Another thread asking for recommendations (large, exploratory, enviromental)

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Hi all. Since I'm always late to every video game party, I didn't play the Knytt or Knytt Underground until the mid-2010s or so, but like many of you I fell in love with Nifflas's beautiful art, relaxed approach to gameplay, and endlessly tantalizing pick-a-direction-and-go exploration. I didn't check out Knytt Stories until this last weekend, because to be honest I figured the level editor didn't catch on--Knytt is after all a relatively obscure indie game, right? But I'm very excited to see how wrong I was, and even more excited to see the community is still alive and releasing levels.

As is expected there's a healthy variety of levels out there, but personally, I'm mainly looking for levels in the vein of the Nifflas levels like A Strange Dream, or the other Knytt games: big and nonlinear, free-roaming exploration, diverse environments, etc. About the same level of challenge would be good too: if you know of harder levels that meet these criteria, feel free to post them as long as they aren't kill-you-on-every screen "masocore" stuff (I'm very bad at platformers, by the way). Similarly, I am not necessarily looking for "playground" levels with no goal at all (I like to have a motivation to explore, even if it's as simple as collect X number of objects) but if you know of any particularly interesting ones, let me know.

Before you ask, I have looked through this forum already and it seems there's been two threads covering similar ground:
https://nifflas.lp1.nl/index.php?topic=2807.0
https://nifflas.lp1.nl/index.php?topic=2886.0
These threads have good leads but the thing is they're from ten years ago, so I'm in need of leads for levels that have been released since that time. If you know of any older ones that aren't mentioned in those threads, though, do mention them.

Thanks for your time! If I didn't have an unfinished Quake level taunting me from my hard drive I'd open the Knytt editor myself right away, but I'll have to wait for the time being.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2021, 17:50:45 by Lane Powell »

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Offline Polana

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Two large and mostly enviromental leves released recently are Advena and it's remake Reditus by Purple Ink. Don't play them back to back, they are very similar.

Another recent large level with lots of exploring are Forgotten realms by Vegetal Gibber. I can recomend also his smaller levels like Lamp flower garden, Journey to the Golden Land, Exploring the Golden Land , Alcázar or The Bluebird of Happiness , which all have similar atmosphere.

Azure serenity by Shreeps should be mentioned here, because it's very very very very large level with lots of areas to explore, but unfortunately it's too big to be really well-made.

Then there are some classical levels like Gaia by Anyndel and Drakkan, which is all about exploring strange planet, Hypnagogia by Plural, Dark Sky of Wish Mountain by AZ Taco, Endless winter made by collective of level makers of this forum, A Knytt in time by Egomassive or Mashu Prapa by Salmoneous, but you probably already read about them in those two mentioned topics.

Another level that you might like is Emma fell down a well by Bulbapuck. And then you also should try anythig by Talps, especially first Petals (although his levels are not exactly about exploring the world and are probably much harder than what you want).
« Last Edit: May 12, 2021, 08:14:37 by Polana »

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Offline egomassive

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I didn't check these for difficulty but they are listed as easy and I remember them fondly:

Riku Island by Kohdi
The Golden Pyramid by Bass
A Day at the Beach by Healy
White City by Headgrinder

Also, if you take Polana's recommendation to play A Knytt in Time. I recommend the LoCP version.

Thanks for the prompt replies! I'm playing Dark Sky of Wish Mountain right now and it's very good. I also walked around a bit in Mashu Prapa and Riku Island. Loved climbing on the trees in the latter, less a fan of the maze at the end though.

Thank you all.