Pixel Knight

Pixel Knight is a precision platformer drawn the way the 16-bit machines drew: the whole world is painted into a tiny low-resolution buffer and blown up to your screen a whole number of times, so every pixel stays a hard little square. One palette of thirty-two colours does the lot, from the dithered dusk over the courtyard to the lightning behind the tower. Torches flicker, banners ripple, mountains and castle walls slide past at three different speeds, and the knight's plume streams out behind him when he runs.

The controls are the point. Jumps are as tall as you hold them, you keep six frames of grace after you run off a ledge, and a jump pressed six frames early still fires the moment you land. Slide down a wall and kick off it, chain a three-hit sword combo on the ground, or hold down in the air for a thrust that pogos off slimes, candles and helmets. Slimes patrol, bats swoop, skeleton archers loose arrows down the corridor, and armoured guards raise a shield you cannot cut through: hit them from behind, or time a swing against their wind-up for a parry that leaves them wide open.

Fifteen stages run across three zones, four rooms and a boss each. Crumbling blocks give way under your boots, swinging blades sweep the floor of the chain room, keys open barred doors, and moving platforms carry you over spike pits. Three hearts, retries as often as you like from the last flag you lit, and a timer on every stage with your best kept in your browser. At the end of each zone waits something bigger: an armoured Gate Guardian with a great axe, a crowned slime king who splits when he lands, and a wraith on the tower roof that fades out and reappears behind you.