Synopsis: Spawn your own enemies in this wobbly physics based rogue-lite action RPG and mow down hundreds of foes to your heart’s content. Fend off the Hordes of the Corrupted Realms by choosing powerful skill cards, enchanting equipment, and extracting living essence to upgrade your crawler.

Publisher: The Iterative Collective

Reviewed on: PC (5800X, 32GB, Nvidia RTX 3070), Steam Deck
Also available for: N/A

Developer: Good Morning Games
Lead Developer: Ivan Moltini
Producer: Tanya He
Interns: Marco Moltini, Aiden Ong, Jia Jing Foo

Knight Crawlers is a wobbly physics-based rogue-like with RPG and RNG mechanics, with a top-down isometric view. The player controls a custom character through a dungeon, summoning squads of enemies from mysterious portals. A simple game at the outset but, upon further playthrough, allows it to define itself.

At first glance, Knight Crawlers isn’t much of a game. The character model is a wobbly mess, the combat is challenging, and the basic controls might initially turn some off. After running a few crawls and learning more about the other parts and features of the game, some more rewarding aspects are hidden. After playing the opening scene multiple times due to my saves disappearing, I was finally able to experience the game as intended, playing through as far as I could, dying and returning to the hallowed halls of “The Sanctuary”, a place where players get to upgrade their wobbly and strange looking character by speaking with one of the five vendors.

My first visit to The Sanctuary began with a conversation with the Blacksmith; I, unfortunately, did not have the resources to add any additions to my gear. Moving to the next character, I was also lacking the required dominion tablets, and I did, however, have enough to purchase some upgrades from the next vendor, who runs the Eldrasil store. With this, I upgraded my attack and health, just missing out on upgrading my defence. I then approached the seamstress who had many wares in her store. I liked my character’s appearance, so I moved to the last vendor, who took me back to the dungeon for my next run.

My subsequent few crawls through the dungeon felt more successful. While I still didn’t make it far, the early summons from the portal went down with minimal fuss, making my character feel stronger and allowing him to gain better loot. The game allows players to change or destroy gear on the fly and take the resources for upgrades later. The player sees a brief comparison on the screen to make the decision easier. Each death allowed me to return to the Sanctuary or crawl again. I decided to crawl again and saved enough resources to upgrade my character further, allowing them to get to level ten in attack and about level five in defence. From here, I felt better about the game, gaining a better understanding of it and its quirks.

The game has many features, including a randomised card aspect. During a crawl, the character will level up, allowing the player to choose one of three displayed cards. These cards have a massive variety and can determine how successful your run will be. Some of the cards I have encountered are spot attacks which can be lightning or fireballs raining from above and are good to get out of bad situations, and others include boosts to attack or defence, additions to health, and various buffs. There are too many to name here. They all play a role in the success or failure of a run. Defeated enemies will often drop loot which is also randomised and can be better or worse than the stats on the currently equipped gear. The game assists with the decision, displaying a quick comparison on the screen allowing the player to decide before carrying on with the adventure.

The randomised maps feature a variety of dangerous traps, including spike walls, fire pits, floor spikes and moving blades. Early in the game, these traps are hazardous for you. Later a Dominion upgrade allows these environmental traps to be utilised against enemies. The seamstress can modify the look of the dungeon, and I have yet to have the chance to do this as of writing this review. Progression in the dungeons is as easy as summoning and defeating the correct number of enemies and defeating them. Once the number is hit, the door to the next area is open. If you happen to have some enemies remaining, you have the choice to defeat them or move through the door, and the remaining enemies will vanish; unfortunately, doing this means you do not get their resources.

Enemies take on multiple forms, from skeletons, knights, goblins, and many more, all having their attacks, from basic swings with a sword to grappling and slowing you down, shooting you from afar with arrows or magic, and even exploding on or around you. Luckily the player has the option of how many opponents to spawn and how to attack them. When the character is stationary, a projectile will fire from their distance weapon, or when hordes are close, a sweeping swing of their primary weapon can wipe the floor.

Dungeon difficulty can be controlled by spawning more enemies; the more enemies spawned, the stronger they become. At one stage, I had over one hundred on the screen, and this was like wading through the ocean. This was also my shortest run. In general, I stuck to spawning small amounts of enemies and aimed to progress to the boss stages as quickly as possible as they gave out the best loot and dominion tablets.

Unfortunately, my start with Knight Crawlers had been somewhat frustrating, losing multiple saves, which denoted from the overall experience. On top of the disappearance of the saves was the lack of cloud saves which made reviewing harder as I generally enjoy jumping between devices depending on where I am. My introduction to the game was with the pre-release version, and I am happy to note that since the release update, I have had no further save game issues. I am, however, still restricted to the one device to play on, as cloud saves still need to be added to this game. These early problems, on top of the ugly-looking game, frustrated me and made me not want to play. I am glad I persisted, as a silly and fun game is underneath the grime. While the game isn’t pretty, it makes up for the lack of polish in other ways. The RPG mechanics are solid, as is the combat, if you can make it past the first few runs while the character carries themselves and swings their weapons like a neanderthal, the gameplay is quite rewarding. The music isn’t too much to write about, though ambient for the dungeons and disappears into the background as you focus on slashing your way through.

My time with Knight Crawlers, although initially frustrating, was rather enjoyable. I appreciated it more after discovering a small team designed and created the game. The design of the character models is crude and common when using the Unity Engine, and while ugly looking, the models performed well, if only a bit stiff. The music and audio were well done but ultimately are overshadowed by the game’s other features. Knight Crawlers holds its own even if it got off a rocky start. The publisher has been kind enough to make a demo available for download to let players get a feel of the game before purchasing, which I suggest for anyone on the fence about playing this game. The developer is also updating the game and keeping in contact with players on the Steam forums, which is great.

(Knight Crawlers code provided for review)