Take It For A Spin: Spiral Knights
Ooh, Spiral Knights is pretty good. It's the upcoming free-to-play hack'n'slash MMOG from Three Rings, developers of the now-ancient Puzzle Pirates (and also currently working on the Doctor Who online game). No release date on Spiral Knights yet Spiral Knights will be out on April 4th, and the preview build just devoured a not-insignificant chunk of my afternoon without a care in the world. "How rude!" I cried, as I gunned another fox to death with a cool series of clicks. Trailer and thoughts after the jump.
In short, it's a perfectly ordinary java-powered ultra-light RPG executed with plenty of heart and class. Your new character first crash lands on Spiral Island in an escape pod, and the image you see above is of the first camp you reach, where some of your people have dragged those escape pods together for shelter.
The combat's clean, the loot-collecting is satisfying and the heavy emphasis on co-op would, I'm sure, be lovely if I'd just managed to find anyone else in my build. I'll do another post about this when it goes live, but for now- yeah. Looks good. One clever mechanic is that while a run through a level will always net you plenty of coins and alchemical components, the "Heat" you collect that levels up your weapons only takes effect at the end of a level, and you lose it if you die. So you'll always come away with something, but there's always tension. Ooh, those fiendish developers. I'll definitely be posting about this when it gets released.
