self: 27 years old. Playing video games of all kinds since 1989. Introduced to Nifflas with STEAM Saira, have since played all major Nifflas titles. Fell in love with Knytt Stories and have played ~100 or so, including Lunatic-level difficulties. Bought Knytt Undergounr about a month ago, rang the bells two weeks ago, completing most of the map but not all of it. Today I finished it again, having found all of the Secrets on the map proper, two of the figures, the Sandwich, and the Enigma. (I had to cheat to find the figures and the Enigma.)
Nifflas and friends, let me start by saying that this is your best work yet. (I am reluctant to call it your Magnum Opus on the hope that you will somehow surpass it in the future!) There are so many good things to say that I don't know where to begin... let me start with the setting.
Franchises like Star Wars and Harry Potter and even The Lord of the Rings are extremely popular, I think, mostly because of their rich, immersive world. The stories themselves are nothing special. In fact, when analyzed on their own, they are usually dull, rehashed fairy tales. However, each of these three franchises (and most good science fiction/fantasy stories) takes place in its own large, expansive universe ripe for telling stories, creating characters and filling the audience with a sense of wonder and awe. There's millenia of untold legend, and doubtless there will be future stories. Each begs the audience to wonder about the setting and mentally explore the fictional history. What did Minas Morgul look like before corruption? Who founded the Jedi? What other spells and secrets does Hogwarts hold? In a similar sense, that's what you've done here by knitting WaDF, Knytt, Knytt Stories, Saria (and others?) together into Knytt Underground. We now have a vast setting with hundreds of creatures and thousands of years of history to wonder about. What drove the humans to leave? Where did the Knytts and the Sprites and the other creatures come from? What will happen to Earth, the Humans, the Knytts, or even to Cilia and Dora? In Knytt Underground, you have effectively captured the sense that the game takes place during the briefest of normal, humble weekends, while highlighting a long saga of literally world-changing events. The tiny details really help with this immersion... like the geiger counter and the hair dryer and the blob that just wants a basket to die in and the girl who wants to forcibly seduce her crush. In short, you've fleshed out your universe extremely well, its clear that you've had a bigger picture all this time, and I am truly looking forward to seeing what comes!
Every setting needs interesting characters to tell a good story, and the characters in this universe are _extremely_ well developed. It's funny, despite being fairies and other fantasy creatures, these are potentially the most realistic, best written characters I've seen in any video game. It's funny, and a little sad, that in most games and movies, the characters NEVER talk in any way even remotely similar to how people in real life talk. It's always about getting down to business, or sly witty comments every other word, or blatant expressions of emotion, and EVERYONE knows what to say, when to say it, and how to effectively convey their thoughts. In contrast, I absolutely LOVED the fairies dialogue... they often (more than not) didn't know what to say to each other or to other people, they didn't anyways know how to express themselves, and we frequently find them projecting their own personalities onto whatever situations or characters they encounter. They stutter and insult and use crass language and complain and praise and flatter and are so... human. I don't know who wrote the dialogue, but they need to be commended. And despite this humanity, they are NEVER boring, never annoying, and I find myself wanting to see what they're going to say or do next. Instead of one-dimensional compassionate/mean/violent/wise characters, Cilia and Dora have an extra few dimensions that we see many hints of throughout the game. Cilia is "mean," certainly blunt, but very honest and because of this, the fact that she generally wants to help out most people and find happiness/love seems very genuine. On the opposite side, we have Dora who is nice and polite, even to a fault. She would rather tell someone what they want to hear instead of the truth and honestly believes that this is the right thing to do, even when she KNOWS it has lead to problems. While many works of fiction take a one is good, one is bad approach, it's infinitely more interesting to see that each personality has nuggets of wisdom and layers of complexity that make the audience feel like we're getting to know a real person better. I loved diving deeper into Cilia's relationships, and the fact that Dora was cheating on one of her boyfriends (and has had so many) fits in with her character so well. Yes, there really ARE people who cheat simply because they can't say no and they honestly are trying to make too many people happy at once.
