The Knightling Review
The Knightling features joyful exploration in a storybook world.
The Knightling. Credit: Twirlbound / Saber Interactive
Developer Twirlbound’s The Knightling, published by Saber Interactive, is an open-world adventure that proves sometimes all you need is a great movement gimmick and a world built to support it. Shield surfing down hills and launching off ramps is pure joy, making exploration the game's greatest strength.
You play as the young apprentice to Sir Lionstone, the realm's greatest knight, who has mysteriously vanished chasing a villain, leaving you only his shield Magnustego. Armed only with the shield, you must search for Lionstone while proving to everyone else that you’re worthy of carrying more responsibility than an apprentice.
The Knightling. Credit: Twirlbound / Saber Interactive
The shield becomes far more than a weapon and defensive tool, serving as your primary means of traversal. Shield surfing feels absolutely fantastic, letting you barrel down slopes and launch yourself skyward off ramps. The world’s design cleverly accommodates this mechanic while quests provide optional challenges to really test your skills. Later upgrades add gliding abilities that further open up exploration. Combined with natural jumping and platforming, movement becomes second nature once you adjust to the physics, and simply getting from point A to point B is a blast.
The Knightling. Credit: Twirlbound / Saber Interactive
The open world is divided into distinct zones, each packed with quests from NPCs who need assistance. While helping villagers feels appropriately low-stakes and charming, the game's navigation occasionally frustrated me. Some quests lack proper waypoint highlighting. For example, searching for a character's "stinky children" scattered around town without any navigation markers was an exercise in blind exploration that tested my patience even when I was otherwise enjoying myself. Maybe I’m just spoiled.
The Knightling. Credit: Twirlbound / Saber Interactive
Dungeons provide the strongest puzzle content, evoking 3D Zelda games with cleverly designed challenges that test your mastery of shield mechanics. These thoughtful sections offer welcome pacing changes from open-world exploration, requiring environmental observation and creative shield usage to progress.
Combat serves primarily to add friction to exploration rather than being a core focus, keeping things simple with basic hit-parry-dodge mechanics. You unlock an impressive skill tree featuring vertical launches, delayed combo extensions, dash attacks, and more, expanding combat to give it a little more depth, but to me, it’s not the heart of the game.
The Knightling. Credit: Twirlbound / Saber Interactive
The vibrant, colorful graphics complement the game's charm. Cartoonish character designs brim with personality through expressive animations, while environments pop with a vibrant storybook quality common in a lot of all-ages 3D platformers, but executed very well.
The Knightling succeeds as a movement-focused adventure where simply getting around feels rewarding. Don’t go into it expecting deep combat; rather, enjoy exploring the world and the dungeons, and you’ll have a great time.
The Knightling is available now on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: PS5
