Nerd Mentality

Knytt and exploration

Posted March 3rd 2008 by Jordan Mammo.

In between work and school, it can be hard to find the time to play videogames sometimes. I've been trying to keep up with a play through Earthbound during this time (brilliant, by the way) and Professor Layton (pretty good, if strange) for the Nintendo DS. Since I am home for a week now and Earthbound has been left behind during this time, I've been playing a charming little game called Knytt.

In Knytt, you play as a little creature who's been abducted from his home by an alien spaceship, which happens to crash land on a foreign planet. The Knytt and the alien both survive, but the spaceship is in terrible shape. What do to? Why, find the pieces that will get it working again, of course!

That's about it when it comes to set-up and story, but Knytt is essentially about exploration and atmosphere. Sure, there are the parts you'll need in order to fly back home and finish the game, but collecting them almost feels secondary to taking in the game world, seeing all the sights and creatures, and discovering all the caverns and niches you can. The world of Knytt is vast and beautiful, with areas I won't be surprised to know that I'll probably never locate. The minimalist music and sound design, meanwhile, help in making you feel like the areas you travel through are really special.

Knytt is not a very difficult game. In fact, rarely will you come across creatures that can harm you, and even when you do, it's even rarer for those enemies to actively go after you. Most of the living things just seem to ignore you and go on with whatever they're doing. Falling into a pit doesn't kill you; it simply takes you deeper into the landscapes. When it comes to finding the ship parts, a beam of light can help point you in the general direction you need to head in, and the Knytt itself can climb pretty much anything it can reach and moves at such a brisk pace that it really helps keep what I feel is a rewarding experience from becoming a tiresome slog.

Some aspects of Knytt remind me of Shadow of the Colossus. The general outline of the story is laid out to you and then you're given free reign to explore a vast, giant world while searching. The beam of light. The quietness. More significantly, I like that both are essentially devoid of the trinkets that seem to bog down the exploration aspects of other games. Think about a game like Okami, which wants to reward players for every step they take and every small task they do. Titles like Knytt and Shadow stand in stark contrast to the idea of exploration for reward and seem to focus on exploration as reward itself.

Personally, I like the idea, though I can understand why others aren't as keen on it. Both can be well-done, I just think that lately "exploration for reward" has gone a bit off the deep end.

What I'd like to see more of in "exploration as reward," though, is an attempt to raise the level of interaction. Because that seems to be the big difference between these two ideas that I'm not even sure exist outside of my head. In Okami and Zelda, you are out in the world, actively manipulating parts of it. Blowing up walls, overturning rocks, and other things like that. In Knytt and Shadow of the Colossus, these aspects are there, but definitely not to the extent that they are in other adventure games. So, I think it'd be interesting to create a game built on the idea of exploration as reward that also allows you to interact with the environment in a way that we haven't been able to just yet. I'm not exactly sure what that would entail, but I think it's a game I'd like to try playing one day.

Anyway, I've gone on for a while now, so I'll start wrapping this up. I think Knytt is a pretty awesome game that nails what it wants to do, and I think you should try it out. I'm interested in what you guys think about both the game and exploration in gaming if you're still reading, so any comments about what you prefer or otherwise would be more than welcome.

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