Knight vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur (PC)

Developed by the team at Indonesian based Gambir Studio, Knight vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur is a fantasy roguelite, in the vain of many, many other titles. We see King Arthur and his legendary friends as they’re up against it as Camelot finds itself in a very challenging situation. Released on October 5th, on pretty much all current formats, lets see what this young team was able to develop.

In Knight vs Giant, we play as King Arthur. However after an unsuccessful battle, Arthur finds himself… well dead. Merlin resurrects our hero and our journey begins, we need to restore camelot to it’s former glory as the battle has left it in ruins, you will find some friends along the way who’ll be able to help out. These will be merchants, blacksmiths, and other similar characters who can help our journey.

In this action roguelite, without sounding detrimental, it plays hugely similar to Hades, movement is fast and responsive, a dodge mechanic with invincibility frames is there, and we have a main weapon based attack followed by some additional powers. So far so good, each of the other knights of the round table provide you with a different weapon and ability, these will give you a slightly different play style to mess around with and find what’s perfect for you. Again this has been done many, many times but feels good in KvG.

It’s very much accessible to most people too, those who’ve ran through vast amounts of runs in Hades, or those who’ve never played a Roguelite at all will find themselves at ease with the controls in a matter of minutes, as these are explained quite well. I say quite well, as I feel after a few runs I don’t need some of the additional dialogue that appears and there’s no real way to skip this.

In game combat is nice, with a good amount of perks, and buffs these will go through both weapon and additional ability. These will help you in combat giving additional critical chances, or damage boosts. Fountains will give you HP replenishments, and merchants are able to sell you key items like potions. Unfortunately I didn’t have any inventory so to speak of, so if you need a potion mid battle, you’re out of luck.

Each map as mentioned is procedurally generated, split into different sections, if you’re in combat you’ll be locked in until each enemy has been eradicated, the final room will find you in a boss encounter, these can be different each time, and these can be massive epic fights, with a lot going on in them, so make sure you’re fully equipped and ready to go for these. These fights are really fun and will put your skills to the test.

When (not if) you die, you’ll be transported back to the hub, here you’ll be able to repair and upgrade camelot, here’s where most of your obtained currency will be used, building and repairing the city so you have full access to all amenities. It’s a nice but basic addition, but you’ll definitely be clambering for as much currency as possible to get things up to a decent standard.

Visually everything’s nice here, the characters have a nice cartoony look to them, there isn’t a huge amount of facial detail in characters but each one has plenty of visual character to not make them seem boring in plain. Enemies have a pretty cute look to them, with little rocks, up to as mentioned the massive boss fights all look really nice and give it a strong unique look. Maps are procedurally generated and each one has a fairly decent look, if the areas themselves are a bit generic.