Review for Knights and Bikes. Game for Linux, Mac, PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 27/08/2019
It is a period of evident revival of the 80s in the world of cinema and television, with great productions such as Stranger Things, the next Ghostbusters or perhaps the new and promising arrival on Netflix Dark Crystal. In the pixelated garden of video games, where technological innovation is often predominant and stories tend much more often to the future than in the past, this wave has not been seen; however, Foam Sword Games is here today to present the adorable Knights and Bikes, an adventure with very soft tones and a pastel look set right in the years of synths, bright colors and VHS.
So here is Knights and Bikes, the debut title of the new studio of British developers Rex Crowle and Moo Yu, already working on the unforgettable Tearaway with Media Molecule. Precisely with the platform for PlayStation Vita this title, published by Double Fine (recently joined the Xbox Studios stable), partly shares the art style, perhaps the element that you will most carry in your heart after finishing it. Knights and Bikes is a drawing in motion, a Cornish fresco (South West England holiday region) of 1987, at least on the small island of Penfurzy, where lives a lively girl named Demelza, who recently lost her mother.
The summer season is coming to an end and for Melza (as she calls herself by those who love her) another boring and cold winter is apparently approaching. The surprise and the turning point comes unexpectedly with the last ferry of the season, when the rebel Nessa lands alone to upset her life and set out together in search of the treasure of the island.
Between scones, geese and September rain ...
The two girls immediately become close friends and begin exploring colorful Penfurzy, a seemingly rainy and boring place where Melza's only job is to feed the geese in her garden. The imagination of the two very young Britons, however, is boundless and Knights and Bikes thus tells of their journey between reality and fiction, always leaving the player the doubt about what is really happening and how much instead lies only in the fervent brain of the two.
Pad in hand, the game translates into a action adventure in two dimensions, where two characters are used at the same time, in many cases accompanied by AI-controlled party guests (obviously impossible not to mention the Honkers goose who will basically play the role usually played by an adorable big dog with an infallible nose).
As you can imagine, Knights and Bikes is therefore designed for co-op (local or online) and expresses its qualities to the maximum in two. Nessa and Demelza have different abilities from the beginning and able to combine: Melza for example is able to splash around with her boots, while Nessa can reach distant targets with her Frisbee. To solve the - usually simple - and puzzles and the - equally easy - battles, the two players will have to work together, perhaps after grinding a few kilometers on their bikes (after all, the game is called Knights and Bikes, isn't it?). freely customizable.
The gameplay is not complex at all and entrusted to very few buttons and the design of puzzles and levels absolutely discreet, even without peaks of particular creativity or challenge. A bit like the third season of Stranger Things, Knights and Bikes wants to be a fun and beautiful journey to look at, without however innovating in a decisive way. Which is there, we want to add, and certainly not boring in the 6-8 hours it will take you to complete the story.
A nice blast from the past
To enter the elite of the best independent games (like other similar projects such as Oxenfree and Night in the Woods), Knights and Bikes is missing something, especially in terms of game design and finishing. In our playthrough we have indeed highlighted a very impactful bug that forced us to lose a couple of hours of progress and some puzzles and sequences also seemed strangely unintuitive.
In addition to this, when you do not have a friend to play, you will have to rely on bizarre CPU artificial intelligence of the Foam Sword Games production, which will not always be "on the spot" or on the contrary will solve for you some of the perhaps most interesting puzzles, automatically heading towards the solution in a few seconds. Not to mention that facing Knights and Bikes with the AI makes one of the best gimmicks in the game almost useless, or the improvised challenges and races between the two girls, which, as you surely did in the courtyard with your little friends, yes they will face in competitions of skill maybe without a real goal but for the pure flavor of the competition.
Having said that, in any case, these are minimal defects - for the bugs the development team has also promised us a patch shortly - which do not affect the quality of Knights and Bikes, a splendid adventure to see and pleasant to live, the story of two girls and a region to be discovered, immersed in the unforgettable atmosphere of the 80s. An excellent pastime at a low price (€ 19.99) waiting for the big end-of-year barrels, as long as you have a trusted friend to deal with it.
► Knights and Bikes is an Adventure-indie type game developed by Foam Sword Games and published by Double Fine Productions for Linux, Mac, PC and PlayStation 4, the game was released on 27/08/2019
