Developer: DevilishGames, Spherical Pixel, S.L., Hidden Trap, Noobology
Publisher: DevilishGames, Spherical Pixel, S.L., Hidden Trap
Platform: PC, Switch, Mac, Linux
Tested on: Switch
King Lucas (Switch) – Review
As we already did a review of King Lucas in 2016 for PC, this is the review for the Switch as it got its own release, as many (older) PC games get ported and developed for the Switch now. It’s something people enjoy when these games are good as they really would have enjoyed playing such games on the go in the first place. Something that seemed out of reach till the release of the Switch.
Story
In King Lucas, you get to play as a young knight whose face and name you get to adapt to fit your taste. You cross paths with a king who’s presumably named Lucas with an amazingly weird castle. This castle is subject to transitions, where every room keeps changing location, which is a major problem for many, as the king loses a lot of things inside. Well, things, his daughters mainly actually. He asks you to find one of his princesses, and before you know it, he asks you to find another, or a dog, or maybe something else. You quickly find yourself in a pickle as the weird inhabitants of the castle all seem way more insane than you are for accepting such quests.
Graphics
The graphics of King Lucas are a bit reminiscent of games in the late ’90s or early 2000s. With a combination of 2D gameplay and rather simplistic 3D models, it’s not a game that will instantly wow you of your feet. But this, in a way, actually fits the game nicely. Since the game is colorful and in possession of rather straight-forward and easy gameplay, the game quickly tends to target a somewhat younger audience. There’s a good chance that this game is most appealing to those between six and fourteen years of age.
Sound
A lot of the sound seems synthesized on a classic piano keyboard. The tracks you go through have something adventurous or something medieval to them, and they flawlessly merge in each other while playing. Then, of course, there’s also your classic picking-up-a-coin-sound and such, and it all works rather well, but still has somewhat of a cheap taste to it which, again, rather fits a younger audience in its own way.
Gameplay
So, when you get tasked by the king with finding something in the castle, you find yourself in Metroidvania-like rooms that keep changing depending on your objective and deaths. You start out on a grid that’s rather small, so it’s not that difficult to find your goal objective. But after a little while, the number of rooms actually keep increasing, where eventually you will have to find your way through over a thousand different rooms to get to the right one. This seems like a daunting task, and to be honest, it is. More than daunting though, there are moments between your first and your last mission that feel boring. On the PC versions, there was also multiplayer support, but on the Switch, it seems like this option is taken out as we didn’t find any information about it or an option in the menu.
King Lucas has two gameplay elements. Platforming, where you have to avoid lava and spikes, and combat. The platforming feels rather natural and there’s nothing wrong with it, aside from the lack of variating traps. To fight, you start out with a small dagger that requires you to stand at a ridiculously short distance before you actually hit something. When you are at the right range, you just smash the combat button. If your health bar drops, you die and have to start over again unless you find a checkpoint in one of the smashable barrels that drop items or a witch that sells you items. To avoid dying quickly, you can buy better weapons for more attack range and damage, shields that protect you for a set amount of hits, and even some items that help you explore the castle with less danger or a better sense of direction towards your goal.
That being said, if you fail too much, you will have little money left to buy such helpful upgrades. If you don’t have such upgrades, you are stuck with your dagger as other weapons are troubled by durability loss, which means they only have a set amount of hits before they break. This makes it less easy to figure out what to spend your money on as you only get bigger amounts as a reward for completing quests. It’s a bit of balance that makes up slightly for the boring, richness-depending combat. However, the game’s biggest flaw is perhaps the uninspired, single-minded quests that you get. There are also some smaller quests to be done, such as killing 10 rats for a specific person in the castle, but it doesn’t make up for you running around from room to room to find a single person without anything changing but the order of rooms.
Conclusion
King Lucas is a fun game, especially for a younger audience. It’s a nice way of introducing the Metroidvania genre to the younger ones. For older players, the poor combat and tedious search for a single goal might quickly cause you to give up on playing any further, yet the game offers some amusement for all ages in the end with easy-accessible platforming and adventure.
King Lucas (Switch) - Review,
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