Six years later, and I finally finished Knytt Underground

  • 4 Replies
  • 2098 Views
Six years later, and I finally finished Knytt Underground
« on: December 01, 2018, 11:34:41 »
As the news of the development of Knytt Underground reached me, I was hyped. I kept replaying Knytt Stories and just waiting... waiting... and waiting... until the day the game came out in December 2012.

I immediately got it on my PS Vita and kept playing until I explored almost the whole map. I remember sleepless nights when I would get to the university barely functioning next morning. I kept playing until I decided to save some for later.

And so, fast-forward a year, I got back to the game and finished uncovering the map and hunting for those hard-to-reach spots, and finally decided to tackle the Figure. I finished the first couple of challenges, saved the game, and... the things just kind of stayed like that.

I wouldn't allow myself to leave the Figure, I knew I needed to finish it. It was my personal challenge. I had to do it, but... boy was I intimidated by it! I was more or less finished with the game otherwise, so somehow I never got back to it. I rarely ever played my PS Vita since then.

It was always there though, in the back of my mind. I would listen to the soundtrack occasionally. In my mind, I would compare other platformers to Knytt. I would play around with the Figure music app on my phone (that is how the Figure challenge got its name by the way).

And then finally, in 2018 I took the Vita out of the drawer, charged it, started the game again and pushed forward through the Figure until I finished it.

I then explored the mini-chapters, got the Enigma and rung the last Bell.

On December 1st 2018, I finished the story of Juni and got the final achievement. What a bittersweet feeling.

I am finally done with the game, and what a journey it was!

Thank you, Nicklas.



P.S. a PC version is there on my hard drive, so I know that once I decide to come back to the beautiful world of Knytt, there is the whole Infinity Hype update for me to explore. Whether this happens tomorrow, in a year, or in 10 years I don't know, but I know it will happen one day.

*

Offline kilicool64

  • 194
  • 14
    • View Profile
Re: Six years later, and I finally finished Knytt Underground
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2018, 01:10:13 »
Nice to see there are still people playing this game nowadays.

That said, the PSN versions are notoriously bad ports. You really did yourself a disfavor by playing the Vita version. They were outsourced to a company called Green Hill Studios and developed on an entirely different engine. And it's clear that something went seriously wrong during their development. Not only did they make numerous mistakes when porting the game, but their partnership with Nifflas was terminated after release for unknown reasons. As a result these versions were never updated to fix their bugs and add all the content that was added later.

It would be interesting to hear what caused things to end up like this, but judging by what little Nifflas has said about the matter, he's probably unable to go into details due to NDAs. All we do know is that he himself is unhappy with how these versions ended up, but has no way to update them. There are some vague hints that the game's publisher, Ripstone, played a role in this as well, but nothing concrete.

And they really are missing a lot of secret content, including some of the best parts of the game. Luckily, most (though not all) of the content you missed out on is easy to access if you know how to get it. If you want to know how,
Spoiler: (click to show/hide)

*

Offline Knyttster

  • 27
  • 3
  • Oh, look at this, it's my personal text!
    • View Profile
    • SoundCloud
Re: Six years later, and I finally finished Knytt Underground
« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2018, 11:38:27 »
We are in the same boat! I beat the game some time this year and loved it very much. I hope you get around to the PC version some time, because there really is a lot more good content on PC. I hope someday we get another Knytt game!
Spoiler: (click to show/hide)

*

Offline Wibi

  • 258
  • 66
  • apologies for the interference
    • View Profile
Re: Six years later, and I finally finished Knytt Underground
« Reply #3 on: December 21, 2018, 18:16:22 »
Is there any content on the Vita version that isn't in the Infinity Hype update? I remember hearing something about a secret that sets KU in the same universe as Saira, but I could never find it on the Steam version.

*

Offline kilicool64

  • 194
  • 14
    • View Profile
Re: Six years later, and I finally finished Knytt Underground
« Reply #4 on: December 21, 2018, 23:50:12 »
To my knowledge, there are only a handful of features exclusive to the PSN versions.

The first one is an extra room in the menu for managing the cloud.

The second is that it informs you whenever you activate a new save point. Once you've activated enough of them, you unlock one of three mini chapters you can then access via save points. These mini chapters were later added to the PC version (the Wii U version didn't exist yet at the time, but also got them), though the way they're accessed is different.

The third is a coordinate system for the map to help with navigation. Technically, it doesn't count as exclusive since the Wii U version would later get one as well, though the PC version never did.

And the last exclusive feature I'm aware of is a quest list. Doesn't strike me as particularly useful, though.


If you pay close attention to the stories of Saira and KU, it should be pretty obvious they both take place in the same universe. A few parts of Saira clearly imply that the humans in its story are descended from those who fled to outer space after the Great War. Plus, one of the game's endings contains very obvious references to WaDF and Knytt.

KU doesn't directly reference Saira very much, but that's because the events of that game happened only a decade or two before KU. Plus, it's made clear that no human ever made contact with the knytt society that formed beneath the Earth's surface. They probably don't expect anything to have survived the radiation. So even if Saira's story were to be passed along in human society, it would have no way of reaching the knytt on Earth.

There is a single reference to Saira in the game, but you wouldn't notice it unless you read Nifflas' explanation. Basically,
Spoiler: spoilers for Saira (click to show/hide)