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Developer: Nicklas Nygren
Publisher: Nicklas Nygren
Release Date: Aug. 28, 2007
System: PC
ESRB Rating: Unrated
Official Web site

0:00 I initially found this game on a list of free, independent platform games on MetaFilter. Those are three of my favorite adjectives in that last sentence there!

0:01 The opening menu has some concentric circles of colored, rotating balls with ethereal music in the background. Odd. Tutorial time!

0:02 "Welcome! Try to walk around by pressing the left and right arrow keys." OK, I'll try, but I doubt this is gonna work!

0:03 Whaddya know -- it worked. And the S button worked at making my little character jump. Some more ethereal music comes in amid the rainy, pixelated background. Very minimalist graphics and animation so far. I like it!

0:04 I get some power-ups that let me run faster and climb up/hang on to walls. I like the stickiness of clinging to the edges.

0:05 A double jump item! It's just not a proper platformer without a decent double jump!

0:06 I come across an umbrella to slow falls. Who does this guy think he is, Princess Peach?

0:07 Invisible blocks are suddenly visible now that I found the "eye" item.

0:08 I come across my first enemy, a little greyish thing. I touch it just to see what happens, and my character disappears in a puff of smoke. Whoosh!

0:09 A new item means I can create a hologram to get by incredibly stupid enemies who don't see me even though I'm right in front of them. HA HA, STUPID ENEMIES!

0:10 "...and that is how you play Knytt Stories." What an excellently endearing little tutorial. The main game comes with one Challenge: "The Machine: A save-the-world adventure." And away we go.

0:11 A few screens of text explain that there are many contradictory "stories" about the Knytt, but "a small number of them are known to be partially true. This is one of those stories." An interesting way to explain the dichotomy between player-created content and the "official" game.

0:12 "This was once a very beautiful place... but it had suddenly changed into a desolate wasteland." A girl named Juni (my character from the tutorial) gets a letter about a machine sucking the life out of the world. The machine is in a cave, guarded by a monster. Can she please come help save the world, the letter asks? Pretty please? "This is what happened next."

0:13 I lost all the abilities I had in the tutorial. Poo. Traveling left, I quickly find the speed power-up. Quickly! Ha!

0:15 I can climb the walls again, but still no double jump. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?

0:16 I just have to mention the beautiful pixel art backgrounds again. They're just full of life, even when depicting a desolate, destroyed world. The music goes a long way to increasing the impact.

0:17 I come across a sort of reverse-Thwomp (from the Mario series) that jumps whenever I do. I have to trick it a little to get by.

0:18 Down into a water-filled cave, lit by lampposts. It's all so beautiful. The game reminds me of Super Metroid more than anything, with the interactive environments and ability-based exploration.