Ever wonder if you should maybe take a break from the more serious side of gaming and maybe play something a bit more relaxed? Worry not, Gambir Studio has you covered there with an interesting but casual take on game development. This little studio started small in 2016 in Indonesia, very small in the sense that they initially started with simpler games for mobile browsers. Yes, browser games are still a thing, and they’re still fun, deal with it.

With a few of their more notable games like Selera Nusantara: Chef Story, a cute but fun little Diner Dash type of release, and a whole slew of smaller releases on Itch.io, it was probably time to go for something bigger. This brings us to Gambit Studio’s latest and biggest creation, Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur, which releases on 5 October. Lucky for us, we had a chance to get an early sneak peak at their latest creation which turns out to be a mostly unforgiving roguelike, though things aren’t going quite as well as they should in Camelot. Buckle up and get ready to brave the strange lands ahead, it’s going to be one hell of a grind at first.

Your adventure into the grindy world of Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur starts with a cinematic where Merlin basically confesses to being the cause of what you’ll see to be the ruins of Camelot. However, he’ll also deny any blame falling on him and will instead try blaming the Knights for meddling with the Holy Grail. This already starts everything off on a very confusing foot, and things only become a lot more confusing when the Holy Grail unleashes a Void Giant.

After a lot of chaos that befell Camelot and the Knights (Including King Arthur) were cut down by the Void Giant, Merlin took it upon himself to try and send the Giant back to where it came from, though this didn’t quite work out as Merlin had planned. Camelot ended up being thrown into the Astral Dimension, where the Giant came from, luckily, he had enough power to revive King Arthur in hopes of saving Camelot. Though in itself, it is no simple task, and you’ll find out quite quickly just how much of a grind Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur can be for a minimal reward at first.

The controls for Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur are relatively straightforward for a top-down game, aside from simple movement controls, you’ll also have to become best friends with your dodge roll. Dodging is great for getting around faster but also for preserving what little HP you have. In the right hands and with some good timing, you can literally dodge through any attack as it happens. However, this doesn’t mean you can breeze through the challenges ahead of you by just dodging, you’ll need to do a bit of damage too. After all, you, as King Arthur, have a goal that involves taking down several Giants, and you’ll need weapons and skills from your fallen Knights to do it.

Once you reach Camelot, you’ll get to have a chat with the spirits of two of your fallen Knights who now live in stone statues, and you learn that you can use their skills and weapons to replace your broken Excalibur. This is where things become somewhat more interesting in Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur, you’ll be limited on options at first since you only have two Knights to choose from. The Knights Being Lancelot, whose weapon and ability aim to be more balanced and melee range while focusing on building damage quickly. Then we have Bors, who focuses on ranged attacks and fighting from a safe distance. While these options are nice, the easier choice for the sake of survival at first would be Bors’ weapons, as they’ll keep you out of danger for longer, and you’ll have more mobility as well.

So, options are nice, but they’re limited at first. Worry not, after an absolute slog of a grind and a whole lot of struggling, you’ll eventually be able to restore more statues to unlock more weapons and abilities. Unfortunately, this is far from easy and as accessible as it could be, leaving you with little to no reward in the early stages of Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur. The ability to progress and, at the very least, get something to help your progress is key to keeping any roguelike interesting, this is where Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur falls flat because while you can gain experience on each run for the Knights you’re using, you’ll still need a fair amount of gold for those upgrades and even then…. The upgrades are negligible at best—more on this real soon.

As you’ll soon realize, Camelot is only a shell of its former glory, and it’s missing a lot of its residents and polish. This is where you come in with a secondary task that still forms part of the main quest to find and bring them back, not just for the sake of being the hero but also to have further options for gold income, upgrades, and added bonuses to make life in Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur just a bit easier. Sadly, this is where things become a bit more complicated and possibly grindy because every kingdom needs a builder, and yours are called The Regetin.

The Regetin are an industrious lot of beings left behind by what is known in-game as The Architect, the in-game version of God. The Regetin can make just about any building material appear out of thin air, but they also need gold and diamonds to repair Camelot. As for the grindy part of their work, you’ll need to find more than one, and even then, the work they can do is tied to your Castle Level and the other NPCs you find on your journey. Unfortunately, this also circles around because it looks like you’ll need to finish entire runs just to have a chance at finding more Regetin and NPCs. Finishing the entire run means defeating the Void Giant too… Yes, it’s that kind of slog to deal with.

