Knights and Bikes (Limited Run #96) (Import)

Knights and Bikes is very much a story driven game. It’s about two young girls who go on an adventure around their island. I’m pretty sure that most of it is their imagination but that doesn’t at all take away from the enjoyment of playing. It all has a very graphic novel brought to life feel including the amazing storybook like graphics that’s described as hand painted. The game is basically a children’s treasure hunt except with real world consequences as one of the young girl’s dad is losing his business and needs money. She’s also trying to deal with the recent death of her mother.I often rate a game based on how hard it is to put down and I confess that Knights and Bikes isn’t hard to play in small doses but that can be good too. I’d played a series of games in a row that were quite addictive. I just casually went through the game, exploring the rather large world. I was really impressed with size of the world and assumed that Foam Sword was a small studio but the amount of credits listed at the end of the game was pretty massive so it appears the studio has quite a few resources. The game all takes place on an island but if you were to traverse then entire island it would take quite a while.Apparently, the game was inspired by Goonies and I can definitely see the influence. We have a treasure and pirate skeletons and a coming of age. Is any of it real? Maybe not. The game literally shows you that many things you see are in the girl’s imagination. I played by myself but it’s more geared towards co-operative play. I might try playing with my daughter now that I’ve finished it on my own. Although it may have been inspired by other things, Knights and Bikes is definitely its own thing. The Goonies inspiration didn’t even occur to me until I read it on Wikipedia and then I was like, Oh Yeah.I didn’t love everything about the game. You can spend a lot of time collecting coins or whatever the items are but the only thing you can use them for is cosmetic upgrades to you bike. There are some legitimate upgrades, but you’ll easily stumble across enough coins that you don’t need to search. I was hoping there might be a surprise benefit to all the hunting I did but apparently not. The bigger problem is that I feel the story stumbles right at the finish line. I could see where the story was going but the last freeze frame is very unfortunate.I’m more into games that focus on gameplay rather than story but for a story driven game, this is one of the best I’ve played, and the gameplay is perfectly fine. There is a fair amount of fighting using different weapons and lots of bike riding. I’d say the biggest strengths of the game are the story and visuals and it’s a shame the ending didn’t live up to the buildup. If you have a child this would likely be a fun co-op experience.