nfinite runners are a genre that has sprung up mostly on mobile devices, easily using touch interface to manipulate specific, simple actions to get as far as possible. There's no denying that Jetpack Joyride is the clear trendsetter here, and an addictive one at that. However, what if you're tired of Barry Steakfries' antics? Enter Knightmare Tower.
In Knightmare Tower, you are tasked with saving princesses from a nefarious, danger-filled tower of death and misery, filled with monsters to slay, hazardous opposition and, oh yeah, a ton of freaking lava bubbling up behind you. How does one stay ahead of their untimely demise? A rocket and sheer momentum of your breakneck jet craft.
Blasting off at the speed of light requires a perfectly timed button press that will fling your rocket up at as fast a velocity as possible. As your rocket falls away, baddies will give chase, and each kill will propel you back up through ricochet action. I used the Hori GemPad EX 360 pad to play Knightmare Tower, and while the controls are mapped to the less than optimal analog stick rather than the D-Pad, it still works really well. A single button press to the A button will send your knight hurling at his foes with the business end of his sword, usually slicing them in half in one go.
Some enemies are armed with defensive countermeasures and others will shoot at you shmup-style. Your knight has a life gauge that, when depleted means game over, but life can also be recovered from health drops that appear from felled foes. Additional money and screen clearing bombs also appear regularly and need to be attacked to activate, along with the aforementioned health. Making it to certain intervals will free a princess from captivity, which also enables new pickups like bombs, money and items to appear randomly in future launches.
When you inevitably do die, your distance and gold per run will be tallied up and records recorded. There is a shop that sells additional armor, weapons, new rockets, special abilities and much more to aid in boosting your overall distance to rescue all of the princesses and get the best drop items. There are also missions just like Jetpack Joyride, in which certain conditions can be met for a bonus payout. Stuff like drink X potions, split X enemies, go X distance, launch X perfect times, etc. It's all particularly fun, if a bit on the simple side.
The visuals don't hold up especially well on the steam version though, since there is a bit of screen tearing as you move vertically, with no V-Sync option to fix it. This problem does not happen in the mobile version. Despite this, the Steam version of the game still works pretty well, but it's not really designed for extensive gameplay sessions. It seems to be a better fit on mobile platforms for about the same price, but if you want your Knightmare Tower on a huge screen, here you have it. With over 70 missions, 50 baddies, 10 princesses to rescue, boss fights, decent visual design and a surprisingly great soundtrack, Knightmare Tower is four bucks well-spent, no matter the platform.
