Kill Knight is more admirable than it is fun

Kill Knight is a game designed for a very specific audience. Everyone else should ignore it, and live a happier life without it.

That audience is those with a hyperfocus on difficult, aggravating, and single-minded experiences. This bullet-hell-roguelike shooter is a tough, uncompromising experience that is both well-designed and so thoroughly inaccessible that it hurts the big picture.

Superficially, Kill Knight does everything right. The controls are tight, the levels are engaging and smartly designed, and every aspect works together. If you only look at the numbers, the content seems sparse, until you realize how long it takes to beat a single level. Let alone complete the challenges to unlock new gear.

Each level starts the same and spirals into chaotic madness before the end. It's part Asteroids and old-school top-down shooters, with a hefty dose of PS1 classics like Reloaded thrown in for good measure. Players equip themselves with base weapons, a heavy cannon armed with special powers, armor, and skill. As you progress through challenges, you unlock more of each, which you are free to mix and match as you please. Part of the fun is finding the right combinations that work for you. The problem is that unlocking the gear takes quite a while, and getting to a point where you can finally figure out what works for you might come too late for some. Especially those turned off by the difficulty.

It's beyond the basics where Kill Knight stumbles. Or maybe it doesn't. This is, after all, a game for one audience, and one audience alone. It doesn't court anyone else. So, in that sense, Kill Knight is a rampant success. It doesn't help the player in any way, it doesn't provide a learning curve. It does the bare minimum with accessibility, to the point that I can't play it because of how hard it is to tell enemies, pick-ups, and dangers apart.

And yet, for those who can and want to engage with a game on this level, Kill Knight is an unqualified triumph. A hard-as-nails bullet hell that challenges at every level. Its beauty is in the repetition and beating your best time on every single run.

There's no story or greater meaning to all of this. Instead, it's a purely atmospheric dive into a hellscape full of carnage. Though the levels only take around six minutes to complete – if you can complete them in the first place – each run feels like an epic adventure of your making.

It's here that I can't fault Kill Knight for what it is, simply because it's not for me. By all accounts, Kill Knight is a visceral and supremely confident outing that succeeds in its goals. It doesn't have to be for everyone, just as long as fans and developers understand how limiting their specific needs are. If you're not one for punishment and aggravation, you won't enjoy Kill Knight. If you have difficulties in parsing out details in fast-paced shooters, Kill Knight isn't for you.

There's a myriad of reasons why I wouldn't recommend Kill Knight for most of my friends, and only a few why I would. But herein lies the beauty of it: Kill Knight does the things right that this particular audience wants, and in doing so it cements itself as one of the best games in its genre.

Just as long as you're in that very small subset of gamers who like that kind of thing.