Let's talk about strategy guides. It's no secret some games have very obtuse elements about them. Often times, they're not meant to be used in a first playthrough at all and are the kind of thing one would find out from Nintendo Power ages later. One example would be the Hadouken and Shoryuken in the Mega Man X games. Then there are secrets like the Lightsaber in Ico which nobody would ever find without a strategy guide, but the player probably wants to get on their first playthrough even if they don't necessarily need it.

And then you have games that can feel completely overwhelming or even unplayable without a strategy guide. I cannot even begin to name all the point-and-clicks and JRPGs filled to the brim with labyrinthine structures, permanently missable content, bugs or intended conditions that cause the player's save file to essentially become bricked, sidequests so hidden it took decades to find them, etc etc etc.

Knytt manages to be all of this. Knytt is nearly a brilliant game. When I started playing Knytt, I picked up all but 3 items blind in under an hour. At first, I thought it was a very soothing experience with an incredible atmosphere. The ambient music is shockingly amazing, and perfectly compliments the dark yet colourful world.

Unfortunately, as I neared the end of the game, I started growing increasingly frustrated. Too many platforms were lined up in such a way the player was only 1 pixel out of reach to entering a new path. It became hard to distinguish background characters from actual enemies. And then the worst part happened; I accidentally jumped into an invisible tile in the middle of nowhere that turned out to be an important warp zone.

Within minutes, my opinion of the game lowered from perhaps a 9/10 to a 7/10 at best. I'm not even certain if the last few powerups can be found without all the other warp zones I discovered in a speedrunning video, because there are no guides online. There is no communication to the player they are near an invisible tile, and the game's world is so massive it takes about 5 minutes to run across it in a straightish line. I did find some codes for the game on GameFAQs but I don't think the game itself communicates them anywhere either https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/937276-knytt/cheats

So what are we left with? A passionate and unique game that is ultimately too messy and unnecessarily obtuse for its own good. What could have been an all time classic PC metroidvania is bogged down by adhering to the "we need to sell strategy guides" school of thought despite it being a freeware indie game.

If the game looks up your alley, my suggestion is to look for how ever many items you can naturally find in about an hour with the searchlight feature, and then watch this speedrun to find the rest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmg_maTOSrs

Also worth noting, it is a 2006 PC game. It ran without any significant issues on my Windows 11 rig, but I did have to use Joy2Key for controller support and the fullscreen was a bit fucked in that it forced everything to my second monitor. It's nothing too inconvenient given how short the game is however.

Um joguinho curto e perfeito para quem gosta de exploração.

O objetivo do jogo é simples: Percorra o mapa em busca das peças perdidas e as traga de volta. Porém, mesmo dentro de tal simplicidade, Knytt consegue ser uma experiência bem simpática e agradável.

A única negativa seria o tamanho da tela, que é minúscula (e o fullscreen é bugado), mas fazendo uma leve gambiarra de pegar a lupa do Windows e aumentar até encaixar a tela do jogo já arruma o problema.

Se você quiser jogar algo rápido e tranquilo, pega pra dar uma testada nele - dá pra terminar em menos de uma hora bem de boas.

i fuckingggg figured out how to use porting kit to play windows games on mac fuck yeah :)

rips off the pikmin "retrieve all the pieces of your marooned spaceship" premise but adds the mildly brilliant twist of it not even being your own damn spaceship. instead, you're helping an alien continue their botched abduction of you. out of fear? kindness? boredom? we don't know; there's no dialogue. you get the sense that the player character themself doesn't even really know why they're doing it, or what they're hoping will happen upon repairing the craft. in the end, the alien happily flies you back home in return for your help, but we find that our family has all gone to sleep rather than spending the night frantically searching for us. maybe they didn't even notice we'd left.

it's a lonely game, very overtly so. plenty lonely even before considering that the most abundant species on this "alien" planet appears to be homo sapiens—something our hero visibly is not (just in case the theming wasn't clear enough). again, there's no dialogue; there's not even an interact button. we see a girl in a long dress sitting on a cliffside, deep into a train of thought we can't board. we see a forest dweller go for a leisurely daytime swim in water that will kill us instantly if we touch it. we see a sad middle-aged man shuffle out of his lakeside home, look around for a moment, and then shuffle back inside once we've failed to ask him what the matter is. no matter how we may want to involve ourselves in the lives surrounding us, we are only ever a visitor here.

accordingly, there's no map either—our only knowledge of the world is that which we obtain ourselves. what we do have, though, is a sort of compass/beacon thing which points us in the cardinal direction of the nearest spaceship part. admittedly, this feels like a bit of an inelegant concession. i think the ideal version of a mapless metroidvania-like probably would not contain a "tells you which way to go" button, though it probably wouldn't have been advisable to just remove it and leave the rest unchanged in this case, either. maybe a breadcrumb trail/landmark mechanic would have been a good solution? trickier to design to be sure, but as it is, the game doesn't feel 100% at peace with its own creative limitations, which is a small shame.

still, it's a pleasure to play through. it's palpable just how thoughtful the designers were in deciding how all these various areas should interconnect, and the heart flutters a bit every time you stumble upon a beautiful new terrain. by the time you've fully mapped it out in your head, you really have grown fond of this world you've traversed. ultimately, we know we have no business here, but the melancholy only turns our fondness all the more potent. knytt is a game deeply aware of the unique flavor beauty takes on in the eyes of lonely beholders. recommended for anyone who spent their teen years relating a bit too hard to belle and sebastian or radiohead songs. turn off the lights and play alone—this has all happened to you before.