Box Knight is a mash-up of an RPG and beat ’em up with just a smidge of roguelike elements set in the corporate world. You’re an office drone, but as soon as 5 pm hits, you become the title character. The Box Knight seeks to free the office from a toxicity that has actually transformed co-workers into various goblins. Also, for some reason, there is a lot of goblin hog in this game. Like an absurd amount. I suppose that does help set the tone that this is a pretty light and funny game rather than some scathing take on corporate America, so c’est la vie.
The Story
The game kicks off with an animated intro explaining how the office has fallen. I don’t know exactly how it works other than the rule of “it’s a game, relax,” but all of the annoying traits of co-workers started to manifest into actual monsters. The box knights, an order of folks that cobbled together weapons from office supplies, kept the monsters at bay, but their numbers dwindled. You meet with Jeff, the almighty Janitor, in a janitor’s closet converted into some sort of holy order and start your quest to become powerful enough to fight the CEO.
You first pledge yourself to one of the legendary Gods and Goddesses of yore. The descriptions gave me a chuckle because you’ve got ARTMEITRA THE SOOTHING (aka Lauren from Marketing). If you pledge to her, you get the power of lightning. Your other options are digital marketing (ice powers) and finance (fire powers). Unfortunately, when you choose one, you are locked into that power for that character. From there you start to battle your way through the office to hopefully take down the CEO. Every four deaths is treated like a monthly report, and you get a reward at the end of the month.
The Gameplay Kinda Feels like the 9 to 5 Grind
The first hour or two of Box Knight felt a little rough for me. It’s your standard roguelike loop of fighting waves of enemies. Depending on how much you fill the buzz meter determines how many reels are available for a slot machine that gives you buffs. Until you get a lot of stat buffs, the game feels like a slog. You end up going through the same series of rooms, battling the same enemies, with the same music track looping. You get currency and XP after each run to unlock new equipment or your standard tier of permanent buffs. Progression is fairly paint-by-the-numbers.
Thankfully, each area has some enemy variety; once you get further along, all of the enemies you encounter can now spawn in any room. The first boss felt like it was just a damage sponge with an unfair homing attack. You also have to defeat all of the mobs before you can damage it. After my failed runs got into the double digits, I got pretty close to quitting. The game failed to mention you can use your execute attack (which one-shots regular enemies) to do massive damage. If the team made progression go just a bit quicker, that’d make the first part a lot more fun. The double-edged sword is that by the end of my run, I was having framerate issues because I was summoning all of the elements with every hit, jump, and dodge.
I defeated the CEO, so I assumed the game was over. You end up finding out the original Box Knight has turned evil, but you’re not powerful enough to face him yet. So you end up having to go through the same areas again, but this time there are new enemies and the bosses are switched up a little.
Overall Thoughts
Like I’d mentioned before, that first hour or two of the game can be pretty rough. I could see players getting turned off because everything gets pretty repetitive until you defeat the first boss. If you’re able to stick it out past that point, the game gets to be pretty fun. I highly recommend investing in the upgrades to your damage, evade, and buzz meter. You build up the buzz meter by attacking enemies, and when it’s full, you can unleash a one-hit kill. The downside of the execution attack is that when you’re surrounded by mobs, it doesn’t prioritize them, so I’d waste it on one of the minions and not the enemy spawning them.
There’s a horde mode you can unlock, but beyond that, once you’ve beaten all of the bosses, that’s pretty much a wrap. There isn’t a huge difference in changing pledges. The skill trees feel more like you’re just unlocking things rather than committing to an actual build or playstyle. You do get three weapons, but they play roughly the same.
The animation and the humor definitely make up for some of the shortcomings. All of the art reminds me of a more polished Adult Swim game (complimentary). It’s pretty funny to see all of the monsters broken down into different toxic archetypes like a gossiper, a toady, etc. They should probably add in something like the person that microwaves fish in the break room. Coming from someone who worked a few stints in corporate America, there’s also something satisfying and almost primal about being able to beat up your toxic boss.
The combat is fun, but it needs just a smidge more polishing. Once you’re buffed up, you can chain together all sorts of one-hit kills on enemy after enemy. The dodge mechanics are a bit wonky; there’s one particular enemy where you have to dodge and attack them from behind, but there’s no real indicator on if you’re dodging, so you can get ganged up on easily.
Box Knight is available now on Steam. It’s normally $14.99, but until September 8th it will have a 15 percent discount. It plays just fine with a controller; I used my Xbox controller for this review.
Box Knight
14.99
Pros
- The animation is great
- The humor is pretty good especially the enemy descriptions
Cons
- The first hour is brutal, I can see people tapping out
- Combat could be more fluid
- There's no real builds, just perks to unlock
