57 - Spiral Knights (PC)

Genre: RPG, MMO
Rating: N/A
Developer: Three Rings
Publisher: Sega
Platform: PC (Also: Mac)
Release Date: 2011

I first heard of Spiral Knights when it launched back in April. At that time, I figured it was just another MMO that wasn't going to be a big deal. It probably wasn't either until Steam picked it up for one of their first free-to-play games on the service. Now basically all my friends are playing it daily. Curious, I decided to check it out as well.

As it turns out, Spiral Knights is a lot of fun. To me it feels a lot like The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. That probably stems from the cute art and top down perspective of the game. You also generally group up in teams of four to explore dungeon after dungeon. You can also choose to play solo if you wish, which pleases me because I've always been more than a bit wary of some online players. For single player dungeon crawls, you can even password protect your dungeon so nobody else can hop in. Fantastic!

However, since I have friends playing it I am happy to say I've had a bit of experience with the whole "online" functionality of the game. It's a pretty simple hack n' slash game with a bit of puzzling to do now and again. The goal is to go deeper and deeper to get to the center of the world (or something like that). Unfortunately, it costs energy to go down each level, so you can only play so many levels per day before running out. I've heard that becomes less of an issue when you level up more, but I'm still pretty weak.

I really like the game and if I hadn't gotten caught up in the likes of EVE Online I'd probably still be playing it a ton. Unfortunately, I just get in brief stints with Spiral Knights in between my other business. Regardless, it's a solid online game. It's very casual but very fun.

Would I play again? Yes!