Ember Knights an interesting pixel game with beautiful fast-paced mechanics.
Ember Knights is an action rogue-lite hack-n-slash with 1-4 player coop capabilities that was developed by Doom Turtle, a small indie studio based in London, Ontario, Canada. With the help of Twin Sails Interactive, the game was published and is also Doom Turtle’s very first release. The publisher, Asmodee, however, is known for games such as Gloomhaven and Xenoshyft.
When you first hit start when loading Ember Knights for the first time, it opens up with a cinematic of a wise old plant-based being known as Esper gazing upon the land. Suddenly, the atmosphere changes into that of catastrophe as what looks to be a dark mage appears through a rift. You watch as this dark mage-like being named Praxis pulls out the ember essence from the ember tree, weakening the beings of this corner of creation called the nexus, leaving Esper as the only one still somewhat standing.
Using what little of his strength remains, he pulls as much from the Ember Tree as he can to summon forth your character, the legendary Ember Knight, and pleads with you to gather the embers from within the world connected to the rift to stabilize the Ember Tree before the worst may come to pass.
As you are given control of the Ember Knight, you learn the basics of how to attack and dodge through the tutorial while you explore the small piece of existence and all it has to offer. Unfortunately, you cannot interact with much for now. The only way to be able to interact with everything is to go through the rift for your very first run.
Entering the first run of the game, you get transported to the first world of Scoggfirth. When landing in the first world, you are surrounded by flowers, shrubs, and mushrooms, all of which are destructible, and a doorway that leads to the next area. After going through the doorway, you are introduced to your first enemies, although this does change slightly as you get further into the game.
Upon clearing out certain rooms, you will receive extra rewards such as extra Ember, gold, ability gems, and/or new skills, along with the relics and relic orbs. You will also get drops from the Miniboss and Main Boss, which help you unlock new skills called Skill Tablets. The relic orbs and Ember can be utilized to give you an edge in the next run after death. At the same time, the gold and skills are only usable during your current run and vanish on death.
Relic Orbs unlock new relics for you to pick up on your next run. To unlock your Relic Orbs, you will need to give them to Esper. Embers, on the other hand, are used to heal the Ember Tree, which grants you passive abilities that you can upgrade with Ember for later runs.
With things such as new skills and relics, your Ember Knight will have a large arsenal to work with to take down the big, bad. Not only do you have unlockable relics and skills, but you will also have access to weapons. As you gather more Ember, you’ll unlock different weapons to use.
You will have six different weapons at your disposal once you have unlocked them all. They range from the Ember Blade, the Rift Hammer, the Guardian Bow, the Razor Wind, the Nexal Staff, and Reaper’s Toll. Obtaining these weapons means gathering a certain amount of ember, so it will take a few runs in order to unlock them all.
With Minibosses, each run will change its element, which also changes the attack patterns and styles at random. Each doorway you go through will have a random item drop, although you usually have two options to choose between, unless you are going through a miniboss or boss doorway. Each new world you manage to get to will have an increase in difficulty, meaning you will have to be able to quickly adapt to the new attack patterns and even to the more durable enemies, as any strategy you had for earlier levels will go right out the door.
The music and soundtrack in the nexus are reminiscent of techno-fantasy music accompanied by lightning strikes and thunder effects, setting you into a fantasy in crisis ambiance, although as you heal the tree and progress further, the thunder seems to calm.
Along with the constant collection of Ember for the Ember tree. It gives greater meaning to the Ember Tree as it is not just a source of life but is also a vital point of your combat in the game, as the tree is the Knight’s source of power and strength. Within the ember tree, you will find passives that can be upgraded as you collect Ember. These passives can range from gaining max health points or gaining bonus damage after defeating bosses to even expanding your skill selector option for more range and further variety to choose from.
With each of the runs in Ember Knights, you will meet new NPCs that will play major roles in the game. One of these NPCs, named Evee, takes skill tablets and converts them into usable skills to get during your run; this increases the different combinations you can make to get further in each run. The second NPC is Arlan, a friendly shopkeeper whom you will get to meet after beating a mini-boss of the first world.
Within his shop, you will find random relics to help you on the next part of the run, along with the different relics you can buy in his store. You can also buy healing items to heal up if you are close to death. Arlen’s shop is where you spend the gold you have collected throughout your run. Unfortunately, unlike Embers, gold is not carried over after you die in a run.
As for the game’s visual art style, Ember Knights takes a lot of its inspiration from the eye-catching neon pixel graphics of the eighties and nineties. Most of your characters and spell effects are incredibly vibrant and help your character not get lost in the visual chaos of combat, which will happen if you’re playing co-op with your friends.
Ember Knights’ visuals are a clear love letter to retro arcade games, and we can see this not only with its visuals but also with its co-op gameplay and soundtrack, which are all reminiscent of days of gaming past.
Overall, Ember Knights is a brilliant throwback to the old arcade games brought to the future with its interesting gameplay and world design. The co-op feature is a great bonus and just adds so much more to the game. It just keeps getting better and much more diverse in options with each new run, and it’ll keep you coming back for more.
