“Knight Crawlers” is a rogue-lite dungeon crawler by a small fledgling studio, Good Morning Games, working alongside publisher, The Iterative Collective. In this fantasy world, it’s all about weaving through traps, slaying enemies, and preventing the Corrupted Realms from taking over. I was lucky to try an early preview back in January and I’m ready for another run.

You are a Crawler – a hero-type figure setting off to explore the Lost Realms with the ultimate goal of saving the world from being overrun by various beasties. You’re tasked with braving dungeons and beyond as an awkwardly flailing knight thanks to ragdoll physics. Somehow, despite the seriousness of the situation, your knight can become a bumbling badass during the crawl thanks to a huge arsenal of skills and upgrades.

Unlike the typical hordes of enemies in rogue-lites, they instead spawn at the player’s whim. I’m a big fan of dungeon-crawlers and found the concept of opening portals full of foes pretty unique. The gist is to work through each zone by evading traps and fighting enemies to progress. It’s pretty standard stuff, but it starts getting interesting with skill cards.

Skill cards are earned through defeating foes and offer the chance to build a worthy opponent for them. These majestically illustrated cards feature abilities, health boosts, and upgrades that can dramatically alter each run. Alongside changing stats with cards, there’s gear to be looted or purchased to dramatically turn the tides in battle.

Skill cards were the real saviour, especially in early gameplay. I struggled to survive from the start with a virtually powerless hero and spent a decent chunk of time boosting defense at the expense of offense. Once I started tanking out, combat became satisfying, but this feeling was short-lived. It began to get repetitive.

Spawning enemies on your own terms is interesting but doesn’t necessarily feel fast-paced and high-stakes. The gameplay loop with minimal variation in combat, traps, and environments took its toll. I had the impression that with the rag-doll element and hordes, it would be ridiculously chaotic, but it didn’t really get to that point.

I struggled to progress far in each run and it often felt time-consuming with no real pay-off. I didn’t hit that point of “just one more try” that I have a love/hate relationship with in similar games. I was keen to progress beyond dungeon zones, but it was easy to die and became tedious to revisit. If the momentum picked up earlier on and progression felt more rewarding, I may have kept on delving deeper.

As far as how the game looks things get a bit jumbled. From the start, you can customize your Crawler, down to wings, hair, and ‘fits, more of which can be bought later. Knights are cute, low-poly models, that, once in the field, break out into their ragdoll-esque silly walk. The environments fit in perfectly with the quirky hero and enemy characters, low-poly and with pops of colour and vibrant lighting.

Everything feels like the one world, that is until the ridiculously beautiful loading screen and skill card art comes into play. I absolutely adore these, but it’s so out-of-place with the in-game world that I almost wish the game’s look either matched the art aesthetic and tone or leaned more toward the absurd. The inconsistencies took me away from fully understanding the identity the game was going for.

Sound effects and ambience vibe well with the overall fantasy-dungeoneer feel. There are moments enemies will make sassy remarks and there are some satisfying combat sounds to set the mood. Music, however, struggles to find a rhythm, pun intended, from a serene lovely melody in the hub area to a repetitive loop while out adventuring. Audio mixing sometimes clashes which I attempted to tackle in the audio options.

Sound volumes can be adjusted though using arrows with no numbers or sliders attached, instead having to rely on listening to playback alone to gauge levels. I never really hit that sweet spot for all the sounds to exist in harmony.

I had no real performance-based issues or bugs during my time. What did bug me though, were some minor quality-of-life improvements mostly down to UI, options, and controls. Upon starting, my options to play were keyboard or controller, and while I appreciated the choice, there was no mouse implementation. It felt odd using a keyboard but leaps and bounds ahead with a controller. I would recommend playing this way purely for less awkward movement.

I struggled from the start with no tutorial or button prompts for guidance, especially as a spoiled Diablo fan, part of me was hoping for a hot bar, or at least UI reminders of button functionalities. Ultimately, it hindered rather than helped me to understand how to be a Knight.

Knight Crawlers has the potential to be a fun jaunt in the rouge-lite genre, but it needs a smidge more time to build on its strengths. Good Morning Games have a good foundation to work with, especially as a very small team. They have been consistently addressing feedback and updating throughout the alpha and into the release. I would love to see it fully formed with a clearer idea of what the Knight Crawlers’ world is.

Written by: Yasmin Noble