Next write up!
Other entries in this series:
10. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
9. Perfect Tides
8. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
7. Chop Suey
5. Super Metroid
4. Gone Home
3. Butterfly Soup
2. The Last of Us Part I
1. The Last of Us Part II
6. KNIGHTS AND BIKES
Knights and Bikes takes place on the fictional British island of Penfurzy in 1987 (so amidst the recession of the time that hit the British islands especially hard). It starts out with island residents Demelza and her dad, who owns a miniature golf course on the island, spying a mysterious, super-cool newcomer named Nessa. The two young girls become fast friends and spend the game searching for a mystic cursed treasure that legend has it is hidden somewhere on the island so that Demelza can save her father from having to sell and move off the island and Nessa can have a home there with them.
You control either Demelza or Nessa and can choose either a single-player mode (where you have the ability to swap out which character you control on the fly while the AI controls the other) or cooperatively with a friend either locally or online. The game is truly meant to be played cooperatively, but thanks to the basic intelligence of the AI, it works well either way. It's an action-adventure game in terms of genre. You explore the island (substantially on bikes, as the title suggests* ), solve mostly simple puzzles, defeat small hordes of foes, buy upgrades and decor for your bikes, and develop the girls' friendship as the self-proclaimed Penfurzy Rebel Bicycle Club. Demelza's real struggle though goes deeper. She's lost her mom not terribly long ago and neither she nor her dad have really moved on. He's turned to drinking, forcing her to live separately from him in her own trailer and is otherwise just not very present in her life. She desperately needs a friend. The next question is whether the one she's found is real...and also, whether it matters.
The game specializes in childhood nostalgia, especially for those of us belonging to a certain generation. does a fantastic job of putting me in that nostalgic place of remembering what it was like to be a kid in the pre-internet days and what it was like for me, as kind of a loner, to every so often find a friend who wanted to spend time just playing and doing stupid shit with me, making up fictional worlds and stuff. To that end, I also just love this game's cute implements. Like you fight enemies by pelting them with frisbees, water balloons, and plungers, and splashing them with puddle water and clear out cursed areas by playing a mixtape, heal each other with band-aids and high fives and such. The girls, being young kids, make "motor sounds" verbally when they run around. (Nessa's are a little less obnoxious in the Switch version.) They'll seemingly randomly break into races and other contests with each other for nothing more than pride. You buy bike equipment and decor with empty wrappers and discarded tickets and other worthless trinkets you find around the island and have a simple fighting video game called Castleman. Even the loading screens bring a smile to my face with descriptors like "Jumping in puddles", "Kicking up leaves", "Pedaling uphill", "Editing mixtape", "Digging for treasure," goofy little kid stuff like that. Then there's the lush watercolor visual style that's just a perfect match for the larger tone of the game. The in-game music, where present, is awesome. Also, you get a pet goose and anarchy bike flags. It's as fun as it sounds.
It's not a perfect game, mind you. You'll notice some frame rate slowdown on occasion, but nothing too severe. If it matters to you, it's not very difficult really (as much is beside the point; it's intended to be playable for young and old alike). Knights and Bikes is more of an interactive experience than a serious challenge. Progression is divided into "days", each of which (save for the first one) takes about an hour or a little more to play through, so a playthrough of the whole game is about six or seven hours, I'd say.
There are so many levels on which I relate to what Knights and Bikes is getting at that it just can't fare worse than this on my list. Some minor technical imperfections pale in comparison to the touching way it addresses such issues I can relate to personally as childhood poverty, losing your parents (be it literally or figuratively), and needing friends so badly that sometimes you had to make them up and got bullied as a result. It addresses these difficult topics with deep compassion and sensitivity and the genuine spirit of childhood wonder and imagination and humor that keeps it from being depressing. This was clearly a passion project and I'm passionate about it!
*Bike riding was the most popular hobby for kids when I was young, somewhat above playing video games. Back in the 2D gaming era that seemed to be the case.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 14 January 2023
