Recently remastered and released for free on Steam, Knytt Classic dusts off the classic freeware indie game by Nifflas, Knytt, for modern systems. When Knytt originally released, I downloaded it and tried to play, but the keyboard-only controls proved to be a huge impediment to my immersion. But when I saw that Chasm developer, Bit Kid, updated the title, complete with updated graphics, modern gamepad controls, and achievements, I knew I had to give it another go. Twenty years later, Knytt stands the test of time and shines in its new format.

Dropped in an alien land after your ship crashes, you must traverse the maze-like world in order to find all of the parts from your ship so that you can return back home. In order to make your way through the world, you're given a very small set of capabilities. You can't run or build momentum and you have a single jump that reaches the same height each time; however, you do have a wall jump that you can execute endlessly. This wall jump is your primary mechanism to make your way around the world and your only hope of salvation.

Despite your lack of abilities, the world never feels particularly threatening. There are save points everywhere, nearly on every screen, and there are a small selection of enemies that you need to watch out for. At times, you'll need to execute some precision platforming to avoid hazards like death pits, spikes, and water. More often though, you'll just be navigating from screen to screen to find your way to your ship parts. The map is broken up into rectangular segments with transitions at the edges to the next segment. If you see a pit in the floor, that's a sign of a path you can take, rather than a black hole that will cause death.

In order to give some direction to the player, you can hold a button when you're on the ground that will draw a line toward the next closest ship piece. As one might expect, it's not as simple as just following that line - it might give you the general direction to go, but the act of reaching there is where the real gameplay lies. It's not uncommon to follow the line directly to a dead end, but you'll often see alternate paths that hint at where to go in other parts of the screen. In these cases, you'll need to backtrack or go past your destination in order to find the path that leads you to your prize.

It was quite satisfying to explore the world, unlock all of the map, and find all of the ship pieces. There are also some other hidden goodies to be found, like unlocks for other modes and cheat codes hidden in the furthest reaches of the world. My only real frustration with exploration were the hidden paths. Despite certain tiles looking like walls or floors, some of them can be passed through, which will bring you to a new segment of the map. The final two ship pieces required finding a hidden path on the far left of the map, which charted a new path along the bottom of the map, complete with a warp. It took me a long time to uncover this and basically came down to luckily bumping into it after scouring the whole map. That said, I still cleared the whole game in around two hours, so this was not a huge problem.

But this knowledge played well into my subsequent playthrough. I found the Brutally Unfair unlock in my first play, which opens up an alternate quest (clearing the game also unlocks another quest). These extra quests take place on a modification of the base map - some tiles are moved around, pathways between screens are changed and more hazards are added to the world, transforming the experience. There's also a different color palette applied to make it clear you're in a different quest. I was able to dash through Brutally Unfair in about 45 minutes, right after clearing the main quest, despite all of the pieces and paths changing positions.

That second pass through the game definitely grew my admiration for it. Now that I understood the world of Knytt better, it was easier to find my way through and more enjoyable. I was also able to check out some of the other new quality-of-life upgrades, like the alternate display filters. Rather than the default Pixel view, I switched to the Smooth one, which gave the game a different aesthetic. While likely a simple shader effect, it's a nice addition to a free package. There's also other options to customize your experience - allowing you to scale the amount of music up or down, change controls, etc.

For the low, low price of free, you really cannot go wrong with Knytt Classic. It's worth a couple hours of your time to explore its world if you enjoy 2D platformers even a little bit. It may have taken me twenty years to finally play it, but I won't forget it any time soon.