new moves to use that you missed (which the game tracks) and to explore both the levels and the game's systems. If you typically just play through games once and move on, then you might find Shady Knight's playtime somewhat disappointing for its price tag. In my opinion though, "completing" Shady Knight is a bit besides the point, as the focus here is much more on being a rich movement/combat sandbox rather than being a one-and-done packaged experience. In the end Shady Knight is a game for people that want to explore an interesting, fluid and diverse system that mixes movement and combat in a very unique and fun way!

Ах если бы у этого была хотя-бы маленькая часть ультракилл коммьюнити, возможно на 800 положительных отзывов и игрой в "подвешенном" состоянии мы бы не остановились...