Mark Of The Knights

That one room with all the enemies was too easy smh


In all seriousness, I got the opportunity to play this game a few days ago at a live playtest and decided to play it again at home. I didn't get the chance to give all the feedback I wanted at the event so i'll leave it here.

I really liked what I've played so far and am excited to see this develop further. The controls and platforming physics reminded me a lot of Mega Man X for how precise they are. I really liked how creative some of the platforming puzzles got, particularly in the Wind Dungeon. Some of the solutions weren't super obvious, but they were very satisfying to figure out.

The combat clearly takes a lot of cues from Souls-like games with an emphasis on balancing attacks with dodges or parries. When you get into the swing of things, it is very satisfying, though I will admit that the parry timing for attacks from sword-wielding enemies isn't super clear to me. I don't know if there was a visual or audio cue I am missing, but even though I am able to parry enemies more consistently than when I started off, I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing right whenever I successfully parry. Parrying projectiles is no problem for me. 

Another minor issue I had was that whenever I interacted with a context-sensitive item like a button for an elevator, the camera would jitter upwards for a second because it's mapped to D-Pad Up, which also pans the camera. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I think it would feel smoother if the D-Pad camera controls are disabled whenever standing within range of a context-sensitive action, especially given that the right stick also controls the camera. 

I do think some aspects could be communicated a little more clearly. There was a part in the opening level of the game where I got confused as to where to go. After collecting the key, and opening one of the doors with it, I assumed that I needed another key for the other locked door. As such, I started wandering around looking for another key that I didn't need. Additionally, I remember at the playtest that when the tutorial area introduced me to the "essence" fountain which fills the meter that I can use to heal, but it doesn't tell me that I have to heal with Y / Triangle. Because of this, I was led to believe that the fountains were healing spots which I would find throughout the levels, rather than recharge points for the energy the player can use to heal on the spot. One of the developers explained the mechanic to me during the live playtest, but I think it could be explained better in game.

One last thing to note is that in the Wind Dungeon area where you have to platform your way up to higher levels to activate the elevator, I managed to progress to a higher level than I did during the live playtest, but when I pressed the call elevator button, nothing happened, and the elevator wouldn't go any higher than where it already was. I don't know if that was an outright glitch, or if I somehow did the section out of the intended order.


Despite these critiques, I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game. I am a big of fan of platform video games in general, and this one satisfied that itch quite well. The player character sprites are charming, and I think this is well on its way to being a really great game once it's fully completed. 

I'm definitely gonna be keeping my eye on this one.