Welcome back to Save State, where weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down. After another couple weeks of working and traveling, I found myself largely sucked into two games that had very large updates, recently. One title, 7 Days to Die finally, after a decade, released its 1.0 update, so I delved into that with fellow columnist Neal Sayatovich to see all of the update’s changes. On top of this, right around the same time, Pokemon Emerald Rogue released its 2.0 update, adding generation 9 Pokemon and tons of new mechanics changes to it, basically refreshing the entire title.

Both 7 Days to Die and Pokemon Emerald Rogue have been previously talked about on GiN, but thankfully a third title resurfaced from my backlog: The Knight Witch, that will further allow me to push my propaganda about how Metroidvania would be a much better genre classification if we called it labyrinthine platformer, instead. So, without further ado, allow me to expose you to The Knight Witch, which combines the level design and backtracking of a labyrinthine platformer and the fast, frenetic combat of a bullet hell shooter… and these two game design philosophies work much better together than you’d think.

The Knight Witch is available on Steam and set in a fantasy world where a mad scientist had to be defeated by the combined forces of the Knight Witches. Unfortunately, these powerful witches stopped him too late, resulting in the sky shattering and the few survivors remaining had to retreat underground to find some semblance of normalcy beneath the planet’s surface. Things went well, at least for a time, as the survivors rebuilt their civilization underground. Unfortunately, trouble soon brews, thrusting the protagonist Rayne, an aspiring Knight Witch trainee, into the fray as robots reemerge and begin harming citizens.

The story is, ultimately, very simple and quite telegraphed, but you don’t normally pick up these kinds of titles for their approach to the story, anyway. The Knight Witch is an interesting spin on your usual Metroidvania in that it allows your protagonist Rayne full powers of flight right from the start. Normally, in most labyrinthine platformers, you’d acquire new movement abilities that let you double jump, or fly short distances, in order to scale ledges or cliffs you normally wouldn’t be able to. This change in game design philosophy means that enemy attacks can be thrown at you from every angle very early on, and you have to learn to deal with a plethora of enemy projectiles quickly. Combining flight, backtracking, and bullet hell mechanics makes The Knight Witch pretty novel in its approach to game design just from these elements alone.

Controls in The Knight Witch are quite simple: you move Rayne as she flies through the air with the left stick and aim Rayne’s gun by pointing at enemies and shooting them with the right stick. There’s also an auto aim ability that homes in on the closest enemy, but that shot deals considerably lower damage. Due to the auto aim’s reduced damage, I generally preferred to use manual aim to deal as much damage as possible, as ending combat encounters more quickly means fewer instances in which I could take damage. However, I could definitely see someone opting to use the homing shots instead if they were unconfident with manually aiming Rayne’s bullets. Of course, your primary fire isn’t your only method of fighting back against enemies, as Rayne has a deck of spells you can use as you fight.

As you progress through The Knight Witch, you’ll find spell cards that you can set into a deck that gives Rayne different powers. Some spell cards may give you enhanced bullets, like larger or faster projectiles, but some may create shields, mines, homing swords, or shockwaves that damage enemies and erase their bullets. Damaging enemies with your primary weapon will generate mana you can use for your spells, so a good player will be constantly weaving through enemy bullets, consistently landing your own shots, and firing off spells when they’d deal the most damage or have the most utility.

Combat in The Knight Witch starts off pretty slow, allowing you to get used to what it demands of you. The difficulty curve is actually pretty all right on normal difficulty, though there’s a whole host of accessibility options to make you more comfortable if you’re not confident in your ability to handle a bullet hell with backtracking. There’s even a cheat menu with codes you can enter that can ratchet the difficulty down or up and making it possible for Rayne to die in one hit, or that can give you infinite ammo or mana.

One of the first things you’ll notice while playing The Knight Witch is that the visuals are absolutely beautiful. The character sprites and backgrounds are all done with an adorable painted aesthetic, and the character portraits you see during dialogue have a fun cartoon appearance that is quite endearing. The music is also quite solid, peaceful, bright, and serene during exploration periods, while it changes to frantic and energetic when taking on bosses.

Due to the fact that The Knight Witch is a labyrinthine platformer, you’ll spend a considerable amount of time venturing back to previously explored locations after acquiring a new ability. It’s quite common to see a hatch, stone, or something else in the way of a path you could take, blocking you off from some upgrade or coins you can spend for spell cards. The Knight Witch is pretty linear outside of backtracking for power ups and spell cards, though you do have a choice to fight a significantly more difficult final boss to get the true ending.

The Knight Witch does feature some areas and bosses that will put your skills to the test and may even result in frequent deaths as a result. Thankfully, there’s a great number of save points so you don’t lose too much time before making another attempt. You can even buy armor using currency you find that can absorb a hit and even give you a weapon when it breaks, though the armor is effectively a consumable and goes away after taking damage.

If there’s any complaints I have with The Knight Witch, it largely lies with its user interface and visual information during combat. This is a title that combines Metroidvania elements with bullet hell enemy design, and because you get power ups like a blink dash to avoid projectiles, enemy weaponry comes at you hard and fast regularly. When dodging through multiple streams of gatling shots per second, it’s extremely difficult to look at the UI tucked away in the lower right corner to see which spell cards from my deck are currently ready to use, see how much mana they cost, or how much mana I even have available to cast the spell. This was mostly mitigated as I progressed through the game and had more options for similar spell cards that do the same things, but having to look away from the action was quite an annoyance for the first several hours of play.

That being said, The Knight Witch was a great time. The environments and combat encounters were almost universally designed well, and I enjoyed flying back and forth among the interesting environments within it. The standard difficulty is also pretty great, offering a decent amount of challenge across some specific bosses as you progress without being frustrating during general gameplay. I greatly enjoyed The Knight Witch, and it ran like a dream on PC and expect it likely would do similarly on console platforms, too.

With that, we’ll now bring this entry of Save State to a close. Remember, you don’t want to be feared or loved: you want people to fear how much they love you. See you in two weeks!