Knightmare! (1984)

Name:Knightmare
Number:228
Year:1984
Publisher:Romik Software
Developer:David Jones
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour
Won:No (97W/72L)

Here's a small little oddball. No, this isn't the Knightmare you're thinking about. It's one based off the show, or the Amiga one, the Commodore 64 one that you probably don't know about. As the nicely animated title screen goes up and down, we get a jaunty tune that I recognize but can't name. Wait, Activision 1987? Isn't that the other Knightmare? This is a pirate release, so maybe they changed it? Hmm.

I'm the grey figure on the left.

This is another top-down, every room is special kind of action game we've seen pop up around this time. Kind of like Anticipital, except not as insane. This is good in some ways, I feel like I have a shot at winning. This is bad in some ways, I have less reason to actually advance. Our objective seems to be to gather seven treasures and to open many doors, but online descriptions imply I'm supposed to be rescuing fellow knights and the king.

Continuing the trend of games which force the player to use peripherals, this uses the joystick for everything. It's clever, but unnecessary. Movement is as you expect, but shooting is down by holding down the joystick button and pressing a direction. This does work against the game in awkward ways, as you can't stop moving once you start, walking into a wall hurts you. There are items on the ground you pick up by walking into them, and drop on crosshaired areas by pressing the joystick button. Saying all these factors are annoying is an understatement, it's a struggle to play this one. Even when I know what I'm doing, it's a struggle.

There's also a mechanic at the start where you pay parts of your lifeforce, because you don't die in one hit thankfully, to get a better crossbow and armor. I'm not sure about the specifics of the crossbow, but better armor/shield comes with subtle advantages and disadvantages. Your speed changes depending on the state of your armor, spend more, you move slower. This is not necessarily against you, as the unarmored state is way too fast to safely control.

Each screen has its own selection of respawning enemies which range from the usual fantasy to the title screen coming to life to attack you. Enemies will stop respawning if you kill enough of them in a certain room, at least for a time. Enemies that don't die in one hit require you to find a special weapon or to use some sort of item to defeat. Perhaps some aren't even killable at all, and you just have to avoid them. Rounding out the threats are the doorways between rooms, as walking into them triggers the wall damage sequence and you have to walk in that direction again to escape the room. It's always a great sign when things required to win the game are troublesome to do.

The game also really homes in on that puzzle aspect, but because of the aforementioned issues, this is not fun. The easiest to figure out is a puzzle where you rearrange numbers into a numpad. Well, possibly, because in practice it was a pain to do even with enemies gone. You automatically pick up to 4 items and then drop them whenever you hold down the fire button. It's so difficult I just couldn't solve it, so that's fun. It was pretty much a guarantee I wasn't beating this one.

The only actual puzzle I seem to be able to solve is one in which you get an item that turns your attacks into mostly harmless fluffy balls. These kill some unusual enemies floating over a key in one room. But the area this opens up is just more of the safe. Cool, more rooms with doors I can't open and another puzzle with an enemy floating over a key. Pills don't work, it's a vampire, who knows what does since I'm basically shooting stakes all the time anyway. There's oil in the room, what that does is a mystery to me, because it's a pickup like the health pickups, meaning you can't drop it.

There's one more item I can try, a yellow diamond. But there are no doors it can open, at least not by color. There's a treasure room, but it has seven slots and it seems doubtful that putting one treasure down will change anything. That basically leaves two options to me, both busywork. See if you can't get something by killing infinitely respawning enemies in each room or try the diamond in every slot there is. I'd try it if there were a trainer for the game, because this game seems to pride itself on jerking the player around. But there isn't, and it feels like too much work to try to use Game Conqueror, so it's off for my highly unsatisfactory rating.

Weapons:
I'm not actually sure what the difference is between a rating 1 crossbow and a rating 4 crossbow. 1/10

Enemies:
There are a number of unique enemies each with their own unique behaviors, none of which matters because you're getting ground down by a swarm of practically infinitely respawning enemies. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
There are two possibilities regarding this game. One, it's a secret work of misunderstood genius and I've just crapped on a modern day Moby Dick. That I didn't put in enough time to understand how the game set itself up. Two, it's a bunch of rooms and items put together in a haphazard manner and sold to children expecting something that isn't a piece of crap. I will let others decide if it is the former. 2/10

Player Agency:
However, I will say that if future generations condemn me for not getting the genius of this game, I hope they will understand why I say that this is the worst use of wall damage ever. It's either a trick to avoid or something that penalizes the player for not paying attention. Not a toll. The things you pay for and how they interact with how you go about the game world are also just too confusing to properly figure out without a copy of the manual. 1/10

Interactivity:
Stop trying to do a million things with a single joystick. It doesn't work! 1/10

Atmosphere:
I'm really not sure what this is trying to be so it mostly just annoyed me. 0/10

Graphics:
I did not find it very appealing. 1/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
There's a jaunty music tune, and some sound effects. What you expect, nothing impressive. 1/10

That's 9. Man. I'm really getting some dismal games lately.

The only place this is really talked about is Lemon64, who say it's crap. A review linked from there is basically an ad for the game, though curiously it mentions that the instructions are a 95%, the same score they game "value for money". Which makes me wonder what's in the manual. Is it informative? Because a high score for money value is fair, if you place it as how long you could play it if you could stomach it. Which is a very long time, I reckon, since there are no saves.

Anyway, things will be slow around here for a little while. I've been managing my time poorly lately and I have a lot of stuff to do and not enough time to work on everything as much as I'd like. This is not a hiatus announcement. Next week I'm going to wrap up Galactic Dan, then the week after that probably wrap up Mazer II. Just going to be slowly wrapping up what I have before starting up anything new. Going to cut it down to one game at a time, even if that can be boring.