KNUCKLE SANDWICH
DEVELOPER ANDREW BROPHY • P RICE TBA knucklesandwich.biz
I’m starting to really appreciate games with a tongue-in-cheek approach to genre conventions. Designers are using humour to connect with, and subvert, nostalgic expectation and, as an oldie, this endears me to the experience. For example, if there’s a difficult battle ahead, a classic game may not have prompted me to save. Modern-me doesn’t have time to replay large swathes of content and expects regular checkpoints. What did Knuckle Sandwich do? The diner’s phone rang and it was the bus driver saying, “You know I don’t usually do this, but I thought you might want to save now.”
The kids and I laughed. For them, it was just absurd. For me, this humour has many layers, from the awkwardness of someone calling for a spurious reason, to enjoying that the designer gave me what I wanted in a surprising way. Similarly, the action is much faster paced than in a classic RPG. The opening is about finding and keeping various jobs, characterised by a range of colourful mini-games. Combat involves choosing between a couple of kinaesthetic tasks, like hitting a moving target or wiggling the left stick. You can also choose the foetal position which is appropriately disturbing.
The demo ends by revealing why this game is called Knuckle Sandwich which absolutely left me wanting to play more. Again, this was a surprising twist and I like the promise of a game which will refuse to conform to my expectations. Like how anyone, villain or hero, can die in Game of Thrones. It’s exciting to not know where this journey will go, while trusting that my time and experience will be respected. At one point, I was being asked questions and my character was just scribbling nonsense in response. My kids asked why I was laughing. “Because my answers don’t matter,” I said. They need to play more RPGs.