By 
Can’t say I’m too familiar with the developers over at Robot Invader but they sure delivered one helluva doozie in the Android Market with Wind-up Knight. I’ve always been a sucker for unique visual art style and great character design. Wind-up Knight hits all those marks and more.
The game is a 3D side-scrolling, run-and-gun platformer that puts you in the boots of the adorable Wind-up Knight who must run, jump, roll, and slash his way to rescue the princess from the evil Black Knight. While on the surface that sounds pretty basic (and with most run-and-gun games, it is) Wind-up Knight features the ability to outfit your character with upgradable weapons and equipment adding a little more depth to the classic gameplay. And you’re going to want all the help you can get if you hope to conquer the maddening 50+ soul-crushing levels.
Wind-up Knight also features an original soundtrack by Josh Whelchel and is one of those rare gems you don’t always come across in the Android Market. The difficulty could be a little much for some but I think most of you are going to love it. You can find Wind-up Knight for free in the Android Market.
Looks so hard. Also, will I be forced to run the whole time?
Super hard. And yes! You have to save the princess! Lol
I’m really liking this game, but I wanted to point out the big thing that’s bugging me about it so far. While it’s free to download and play through the first world, all of the subsequent worlds are locked, and they intend for you to use in-app payments to unlock them.
Technically you unlock them with the in-game currency, and if you play your cards right you can advance through the whole game without having to pay anything. However, in my case, I’ve S-ranked the whole first world (and preview level of the second), and am still 50 “notes” short of being able to move on, because I didn’t buy the cheapest equipment available when I was forced to buy a sword an shield.
It’s a great game, and I’d be happy to put money down for it, but the whole in-app payment thing (and the fact that it’s practically a requirement) is a big turn-off to me. I’d much rather have just put $5 or so down up front to be able to experience all of the content.
TL;DR: Be prepared to spend money to play this “free” game, or else buy the Practice Sword and/or Practice Shield, or you’ll get stuck after not too long. Oh yeah, and it can be really really hard, but it’s very fun!
There are very few apps that are truly free. Most come with ads and/or it’s just the first few levels that are free. I don’t mind paying a few bucks for games. Especially great ones like this. =)
I understand that and totally agree, this game is no doubt worth dropping a couple of bucks on. It’s just something about the way that it’s done that really rubs me the wrong way.
I’d prefer to not have to use in-app payments at all and instead just pay up front. But even with the in-app payments, I think it wouldn’t bug me so much if it was just a straight up matter of money for levels. The way it’s tied to the in-game currency, though, where you can *technically* advance without paying but only if you know beforehand what you need to do, just makes it feel sleezy to me. Especially with the whole “earn free notes” nonsense where you get paid for installing random other apps… that doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that a game of this caliber should be stooping to.
This looks really cool!
The problem I have with apps that have the “in App” paid upgrade is it’s way to easy for my Kid to add new levels and not even pay attention to the price. I ran into this with the Cordy and Dungeon Defenders games. Both are free to start but once you past the first few levels it prompts to pay to continue or pay to “buy credits” so you can buy stuff. My kid doesn’t really understand whats going on and I can’t force it to prompt for a password. All I want is a option to force it to prompt for the google account password whenever a purchase is made.
Clockwork Knight, anyone?
Came for this, leaving satisfied.
Wish it could be moved to SD