If you’ve played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it’s impossible to go through The Knightling without comparing the two. I’ve been doing it myself on countless occasions, repeatedly impressed at how indie studio Twirlbound was able to put its own spin on elements that are quintessentially Switch-era Zelda.
That said, while The Knightling’s Breath of the Wild inspirations are its most obvious, you don’t have to dig much deeper to be reminded of other games the Twirlbound team clearly pulled inspiration from when piecing together its stunning new action-adventure game. I noted in my review that I was getting some strong Spyro vibes from Clesseia, and it turns out there was a very good reason for that.
The Knightling Owes Just As Much To PS2 Platformers As It Does To Breath Of The Wild
Twirlbound
I asked The Knightling’s creative director, Matthijs van de Laar, whether Spyro was at the forefront of their mind when piecing together The Knightling’s world. They confirmed that the reason I’ve been getting strong purple dragon vibes was because Spyro, a cornerstone of the 3D platforming genre, was a key inspiration when developing The Knightling. But he wasn’t the only one from the early PlayStation era to play a role in Twirlbound’s creative process.
“Even more than the Zelda games, we were inspired by PS2-era platformers like Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Okami, and indeed, Spyro,” van de Laar revealed. “It plays a bit more like those games as well, because of the platforming main character and the way the world and quests are structured.”
Twirlbound
Although the Spyro-ness of The Knightling is what stood out to me, after it was highlighted by someone who worked on the game, I can see how it’s really a melting pot of influences from all those games. Not necessarily in specific ways that can be easily cherry-picked and assigned to each of those series, but in a way that blends them together seamlessly so you’re reminded of particular moments in platforming history throughout rather than specific games at specific times.
While The Knightling’s story and puzzles might give off Breath of the Wild, its world, look, and general vibe are very much pulled from an array of iconic PS2 platformers. The golden era of 3D platforming, some might say, was largely due to the games mentioned by van de Laar. The way The Knightling moves, his interactions with the world around him, and even the game’s color palette show it; if the goal was to make The Knightling feel like an open-world version of a top-tier PS2 platformer, then mission accomplished.
The Knightling Takes All Of That Platforming Inspiration And Puts It Into A Jam-Packed Open World
Twirlbound
What sets The Knightling apart from the platformers it pulls from is that open world. There’s nothing linear about it, and with side quests aplenty and tons to explore, that might sound off-putting, particularly for fans of 3D platformers.
The potential time sink when it comes to an open-world game versus a traditional platformer is one of the genre's biggest turn-offs. But The Knighling’s ability to blend those two worlds, potentially appealing to fans of both, is pretty remarkable, and something van de Laar and the Twirlbound team were conscious of throughout development.
Twirlbound
“It was always the aim to make a more compact but dense and varied open world, as we’re just a team of 15 people. None of us have time for the 50-100 hour RPGs anymore, so we wouldn’t want to make a game that big either.”
The end result is a game that’s as much an RPG as it is a 3D platformer: a perfect blend of two genres that proudly wears the iconic series that inspired it on its sleeve. Whether you’re a 3D platforming veteran or an RPG stalwart looking for an action-packed adventure that’s not going to consume the next three months of your life, there’s something in The Knightling for you.
