Knight Crawlers Review

Knight Crawlers is a physics-based RPG roguelite dungeon crawler developed by Good Morning Games and published by The Iterative Collective. Your goal in this game is simple: get to the end without dying. However, that is easier said than done, considering the massive horde of goblins, undead, and thieves in your way.

Now, there are two difficulty modes you can play once you create your character: Normal and Hardcore. Normal difficulty plays like a standard roguelite where you can slowly upgrade your character and equipment to eventually beat the game. Hardcore, on the other hand, is more of a roguelike, which means permadeath. If you die, you start all over again from scratch. It’s a nice feature to have, but I chose Normal for this review.

Combat is as simple as holding down the attack button or standing still and letting your magic projectiles do the work. You can jump to avoid enemies and can unleash powerful skills, provided you choose them while levelling up. Overall I found the actual fighting not all that engaging, but it definitely works for the type of game it is.

However, combat is worthless without enemies to fight, and you’ll need to kill a certain amount to proceed forward. What’s unique here is that there is a summoning circle placed in the room, allowing you to spawn enemies yourself. It’s only a few at a time, and they get stronger as you spawn more, but if you tap the confirm button fast enough, you can spawn a lot more enemies than intended. Is that on purpose or a feature? I don't know, but it made the game a lot more fun, where my hubris could lead to disaster.

There is loot, with different rarities and randomised abilities. There is no inventory in this game, so that means the only things you can carry are what you currently have equipped, and any other item has to be either ditched or turned into essence, a resource needed to upgrade your character. It seriously annoys the little hoarding mind goblin who wants to manage my inventory and make sure that I’m prepared for any situation, but it makes finding those rare and unique items that fit your build all the more important.

Once you kill enough enemies, you’ll level up. Levelling up gives you a random selection of three skill cards you can choose from that enhance your adventurer in some way, which can range from flat stat boosts to unlocking powerful skills to help thin out the hordes. If you die, you’ll lose all your skills and be sent back to level one, so you better have a playstyle in mind while selecting your skills. I like this system as it has a sort of risk and reward element. Combining it with enemy spawning, you can level up faster and get more loot from killing enemies but risk losing chunks of health and getting yourself killed. It’s nice.

After inevitably getting yourself killed, you can return to the Sanctuary, a hub where you can upgrade your character, enhance any equipment you find on your run, or change your cosmetics. The Sanctuary is a nice respite from the dungeons, and the NPCs you interact with are well-acted with some decent dialogue. That being said, it feels more like a pit stop than an actual home base. Still, it does its job.

Onto technical performance, it ran perfectly well at a consistent 60 FPS. I ran into no problems with the physics other than getting stuck for a few seconds on an object. It’s not that graphically intensive; it just uses a ton of lighting effects to enhance the visuals. I mean, the cosmetic wings are spectacular to look at.

I don’t really have any problems with Knight Crawlers, but it’s just kinda… fine. It’s a time waster for sure, but it feels mindless. It’s not bad by any means, but there are definitely better rougelites I would prefer playing.