Muffin Knight

There's not really much to review here, so we'll keep it snappy and quick. I sometimes watch Total Biscuit's output on youtube, ideally, the videos where he doesn't get a bit too self-righteous or rambles on about esoteric video settings I can not care about. When he's actually reviewing things, though, I kinda get the impression we're very similar gamers.

So he mentioned some... I don't even know, Crate game? While reviewing 'Super Mutant Alien Assault' which, the game itself, looked pretty good. What does this have to do with Muffin Knight? Apparently this is some sort of platforming action sub-genre, and SMAA is 'better' than Muffin Knight, which is apparently a straight clone. I've never played whatever the original title in this equation is, but I do own Muffin Knight from a bundle or something, and SMAA looked pretty good in his review.

So I installed Muffin Knight and ... Well, for one thing, the game is another one of those 'SNES 16-bit era' looking visual treats. I'm not sure as to the exact rendering style, but it isn't that it is pixel art but rather that it is nice and easy on the eyes. Picking up the game is really easy and visual elements just work nicely. Lots of green.


For two, the game is incredibly simple, as it apparently its lot as part of the genre. It is platformer, you have two buttons: Jump and attack. You pick up "muffins", which increase your score, but also change your class. Each class has a different style of attack. Knights shoot arrows, archer shoot arrows and the gnome has a shot gun. Etc, etc. You platform on a small battle arena and scoot around scoring muffins. That's it. As you go the game unlocks new levels and unlocks new classes, which are added to the random pool from each muffin. Levels feel vaguely different, some of them are pretty cute, but some of them are just awful.

There are enemies but they are less interested in you than  interested in simply running forward. Generally speak you shoot them more because they're in your way, and less because they're really part of what you're doing. I began to tend toward avoiding them as much as possible until I hit one of the really good classes, and it begins to feel almost like you're trying to shy away from actually playing the game.

Several of the classes are really frustrating to play, and the game is largely more about mitigating a bad class than enjoying playing the good classes. There's no real reward for ... Well honestly much of anything... So you just try to scoot along scoring many a muffin before you inevitably die.

The basic issue is that once you get a handle on a given level, you're running down the clock on hitting a string of random classes that suck. Get two or three bad ones and you'll either get swamped, or just get caught in a situation where the power it uses can't keep you from death. Sometimes to get on a good run, sometimes you don't, but this doesn't feel like risk of rain where the random element is major but not overwhelming. Some of the classes just play like garbage, and if you can do better with them, I just never felt like putting in the time.

Frankly, the game plays a ton like Woah Dave, except not as good as Woah Dave at all. More variety, I guess, but less enjoyable gameplay since the two mechanisms here run in complete disinterested parallel. Good visuals, good music and easy to pick up and play, but then... There's not really much to do once you get the basics down.