Knight Moves is a mid-90s computer puzzle game. In the game you take control of a knight that must hop between spaces in the manner that a knight from chess moves. You must collect all the coins in each level to progress, meanwhile avoiding pumpkin headed scarecrows and other monsters as you hop in L shapes to progress.
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Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (15th Aug. – 21st Aug., 2023).
Variations on the Knight's Tour problem are a convenient way of teaching the movement of the piece to beginners, who are often baffled by its atypical movement. Among the atypical manoeuvres in chess are the long knight repositionings, which are among the most impressive sequences because they depart from the intuitive idea of not moving just one piece during the game. For example, initiates will be familiar with White's typical Nc3-b1-d2 manoeuvre, a staple of Indian structures that can build into more advanced sequences. Outside formal games, the knight has long been a favourite for applying chess to puzzles: it offers ideal complexity without really requiring tactical or strategic vision, as only short sequences need to be remembered – similar to the quick manoeuvre aforementioned.
Alexey Pajitnov offered an interesting version for the Famicom in Knight Moves (1990), in which the player had to move a knight around a rectangular chessboard in order to collect hearts that would appear one at a time. The game is driven mainly by its scoring philosophy, and the strategy is to pass over the same square several times to make a hole. The more holes the player clears before collecting the heart, the more points they score; the holes are subsequently closed and a new round can begin. In 1995, the concept was slightly altered for the release of an eponymous game for Windows. While the idea of recovering items by avoiding falling into holes was retained, the title now invited players to solve hand-crafted boards by finding an effective solution. On paper, the idea is a sound one. Having clearly defined squares to cross allows the player to think ahead and makes the knight's manoeuvres much smoother. The player can let the tempo of the action dictate the pace, but they can also force the knight to finish their move immediately, a kind of hard drop à la Tetris. The distinctive feature of Knight Moves is the presence of enemies that traverse the chessboard; they do not, however, follow the movement of chess pieces, but instead travel along a more or less fixed route, getting in the way of the player.
The asymmetry between the movement pace of the knight and the opponents is certainly worth appreciating, but the implementation lacks clarity. The oblique perspective makes it difficult to see the most distant squares, and it is not uncommon to misjudge the hitbox of a bat due to the awkward angle. Enemies with short cycles, such as spiders, are also rather unpleasant with their occasional unexpected turns. As the title progresses, these structural problems become more pronounced. In its second half, the game introduces enemies that can make multiple squares inaccessible, adding to the general chaos of Knight Moves; to some extent, this forces the player to react quickly. However, some enemy fire is a slightly random projectile that can instantly ruin a board if the RNG is unfavourable to the player. This is a problem especially in the final Level, where visibility is poor due to the dark colours. Some moves can already be quite complex to solve, simply due to the presence of moving enemies, without taking the projectiles into account.
While Knight Moves is generally enjoyable in its early stages, it struggles to develop an intelligent approach to the knight's movements. Only once does the game use teleporters with finesse, elegantly altering the parity of movement and inviting the player to first understand the general concept governing the board. Towards the end of the title, some of the items are placed on squares that are difficult to access due to holes in the layout, requiring the player to think deeply about the manoeuvre before starting to move, but Knight Moves leaves very little observation time to grasp this challenge, as the knight is not invincible before his first move. The player has to learn on the fly that a particular coin is the real challenge, a very frustrating feeling after spending several dozen heated seconds avoiding the erratic movements of enemies.
Knight Moves suffers from rough gameplay, made worse by graphics that are more distracting than anything else. Some levels are genuinely enjoyable, letting the player naturally blitz through each move before the enemies have made the board uncomfortable to navigate or visually cluttered. On the other hand, the game lapses too easily into artificial difficulty, where the player has to manage the tempo of their moves while praying that the RNG is in their favour: the last two rounds leave no room for improvisation, and blitzing every move is easier after spending time working out the long manoeuvre from start to finish. Knight Moves seems to have found a decent concept to explore, but the execution mostly highlights the weaknesses of a title that could not figure out how to balance puzzle and action.
Variations on the Knight's Tour problem are a convenient way of teaching the movement of the piece to beginners, who are often baffled by its atypical movement. Among the atypical manoeuvres in chess are the long knight repositionings, which are among the most impressive sequences because they depart from the intuitive idea of not moving just one piece during the game. For example, initiates will be familiar with White's typical Nc3-b1-d2 manoeuvre, a staple of Indian structures that can build into more advanced sequences. Outside formal games, the knight has long been a favourite for applying chess to puzzles: it offers ideal complexity without really requiring tactical or strategic vision, as only short sequences need to be remembered – similar to the quick manoeuvre aforementioned.
Alexey Pajitnov offered an interesting version for the Famicom in Knight Moves (1990), in which the player had to move a knight around a rectangular chessboard in order to collect hearts that would appear one at a time. The game is driven mainly by its scoring philosophy, and the strategy is to pass over the same square several times to make a hole. The more holes the player clears before collecting the heart, the more points they score; the holes are subsequently closed and a new round can begin. In 1995, the concept was slightly altered for the release of an eponymous game for Windows. While the idea of recovering items by avoiding falling into holes was retained, the title now invited players to solve hand-crafted boards by finding an effective solution. On paper, the idea is a sound one. Having clearly defined squares to cross allows the player to think ahead and makes the knight's manoeuvres much smoother. The player can let the tempo of the action dictate the pace, but they can also force the knight to finish their move immediately, a kind of hard drop à la Tetris. The distinctive feature of Knight Moves is the presence of enemies that traverse the chessboard; they do not, however, follow the movement of chess pieces, but instead travel along a more or less fixed route, getting in the way of the player.
The asymmetry between the movement pace of the knight and the opponents is certainly worth appreciating, but the implementation lacks clarity. The oblique perspective makes it difficult to see the most distant squares, and it is not uncommon to misjudge the hitbox of a bat due to the awkward angle. Enemies with short cycles, such as spiders, are also rather unpleasant with their occasional unexpected turns. As the title progresses, these structural problems become more pronounced. In its second half, the game introduces enemies that can make multiple squares inaccessible, adding to the general chaos of Knight Moves; to some extent, this forces the player to react quickly. However, some enemy fire is a slightly random projectile that can instantly ruin a board if the RNG is unfavourable to the player. This is a problem especially in the final Level, where visibility is poor due to the dark colours. Some moves can already be quite complex to solve, simply due to the presence of moving enemies, without taking the projectiles into account.
While Knight Moves is generally enjoyable in its early stages, it struggles to develop an intelligent approach to the knight's movements. Only once does the game use teleporters with finesse, elegantly altering the parity of movement and inviting the player to first understand the general concept governing the board. Towards the end of the title, some of the items are placed on squares that are difficult to access due to holes in the layout, requiring the player to think deeply about the manoeuvre before starting to move, but Knight Moves leaves very little observation time to grasp this challenge, as the knight is not invincible before his first move. The player has to learn on the fly that a particular coin is the real challenge, a very frustrating feeling after spending several dozen heated seconds avoiding the erratic movements of enemies.
Knight Moves suffers from rough gameplay, made worse by graphics that are more distracting than anything else. Some levels are genuinely enjoyable, letting the player naturally blitz through each move before the enemies have made the board uncomfortable to navigate or visually cluttered. On the other hand, the game lapses too easily into artificial difficulty, where the player has to manage the tempo of their moves while praying that the RNG is in their favour: the last two rounds leave no room for improvisation, and blitzing every move is easier after spending time working out the long manoeuvre from start to finish. Knight Moves seems to have found a decent concept to explore, but the execution mostly highlights the weaknesses of a title that could not figure out how to balance puzzle and action.