This week I have been playing bucket knight on the Nintendo switch. Bucket knight is a classic run and gun platform game developed by pigeon.dev. It’s supported in TV, handheld and tabletop mode. In which you play as a little Knight with a gun and a bucket on their head.
So first things first, let’s talk about bucket knights visuals. As you’d expect from a classic style platformer bucket knight is a 2d side scrolling game. The graphics and the music are both in old school 8 bit with a colour pallet to match. The background and environment isn’t overly populated which I think is good in this style of game as it allows you to concentrate more.
Gameplay is simple, move, jump, shoot, navigate the levels, kill, try not to be killed. There’s no tutorial, the game let’s you work out how to play. For a game with controls this simple this is definitely preferable to holding your hand step by step – babying you through what to do. The only issue I seem to have with bucket knight is that when I first load up the game it always seems to want to play in tabletop. But pausing to the switch home menu and re attaching the joycon and then going back in seems to allow me to switch to handheld. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or if this is some strange glitch. Most of the time everything reacts quickly but on occasion the game sometimes doesn’t register that I’ve pressed a button. Again I’m not sure if this is a me-problem or a game-problem.
Most levels are a case of learning the pattern of jumps and kills. Once you have the hang of a level many can be completed In 30 seconds to a minute. The levels vary as well from escaping moving platforms, to mowing through enemies to simply navigating tricky terrain. It keeps each level interesting. Food and other objects litter the levels, be careful though different types of food have different effects on bucket knight. There does come a time when you can upgrade your weapon but in all honesty you can probably pretty happily plow through the game with your basic weapon.
There are absolutely no words in bucket knight, instead what minimal story line there is is carried out in pictures. From what I can tell bucket knight wants to buy a house, so they need money, and in order to get money you go off to find a chalice, which I can only logically assume is the Holy grail. I think for a simplistic story line like this using pictures to tell it is excellent because it makes it accessible to any language without the need for translations.
Overall, I don’t think bucket knight is looking to revolutionise the genre. It’s mostly just a few hours of classic style fun. It is a pleasant game to play through but I do recognise that it may not be for everyone. It’s price point isn’t too high which is ideal as I don’t believe this is a game you’ll be replaying again and again. More than likely you’ll have one little journey through the bucket knight world. This by no means diminishes the game its simply just designed to be something arcadey you can have a little fun with. If you like this kind of game I don’t think you’ll be too dissapointed with bucket knight. Nothing groundbreaking just a little bit of retro style fun, It’s a solid: