Kill Knight Hands-On: The Ultimate Twin-Stick Action Game

You’ve never played a twin-stick shooter quite like Kill Knight. This relentlessly intense action game may indeed be based around firing off a steady stream of projectiles as enemies swarm in, forcing you to dodge and shimmy your way to every corner of the game’s tightly enclosed arenas, but you also wield a sword – which itself feeds into the game’s (at least initially) overwhelming set of mechanics.

Kill Knight is a densely layered twin-stick shooter, in other words, but it’s been designed that way with a very clear purpose – to sort the wheat from the chaff. This is a return to old school arcade sensibilities; a straight-up high score chaser anchored in twin-stick shooter traditions, but also owing a lot to the likes of Dark Souls, Hyper Demon, and Doom Eternal. It is ruthlessly exacting, but never unfair, with over the top action and a skill ceiling that seemingly reaches up forever.

It’s also, thankfully, a whole lot of fun. The learning curve is undoubtedly steep, but I found myself quickly sucked in by the chunky, satisfying feel of Kill Knight’s frenetic combat – not to mention its elegant interlocking mechanics, striking lo-fi brutalist aesthetic, grim mood and killer soundscape.

Playing Kill Knight is a whirling dervish of death, a high-speed mix of swords and gunplay, counters, and supercharged screen clears. It is a game in which wave upon wave of enemies constantly crowds in, forcing you into perpetual motion, dashing to reposition, lining up your most powerful attacks and kiting mobs to create just enough breathing room to clear them out.

Kill Knight has no procedural randomness, so each of the five levels (or Eldritch Layers, as the game rather poetically calls them) unfolds the same way each time, playing host to the same overwhelming horde in the same order. They’ll spawn in different places depending on where you are on the killing floor, and you don’t necessarily need to complete a wave for the next one to start (there are key targets that act as triggers). The action never feels rote, but for the purposes of a high score competition, it’s exactly where it needs to be.

Ensuring you’re always slightly off-balance, the arena itself reconfigures under your feet in a way that’s reminiscent of Aussie indie classic Assault Android Cactus. You’re constantly on the back foot, and simply surviving the many waves – let alone dominating them – really forces you to engage with all the combat mechanics. And boy, there are a lot of them.

In fact, even with the tutorials, there’s only so much it’s really possible to understand out of the gate. To improve, you need to play and play some more – many, many times over. By doing so you’ll gradually getting a feel for this game’s destructive dance, and the role your three core weapons – pistols, sword and heavy – all have to play.

The pistols are your baseline damage dealers, but really come into their own once you’re in the rhythm of using the game’s active reload system to “overdrive” their firepower. This is mechanically similar to the Gears of War series, but different pistols have different perks for successfully timing your active reload. The Revolters (yes, that’s what they’re called) give your bullets pierce, letting you line up and mow down columns of enemies, whereas the Exhausters have a spinning spread shot burst. Tap a different button, meanwhile, and you can use overdrive in other ways. Why not overdrive your sword for a dashing slash or a spinning attack that would make the hero of Hyrule proud?

The sword is an interesting inclusion. In moment to moment combat it’s more of a utility than anything else – not particularly powerful, but any kills you net will restore your heavy weapon ammo. This means that part of Kill Knight’s rhythm is using your sword to farm the weakest mobs and ensure your powerful heavy weapon is online. Using the sword also builds a surge meter over time that gives you access to a screen-clearing super.

Enemy designs lean into the many mechanics too, encouraging specific tactics. Foes with a demonic carapace (essentially a glowing purple shield) will explode when hit with a wrath blast (yet another mechanic; I’ll get to it in a moment). Other enemies will charge up, giving you a window to “pulse counter” them and even slow time, while enemies with weak points can be stunned and then executed. It’s a heady mix of systems. Utilising every inch of the arena is critical to survival, as is taking advantage of the brief period of immunity while dashing.

Almost all the mechanics have a push/pull element to them. Enemies, for instance, drop blood gems, but these can be used in two distinct ways. One is to simply walk over them to boost your movement speed and kill power. The other is to hit the right bumper to suck them in and convert them to wrath, which then powers a special attack called a wrath blast, which is both devastating and your only source of health orbs… which, given how punishing Kill Knight is, can be essential to survival.

Combat, then, is an ever-evolving puzzle as you scramble to prioritise targets, make the most of your arsenal, dodge damage, and try to avoid being overwhelmed by the incessant onslaught.

Urgency is part and parcel of play too, as you’re chaining together kills to grow and maintain your score multiplier. Go a few seconds without a kill and you’ll lose it – and can most likely kiss the leaderboards goodbye. That’s not the only way to pile on points, either. The difficulty you play on determines your overall score bonus (ranging from no bonus up to +30% on the highest difficulty – unlocked only after beating the truly punishing layer 5). The pace ramps right up as you crank the challenge.

Nailing kills with more advanced mechanics (such as pulse counters or executions) nets you carnage points which also contribute to your overall score, while picking up health orbs when already at full health gives you bonus points as well. Making the most of all these systems will ultimately be what gives the very best players the edge over everyone else.

I’ve already mentioned that you can swap equipment, but unlocking new gear is gated behind objectives (optional sub-quests during normal play) which are designed to prove your mastery of Kill Knight’s systems. At launch, the game will have five pistols, five heavy weapons, five swords, and five armour sets, as well as 10 items to choose from in the gem slot.

There are some pretty distinct options in the mix that really shake up the gameplay. Do you want a super-targeted shotgun blast for your heavy weapon, or a cannon that shoots large shells that explode on contact? (And for that matter, what type of wrath burst do you want? That’s also decided by your heavy weapon choice and ranges from a bazooka-like blast to an AOE around the player.) Do you want a fast-slashing sword or one that shoots out a radial spray of ground projectiles? Do you want to drop to only one dash charge in exchange for taking less damage, as well as doing damage and knockback when dashing? Or perhaps you want three dash charges but are willing to cop increased damage? Figuring out which builds are most satisfying, or tailoring builds to specific layers will all be part of the fun.

It’s also worth pointing out that the development team’s goal is for there to be “no fluff”. They want every single piece of equipment to be viable. The ambition, then, is for any build to have a shot at the leaderboards, and for there to not be a “best build” or narrow meta around how to play. That’s a tricky thing to accomplish but certainly a worthwhile goal. At a baseline, the spread of options will let you find a play style that works for you, and also gives you other approaches to try if you’re banging your head against a layer and simply can’t beat it.

This is PlaySide Studio’s first console release, which is kind of bonkers for a studio founded in 2011, but understandable given that its heritage is in the mobile space (and, more recently, in the world of PC gaming). Even so, with Kill Knight, the venerable Aussie outfit is throwing down a (medieval, but also eerily eldritch) gauntlet that showcases the talent they have in-house, and just how much they can deliver on a truly laser-focused vision. Because ultimately, that’s what’s so impressive about Kill Knight. This game is instantly iconic. From the nasty neon brutalist visual aesthetic and low poly character models through to the absolutely killer score and overall audio design, there is no mistaking it. The gameplay, too, takes elements that are familiar and reshapes them into something new and utterly compelling.

Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay Kill Knight is that this is not the kind of game I ordinarily play, and yet, I’m obsessed. I find it intensely challenging, but every day I get a little bit better. I master new skills, I find new lines, I anticipate more of what’s being thrown at me. How far will I go? It’s hard to say, but for the gaming savant the crowning achievement will be Sever mode, Kill Knight’s final coup de gras. This pits you against remixed versions of all five layers in one unbroken sequence. That’s going to be the preserve of the truly skilled and bull-headed, and it’s going to be interesting seeing just how far players can push such a gruelling challenge.

All of the above is just a roundabout way of saying that I’m expecting Kill Knight to absolutely pop off when it releases on October 3rd for PC, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox, so don’t sleep on this one. It’s a stone-cold killer.

Cam Shea is the former editor-in-chief of IGN AU, and now spends most of his time immersed in Australia’s craft beer scene.