Star Knight
A dark knight of the soul
$2.99 Developer LeftRight, facebook.com/lnrgame Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7 or later
Platforming, especially on iOS, is a crowded marketplace. As well as other original offerings, you’re up against ports of console classics with years of goodwill behind them. In order to truly differentiate yourself, you’ve got to be either very distinctive or very good indeed. And that’s where Star Knight stumbles.
Armed with the usual backstory, you head out into a cutely animated 2D world. There are ledges to leap between – some that crumble beneath your feet, others that shoot out spikes – plus doors to unlock and monsters to skewer. It’s all fairly competent stuff, with the levels often encouraging you to explore in order to collect runes that unlock extra moves, and some pleasingly precarious parkour sections. The problem is, even at its best it’s missing that key spark of excitement.
Combat is a telling example. Ideally, you should feel either genuinely endangered, or gleefully overpowered. Instead, you hammer away at the “stab” button relentlessly, occasionally throwing in a special attack for good measure. Dodging out of the way of some falling spikes or thrashing multiple enemies with one slash is about as edgy as it gets.
Solid, but never spectacular, Star Knight suffers when compared to the genre’s leaders – not as brutal as Limbo, not as speedy as Sonic, not as satisfying as Cordy. Without a truly innovative central mechanic to drive it, this star needs a lot more polish to shine.
the bottom line. Jumps in all the right directions, but never quite reaches the heights of excitement.