Good Night, Knight - have Sweet, Retro Dreams

Good Night, Knight was one of the games featured in my knight’s feature as it’s something I was looking forward to. In the infancy stages on Early Access, I had the opportunity to take it for a spin.

If you’re not familiar with the title, it’s a pixel arty retro kind of dungeon crawler with rogue-like properties. There’s permadeath too if that’s your bag, but for newcomers, scaredy-cats and those who like to hoard, you can switch it off.

From RedEmber and No Gravity Games, Good Night, Knight, coming to Early Access, is a challenging title, but no more than anything else from the era it emulates. Collect loot, level up – it’s all here, but is it any good?

Good Night, Knight Preview

Don’t expect a complete breakdown of features and tidy little summary and score at the end, Good Night, Knight will be in Early Access in a fortnight, so this is more of a preview if you will. Still, there’s a lot on offer and more than enough experience for a write-up.

With a bout of amnesia after saving the kingdom from evil, your courageous hero from the Knights of the Holy Divers is called back to the mysterious underground spire to remember who they are, and to work out why everything feels a bit odd.

The odd feeling, in this case, is the fact that the evil still exists. Here you must defeat it using the three C’s: combat, crafting and cursing. The latter doesn’t mean a sweary, vulgar knight, but utilising twisted buffs to assist you on your dungeon crawling.

Plot Hole

Good Night, Knight is a tricky bugger at first. You wander through a handful of rooms until you reach a monk. He gives you an equippable item, then goes back to his umming. Literally, I’m not being disrespectful here.

Behind him is a chasm that you aren’t going to cross. Before reaching this room, you meet another diver/knight who seemingly falls to his death in a similar situation. But where else do you go?

As the monk gave me an item that allows me to jump by pressing X on my controller, I do that, but it’s more of a hiccup than a jump and promptly fall, but not to my death. These experiments went on for a bit until finally I more or less gave up, and while facing the wrong way, pressed evade and backstepped over it.

FFS. I started a new game to ensure there wasn’t a tip or tutorial on how to do this, but there wasn’t. If you’re dumb like me, don’t give up because this was too early on and once across this abyss, the game begins.

Lose Some Weight

The knight can equip as many items as they like, pending they are within capacity. Each time you respawn or rest, you have to drop items if over-encumbered until it’s at a manageable rate. However, if you have a ‘good run’, you can pretty much carry as much as you like.

Each item bears a figure representative of its weight. The more you use an item and earn XP, it’ll level the thing up. It doesn’t get better, but the weight reduced. When you max out the item, it becomes weightless!

Many of these use stamina, but stamina is so useful for sprinting as you’re most likely to speed through repeated areas to gain access to a new one, or perhaps because you’re grinding to reduce all your gear to zero.

The Merchant Of The Spire

No RPG adventure is complete without a merchant and the one in Good Night, Knight is slightly different. Instead of crossing their palm with silver, you have to supply ingredients first, which means trapping enemies on this list.

They’ll give you a consumable portal, refilled when resting, that will teleport goods back to them. Once they have these, you can buy upgrades for your attack, locate essential items and so on.

If you’re an amateur alchemist, you’ll be pleased to hear that you can make potions from your tent. Select the potency with the acquired ingredients, and you can then add as a hotkey to use on the fly.

Balanced Diet

As for health, you can’t heal in-game. Instead, you gain health from resting in your tent, or a quick rest at the lifts (a.k.a. checkpoints). The amount of health you restore is related to the food you pick up – the more you have, the increase in health.

One of the elements picked up with the initial promo material was Good Night, Knight has a sense of humour. Going with a similar art style (sorta) and because he’s a knight, it reminded me of Jump King, though the comedy differs in Good Night, Knight. It’s a little more subtle.

It’s sly, witty and sarcastic. You can’t always pick up on tone with writing, as has been the bane of my writing career, but it’s as sharp as a razor blade with mini broadswords mounted on it. The comedy isn’t overkill either. 

Despite the first hurdle, the complete opposite – a deep gaping hole, Good Night, Knight is as good as hoped, if not better. Remember, it is a rogue-like, and while you don’t lose experience, there’re many deaths and repeating areas.

Again, no score as it’s an Early Access type, but it gets a big thumbs up from this knight and if you’re a fan of this type of game with a slightly cynical point and click adventurer wit, give it a further look.