MechKnight Chronicles has no business being as fun as it is. I passed by the booth initially thinking to myself, “Eh, the cel-shaded look doesn’t really appeal to me and the sidescrolling brawler genre has been over done recently,” and I carried on with my day. However, once I came back around later in the day to check the game out, I was proven wrong. While playing, I spoke with Jesse Sosa, Owner and Creative Director of Dinosaur Entertainment, and he told me about all of their plans and expectations for the game.
MechKnight Chronicles is first and foremost a sidescrolling action game in the same vein as Castle Crashers and other similar beat ’em ups. The main difference that sets it apart, however, is the gameplay. With around ten total characters planned on launch, each of them will control in incredibly different ways. For the demo, they had three characters available: a quick and agile rogue-type character, a mechanized knight character and a much larger behemoth style character.
I played with the yellow guy, the mechanized knight-style character, and had a blast. Combat consists of light and heavy attacks that can be chained together, but there’s even more to do. With blocking and dodging, combat is incredibly fast and intense. Magical abilities are also mapped to the right stick for quick selection – this way you don’t have to move your left thumb off the stick to select a spell. With a press of another face button, you can quickly cast your abilities.
My character’s powers ranged from buffs, defensive abilities, head-on spells and a nice big AoE attack. With so much variety in combat, the possibilities in my head quickly started to open up. With dashes, I could zip in for a quick combo then dash back out for a ranged magical barrage. Smaller enemies could be launched and air juggled, then slammed down for a finisher. Jesse mentioned all of their future plans for improving combat, that would include even more combo options and depth to the move system.
The game will include a story-based level progression mode and depending on funding, they want to include a Story+ mode that allows freeform progression and character development. My demo with the game was very brief, but the development team is passionate, focused and talented. They have a truly impressive product on their hands and it’s shaping up to be something quite special.
Plans for launch include PSN on the PS3 and PS4 and hopefully Vita, with a PC version and possible XBLA version afterwards. Keep track of the game on their Facebook page and official website right here. What do you think of this information so far? Let us know in the comments below!
