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Muffin Knight
PC (Steam)
Muffin Top
4/5 stars
“Muffin Knight” began life as a smartphone game way back in 2011. After proving itself well-suited to a more traditional, non-touch-centric control scheme with its fully-controller-compatible 2013 OUYA release, the folks at Angry Mob Games submitted the title to Steam Greenlight, with “Muffin Knight” finally making its PC debut in 2014. My initial exposure to “Muffin Knight” came, of course, via the Free2Play micro-transaction driven OUYA version, which simultaneously impressed me and made me long for a micro-transaction-free version I could just buy for a reasonable price. The Steam version definitely delivered what I wanted.
Presentation
“Muffin Knight is a colorful, cartoony 2.5D Arcade-style platformer. Each gameplay arena features a specific Fantasy/Fairytale theme, ranging from mushroom forests to graveyards to Santa’s workshop. These stages also feature a suite of theme-appropriate super-deformed chibi-style monsters to defeat. The player character may start as the titular Muffin Knight in each round, but has the opportunity to adopt a number of creative, cute personas at random.
“Muffin Knight” features a few not-terribly-animated cutscenes to tell its story, but what these cutscenes lack inanimation, they make up in charm, cheekiness, and voiceover.
The audio in “Muffin Knight” is excellent. The soundtrack is catchy and memorable, while the voiceacting (while largely limited to the narrator) is really solid for an Indie title.
The only technical flaw in “Muffin Knight” is the fact that some of the menus don’t respond to controller input as they should (despite the game featuring native support for a variety of controllers, plus full button mapping). Thus it is still necessary to pull out a mouse occasionally. The OUYA version’s controller support was slightly better, despite the fact that the OUYA itself had difficulty keeping its controller responsive enough to play a game like this.
Story
As an Arcade platformer, in which the player simply tries to score as many points as possible during a round before dying, one would not expect, or even demand, a decent narrative from “Muffin Knight.” Much to my surprise, however, “Muffin Knight” opens with a reasonably long cutscene detailing the events surrounding a small boy’s transformation into a muffin-powered crusader. As it turns out, this boy found a basket of magical muffins sitting unattended on a path. These muffins belonged to a Fairy Grandmother (who looks exactly like Opal from the comic strip “Pickles”) who was… indisposed behind a bush and left them unattended. Upon touching the basket, the muffins scattered to the four winds, much to the Fairy Grandmother’s frustration. In order to retrieve her muffins, she places a transformative curse on the boy, granting him the power he needs to defeat the numerous monsters that also covet those delicious baked goods.
The sense of humor behind “Muffin Knight’s” excuse narrative is a lot of fun, and I would have liked to see more such cutscenes upon unlocking new stages, but alas I was left disappointed.
Gameplay
“Muffin Knight” is – to put it bluntly – a clone of another smartphone game (which ironically started as a PC game), “Super Crate Box.” Both of these games are spiritual successors to the type of gameplay found in the original “Mario Bros.” (not Super), in which one or two players are placed in a small arena-like stage. Enemies spawn at the top of the stage, walk mindlessly across platforms toward the bottom, and receive an ‘angry’ power-up if they are allowed to cycle through the stage a second time. Unlike “Mario Bros.,” “Muffin Knight” is based on collecting muffins rather than clearing all enemies from a given stage. Indeed, each stage lasts indefinitely in “Muffin Knight,” provided the player is able to stay alive.
The gimmick “Muffin Knight” lifted from “Super Crate Box” is the fact that they player’s abilities are constantly changing. In “Super Crate Box,” each of the titular crate-boxes contains a new weapon, which automatically replaces the player’s current weapon upon collecting the box. “Muffin Knight’s” gameplay works identically, only with each collected muffin transforming the player’s character into a different fantastical fairytale creature. Each transformation features wildly different capabilities, and learning to quickly adapt to perpetual change is the key to success. Also like “Super Crate Box,” the player unlocks more and transformations as the game progresses, but in “Muffin Knight” this works by collecting muffins, gaining experience, and spending perk points. The PC version of “Muffin Knight” features more stages than the OUYA version, as well as a set of unlockable special moves and a rage meter that automatically transforms the player into an invincible Bull when filled.
The controls in “Muffin Knight” are fully customizable and incredibly responsive, especially when compared to the OUYA version. The fact that the PC version also has a set price means the micro-transactions are completely gone, leaving a simple, fun game with no annoying cruft.
Indeed, the only thing that prevents “Muffin Knight” from being a perfect specimen of Arcadey goodness is the fact that it can be a little bit too grindy. Acquiring enough perk points to unlock the two upgrades available for every transformation, the extra lives, and all of the special abilities takes a very, very long time. I didn’t manage it before defeating the final boss (Yes! There is a boss!). Even more annoyingly, the reward for beating the game is simply a higher difficulty mode where the player can earn experience more quickly, but must also unlock EVERY upgrade all over again. “Muffin Knight” is fun, but not SO fun that grinding through the process of unlocking power-ups over and over is a reason to keep playing.
Overall
“Muffin Knight” is a sublime Arcade experience that liberally borrows from other, similar games, yet still manages to feel creative and unique. The RPG-inspired upgrade system is simultaneously the game’s best and worst quality, leading to increased complexity at the cost of lots of grinding.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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