Knights and Bikes is nostalgic for the 80s – but not in the sense that it’s riddled with cheap pop culture references. Instead, it focuses on childhood, friendship, and how it felt to get the freedom of your first bicycle.
The game follows Nessa and Demelza (and Captain Honkers, their pet goose) as they tear around the Isle of Scilly, exploring and generally getting into all the scrapes that kids do. (And I want to say up front, yes, you can pet the goose. This is service journalism, folks.)
The hand-painted art is often overlaid by chalk drawings, showing what the two girls’ imagination is projecting onto the scene. That barbed wire fence? It’s a heavily fortified castle! Tin cans blowing in the wind? No, they’re fierce crabs attacking!
Fun and Friendship
The demo, played in local co-op, (though online will also be available) saw the kids exploring an abandoned junkyard, using the huge magnet (sorry, wizard’s tower) to solve puzzles, and fighting monsters together. The two can cooperate in all things: comboing attacks (which is mostly slinging mud, frisbees, and other assorted kid junk); high fiving to get over scrapes and bruises; and so forth. They also goof around like kids are wont to do, coming up with imaginary challenges like bike races.
A particularly excellent moment involved a “stealth” mission – entering an abandoned building and attempting to creep around, looking for information. Let’s just say it goes about as well as expected, and the pair flees on their bikes, laughing all the way.
If the demo was anything to go by, Knights and Bikes is shaping up to be very funny and feel-good. The developers told me that they’re just in the process of polishing up the second half, so fingers crossed they’ll be able to announce a final release date soon.
Cliqist got hands-on with some games at EGX Rezzed – click here for all of our coverage.
