Nonstop Knight Review

I’ve not seen many dungeon crawlers on mobile platforms, no decent ones anyway. The ability to control movement, aiming, attacks, spells and potions is something not easily achieved with a pair of greasy thumbs, but Flare Games have put a neat little twist on this genre and made it work very well.

In this game, your little knight is literally non stop. From the moment you start the game, off he goes slashing and bashing his way through the levels. Even when you’re not playing the game, he’s still hacking away in the background! When you return he’ll let you know how much gold he’s collected and how far he’s got. You may get a notification from the game saying he’s reached a boss and can’t continue, as you have to help him for those parts.

The fact the game keeps going is quite a cool idea, I wasn’t sure at first but once I finished doing the initial micromanaging and I found it’s a game which isn’t for playing constantly, it’s one to see how far you can get. You can easily pick it up for 5 minutes, check out your loot, fight a few bosses then put it away again.

The graphics reminded me of Torchlight, quite cartoony and colourful and I really like it. The game runs smoothly, I haven’t found any bugs or glitches either. There is an initial tutorial which takes you through the first few steps and then you’re on your own.

You can’t control where he goes, or who he attacks next, your job is to keep him alive while he battles thousands of minions. As he progresses, he will collect loot of various types, however gold is the key here, it’s your way of upgrading the three gear items he has – weapon, armour or cloak.

So to help him on his way, there are a number of skills you’re able to use. These are triggered by the three buttons at the bottom. As you level up you’ll unlock more skills, and different perks to each of those skills. Your knight won’t use these on his own though, only you can use them. As mentioned he won’t attack a boss without your help as he may not be strong enough. Defeating bosses is where you get the new gear, then you can choose to keep or sell it and level it up. The later level bosses will drop gear with more than one perk then you’ll need to manage what suits and what doesn’t.

During the game he’ll collect gems and tokens too. Gems can be used to re-roll perks on weapons, or to upgrade it to current level instead of using gold. You can also use them for buying gold or other items in the inventory.

Tokens will allow you to permanently upgrade your knight with bonuses, such as 100% armour. These are typically collected when you ascend. Ascending puts you back at the beginning, removes all gear and takes away your gold but you keep your level and skills. It is a form of iterative gaming, where you get so far then become too weak to continue, but if you restart with a more powerful character you’ll get further next time. I’m unsure how many levels there are, but I can see this keeping me occupied for quite some time!

Adverts. Yes this is a free to play game, and you’re able to pay real money for in game gems to help you on your way. However in most free to play games I’ve found the adverts are a little bit intrusive, like an image popping up from nowhere just when you’re able to click a button, sending you off in an advert loop in your browser! I like how the adverts appear in this game though. Periodically you’ll find a chest which will say ‘Hey watch this video and I’ll give you something nice!’ Don’t watch it, don’t get the goodie, it’s up to you.

SUMMARY

Nonstop Knight is a perfect little offline single player game which can either be played actively, casting skills and levelling quicker, or casually, letting your knight amass gold in the background until you’re ready. The balance of difficulty is really good, the graphics are exactly what this game needs, but what wins it for a free to play game, is how the adverts are managed.