KUNAI Review: A Swing, a Slide, and a Miss
When a player first hops into Kunai, the sleek style, solid movement, and slashing sword instantly show how much this game could offer. The story starts out strong and the excitement of the world filled with machines are fairly engaging. However, a number of the design choices of this game do take away from the experience as a whole.
Let’s talk about the gameplay, probably the main reason to play the game, and break it down into a couple of sections. First and most important is mobility. The game feels great to traverse for the most part. Movement is quick but never floaty, and the different ways to move help you climb and swing from place to place, giving the game an easier and more interesting way to explore, especially vertically. Some of the environmentally interactions with movement were a little odd though. Climbing on vines, jumping and sliding on walls and other things felt unintuitive and unnatural which really stopped the flow and progression every once in a while.
The next thing to address in these games would be how to kill enemies. With a few ways to approach killing enemies, pretty standard attacks and other things, there isn’t much to say here. However, how they die is another story. My weapons and gear never seemed to do much to the opponents. I could only rush at them swinging, hoping I would hit them first, and often enough before they fought back or obliterated me with a string of bullets. Yes, some acrobatics and maneuvers help to not get hit by enemies, but I never felt like a hero or cool video game character when actually fighting enemies.
Following that, let’s talk about enemy and boss types. There are a solid variety of enemies, but I was never taught or really given the chance on how to use my abilities well in order to kill enemies. I have been playing games all my life, and am often annoyed at tutorials or guiding pop-ups, but I didn’t realize how helpful they are and how much I missed them until I played this game. Boss fights were fun and fell under most standard ideas and staples. There were some unique bosses and mechanics, but nothing overwhelmingly original.
The last part about gameplay would be the set-up/map. “Metroidvania” style games aren’t meant to hold your hand. They are tough and challenging, but I would have liked at least a little bit more guidance and help instead of wandering around aimlessly until I talked to the correct dead robot that I might pass by on accident in order to progress the story. The level layouts were okay, but getting the map to know where you were and find real progression took much longer than I found enjoyable or reasonable, it was a lot of blind walking in very similarly looking rooms/areas.
Outside of gameplay, we have the actual look of the game. In movement or sitting still, this game has a unique aesthetic and design. The contrasting colors and shades of blue, red, and gray looked great at first, but became somewhat dull and became somewhat of a hindrance to optimal gameplay. I would have enjoyed more vibrant colors in the game, more powerful contrasts and maybe better usage of the colors so I could see myself and enemies and clearly see where I could go and with what things I could Interact.
Overall, Kunai is a fine game to play. It will for sure scratch the itch for harder core gamers and those in particular who like side-scrolling platformers. But some of the choices in design, enemy interaction, and general progression hold it back from being a great game.