The story, by most metrics, would seem trite and cliche. The character is asked to save the world by completing some seemingly mystical task. But, as Nifflas says at the end, that's not really what it's about, is it? The story of the characters turns out to be the REAL story all along, sort of "it's the journey that counts," or as Nifflas put it when describing "The Great Work," "...we're not living in a world where you have to be right for your choices to take you somewhere interesting... Our wrong decisions can take us to the right places, and things that are right and carefully planned can go horribly wrong." (you could get away with ascribing that one to Gandhi.) In most stories where the main goal falls to the wayside, it usually comes back to be at least part of some dramatic ending where everything ties together nicely. But that doesn't really happen here. There's no amazing conclusion or grand finale or really any resolution at all. I. Love. It. The ending is realistic. Life doesn't have grand conclusions and epic finales. You may graduate or get married, but those are both more beginnings than endings, and at the end of each and every event, we all look around and say, "Well, now what?" We may discover new things about ourselves or the world, but there's always more. We may go on wild adventures... but really, the adventures are always best during the experience, and ending them is often the worst part. And sometimes enjoying a sandwich with friends really feels like one of the best experiences the world has to offer. Again, I love it. With its stories, setting, and characters, Knytt Underground, more than any other game, begs the player to keep exploring. That, and the limitless supply of secrets. Seriously, is it like 1/3 of the game is Secrets? I guarantee you that there are secrets that no one has found yet, and there are some that probably no one but Nifflas will ever see. But that's how life is... there's always something new to discover if we feel like putting the effort in to look for it.
I've sung high praise so far, but the fact of the matter is that the greatest story and the best written characters can still fail to impress or at least go largely unnoticed if other aspects of their medium is faulty. A movie with a great story but poor acting and bad cinematography is still a bad movie, and a video game that's not fun to play simply isn't a good video game. After all, this is a VIDEO GAME, and it needs to be FUN. Forunately, Knytt Underground is a great game. I would not say that the challenges or the gameplay are spectacular or revolutionary, even if the combination of Ball+Knytt is new. Still, it was a lot of fun, some parts were challenging for me (which I liked), it was very engaging, and it worked very well for me in a casual, comfortable atmosphere combining leisure, scenery, puzzle solving, and game mechanics. I personally loved the Figures, but again, I like challenges like that. Additionally, the visuals were SPECTACULAR, I absolutely loved everything about them, although I think a lot of this is due to my own aesthetic taste. I love the black silhouettes, the bright backgrounds with the zoomed-in flowers and trees, the fog, the machinery elements mixed with the natural elements and mystical places, all of the mini houses and windows and neighborhoods, all of the different environments, I really just loved it all.
And now... the critiscsm. There's not much, but there are a few minor details that I feel like pointing out, perhaps I misinterpretted them, or perhaps they're intentional, or just maybe you may think about them for future work.
1: The language. I mentioned above that I LOVED the dialogue, and yes, this includes the crass language. However, think about this, ASIDE from the cursing, there really is nothing to keep a child from enjoying and exploring this game and experiencing most of it. They may not get the full depth of it, but even a child who doesn't understand all the nuances and details in something intended for adults can still find a lot of enjoyment and glean life lessons and be inspired for years to come, and maybe some day go back and play it again and discover more about their childhood memories. But, in its current form, I wouldn't give this to any child under 10-12. I don't suggest that you sacrifice ANYTHING for this, least of all the excellent dialogue, but you might consider adding a profanity filter that convets "fuck" or "anal penetration" to %$&#%&%& that can be locked via password so parents can let their children play this.
2: The ball-sprite merge between chapters. There was really no mention of this. I understand its a "superhero" thing and it doesn't need to make sense, but SOME mention of it at the beginning of Chapter 3 would have been welcome. Even just a simple, "Oh hey, how did you do that?? Wow, that's neat." I honestly thought I had missed something between the chapters and went back to play both endings before continuing chapter 3 just to make sure I didn't miss a cutscene or skip some dialogue.
3: The mid-air control. If the community developers can change this, then ignore this, but one thing I absolutely LOVE about Knytt Stories is the control the player has over Juni. She can move back and forth in mid-air, jump at a moments notice, and with all of the powerups, do all kinds of crazy acrobatics allowing for unlimitted challenges. There were a few places where I was trying to jump in Knytt Underground where Mi just didn't have the same dexterity... she can't change direction in the air nearly like Juni can. I don't ask that you change it for Knytt Underground, just that the community developers can change it for the maps so that we can see the same quality of challenges in Knytt Underground that we see in Knytt Stories.
4: AMD Athalon 64 X2 Dual Core, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GTS 250. I know it's not top of the line, but I can play StarCraft HOTS and Far Cry 2 on medium settings, so you'd think I'd be able to run ANYTHING Knytt Underground can throw at me... but I do experience some major slowdown in screens that have a lot of water. Not sure why.
TL;DR : Loved the game. If you're on the fence about getting it, get it. I give it a 97/100.