Review | The Knight Witch - Wicked [Cool] Witch

The Knight Witch is a single-player sidescrolling platformer Metroidvania game that has a splash of bullet hell to help spice up that indie game keyword soup. The combination of the game's shoot ‘em up combat and a gorgeous world makes time fly as you get an amazing adventure playing as Rayne, the knight witch in training. The best way to describe the gameplay is to imagine if you took the attack patterns from Enter the Gungeon and the beautiful landscape of Hollow Knight and fused them together into a fun and somewhat panic-inducing game.

The game has a surprisingly in-depth lore, with the story starting because of a war between the rebel group, the Children of Gaia and the kingdom of science known as Daigadai. Roybn, the leader of knight witches and protectors of the Children of Gaia fought the ruling emperor known as Erebus. After draining all the resources and destroying the ecosystem of the planet, he was thwarted and began to try and take everyone on the planet with him. Through the power of the Witch Link, power is sent directly to Roybn to deliver the final blow to Erebus.  Defeating Erebus wasn’t enough to stop the damage already done and made the surface of this world uninhabitable. The Children of Gaia find an underground bunker and with the living survivors, they all move their lives to the underground realm of Dungeonidas. Never to return to the surface again. 

Duck, dive, dip, dive, dodge, and dive.

The game takes place 14 years later when trouble has started again and you play as  Rayne. The way the developers managed to grab my attention and emotions had me invested in the plot and characters. It was well executed and made the whole journey of Rayne feel well deserved. Slowly learning more about how knight witches are made and the different races living in Dungeonida was a key part as to why I kept exploring more and more of the world. 

The way combat works is a mixture of a twin-stick shooter and card management. You can mix and match what kind of deck you wish to bring into a fight, and I’d advise you to hit up the training room to get better acquainted with your new deck and the powers they bring before you go charging into battle because the game has quite the unique combat, as your character shoots out projectiles all round them, as you try to dodge enemies’ attacks. 

Whatcha buyin’.

The cards are split into four categories: Destroyer, Weapon, Conjurer and Tricker. Destroyer, as the name implies, are one use cards that you will need to make sure to aim correctly, as they can only be played once Weapon cards affect your magic bullets like changing their speed or spread. Conjurer allows you to summon items like bombs onto the field if you are being chased by a group of enemies and want to take them out. And last but not least we have Tricker, which gives you ways to buff yourself, but all of those cards will also come with a negative effect to balance things out. 

The game lets you build a deck to suit your needs. Do you have the ability to multitask? Start using spells and go wild on the enemy while using the auto aim feature in the game. Are you feeling overwhelmed with having to move, shoot and use spells? Why not go all in on weapon cards and have buffed magic bullets. The developers, Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team,  also put in robust settings  for those who either want the game to be easier or harder than any one person could ever ask for. These modifies are presented as cheats and, you’ll need to collect each cheat throughout your journey to make use of them. Another part of the combat you should always try to either acquire and level up when you can is your Witch Link. The Witch Link helps boost Rayne’s magic bullets and the strength of your spell cards. You could choose to not make any Witch Links with anyone to up the challenge of the game when fighting any foe.

The game is littered with collectables as there are coins and green shards that you collect from defeating enemies as you go. You can use the green shards to buy a few cupcakes from skeletons. Yes, you read right, SKELETONS SELLING CUPCAKES. The boney folks will offer to sell you confectionery and armour that will do things like give shielding to a single one of your hearts. And before you even try, this armour doesn’t stack. The cupcakes will give you health back, while the armour of different varieties gives you different levels of coverage. The only way to get more armour is by finding armour magazines that are spread throughout the map. The coins are used to buy trinkets that you can use to help you in future battles also. Just keep an eye on your income, because before you know it, you’ll want to buy something and won’t have enough shards or coins for it. Thankfully though this isn’t too punitive as this just means you’ll have to go back out there and farm for some money.

Someone put a Metroidvania in my bullet-hell!

The best way I can describe the music while roaming through the world was that it gave me the relaxing vibes of being at a Renaissance Faire. Once you begin your adventure, the music flows in and out of a guitar just strumming a few notes at a time. Depending on the music, this lets the player know if they are in a safe place to drop the controller and take a breather from the chaos that the last few rooms have given you. I found myself losing myself in the relaxing melody of an area where the enemies had been cleared out, only for drums to kick in when I entered a new room, which always seemed o build to an electric guitar crescendo as I took out enemies. There are moments I wished there was more unique music. This is most notable during the dialogue scenes where there was just an awkward stoney silence as characters talk in text bubbles with no voice acting.

After completing The Knight Witch, I felt like I had scratched a great big, satisfying itch thanks to the amazingly unique concept of a deck-building bullet hell game where you could fly anywhere. The completionist in me felt satisfied with getting all the achievements in the game and didn’t feel like I was ever wasting any time I spent pursuing them. Though be warned, one of the best choices I made while playing was choosing to use a controller and not a keyboard and mouse. The precise analogue movement afford by two sticks proved to be one of the most vital parts of making the game feel as good as it does.