DONE BY: Nifflas

IT'S FOR: PC

YEAR: 2007

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Playing Knytt Stories is like eating a cherry Starburst – short-lived and sweet and a little bit fruity. But whereas the main ingredients in a cherry Starburst are gelatin and reconstituted cherry juice concentrate, Knytt Stories is composed primarily of charm, elegance, and trace amounts of citric acid. Also: LOVE.

I’ve seen the game described online as Metroid minus guns, and that seems a reasonable summary to me. Designer Niklas Nygren has created a stark yet beautiful world alive with detail and diversity, and your goal in Knytt Stories is simply to explore it. There’s a story, of course, and an overarching objective to complete, but that’s just because this is a videogame and that’s what videogames do. In practice, it’s all about exploration for the sake of exploration. It’s about running from screen to screen, jumping on platforms, dodging enemies, and collecting power-ups to access new areas. It’s ... Metroid minus guns. I know I said that fifty words ago, but I’m repeating it because it’s accurate. Plus it sounds kind of catchy. Like a slogan or something.

I could say more, but lookit: Knytt Stories is free, it’s small, it’ll run on pretty much anything, and it’s an excellent game that everybody should play. Do you really need any more information than that? If so, then here’s some bonus trivia for you: Niklas Nygren has a Paypal account. Maybe if you give him some money, he’ll make more games like this one, and the world will be a tiny bit better because of it.

FINAL SCORE: Full of real fruit juice