Let’s say you hypothetically had the patience to spend hours just grinding for minimal rewards through weapon upgrades and learning the strategies for each Giant, and you’ve finally defeated the Void Giant. Congrats, you’ve made your people proud and unlocked the possibility of finding maybe one or two more NPCs and even the right materials to restore other Knights, but your struggle isn’t over yet. There are still many other residents of Camelot to find and a whole story to uncover, one involving Merlin keeping secrets from you. This whole ‘carrot and stick’ story dynamic works well and rewards you well enough by keeping you interested, but it doesn’t work at all if the carrot is literally just the leafy end that nobody eats at first. To make matters worse, you’ll likely just end up putting the game aside, never wanting to play it again if you had to go through that much work for so little payout. Some major Quality-Of-Life changes are desperately needed here.

Speaking of other residents, this is where things take a fun turn in Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur when you discover NPCs like Lord Arden, who will set up a gem shop in Camelot for you. Gems are just the tip of an interesting and rewarding iceberg, you’ll have two slots in which to put the gems you buy, and these can give you much-needed buffs for your runs going forward. The buffs range from extra movement speed all the way to raw weapon damage, but it gets even better because it looks like your gems level up passively as well. This makes their effects even stronger, giving you a helpful edge while easing the struggle.

This edge gets even more added on when you eventually find the Holy Knight and Delphine. These two NPCs make the biggest difference in Arthur’s raw power and overall stats like HP, Spell Damage, and Movement Speed. Starting off with Galahad, the Holy Knight, his role in your journey involves a small fee of diamonds to give you permanent stat boosts. Then we have Delphene, the Flower Maiden, her role isn’t as major, but she’ll give you a flower at the start of each run that will give you a random buff to one of your stats. Having these two together makes progressing through Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur a lot easier and more rewarding because these are types of upgrades and boosts you’d need in the long run.

Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur does come with a different side, this side entails the fact that you’ll need gold for just about everything from building repairs to upgrades, gold makes the world go round, after all. Getting gold on the run is as easy as mowing down any monster that stands in your way and breaking anything that can be broken; however, there is another way as well. Back at Camelot, you’ll eventually get to meet the Huntress, who will give you research tasks. These tasks are pretty simple and just involve a lot of killing, finishing the task will net you a nice amount of gold that you can then funnel into other things.

With so much to do back at Camelot, you’d expect just as much going on in the lands outside. Unfortunately, while the land outside is nice and has a good variety at first, it gets a little boring and even monotonous after a while. The land outside of Camelot in Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur is comprised of 3 different biomes, and each biome has 2 levels. These biomes are called Brochalant Forest, a lush forest-type biome with a variety of nature-based enemies like living rocks, mushrooms, and insects. Sarrache Desert, a dry and arid land with a strange mix of ancient and cactus-based enemies. And lastly, Suidhe Volcano, you are not prepared for the amount of fire flying around and at you. However, if you do manage to defeat the Giants at the second stage of each Biome, you’ll have a chance to challenge the Void Giant in the Void.

It’s not just fighting for your life and challenging Giants during a run, aside from finding other NPCs to send back to Camelot, you’ll also find a few others on your journey that can help you along the way. The most important one is the Merchant; this strange person is somehow always there when you need him, and he’ll usually have a few items on sale that will give you passive bonuses. However, he doesn’t accept gold, the only currency he’ll accept is purple orbs that drop from just about any enemy creatures you cut down. This isn’t as easy to come by as you’d think, especially when items cost 100-500 orbs, and you can only get about 100-200 per stage. You’ll need to be careful with what you spend your orbs on to make the most of your run.

Now, you don’t have to rely solely on the Merchant for passive bonuses on each run. In true Roguelike fashion, Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur will also give you another interesting twist in passive buffs, these come in the form of statues and stone copies of the round table. This adds an interesting layer to the gameplay because the Round Tables will give you general buffs with the chance of getting one that will double the effect for your weapon, while the statues are specifically aimed at your chosen weapon and ability. Reaching one of these will give you 3 options to choose from as a reward, this makes life a bit more random, but it also makes it possible to build your own playstyle with some flexibility in mind.

There is one other part to your runs to keep in mind that will make your runs a lot easier or harder, it just depends on how you look at it. The first one being the Pan Piper, this strange person will offer you a challenge that you need to survive through for a fat gold payout and possibly the chance to get more information about the story at hand. Then there’s The Oasis, you might as well call it a safe zone where you can quickly heal up before or after a Giant fight. However, you’ll need to use it strategically to make the most of it because you only use the Oasis once per stage. Lastly, we have the ever-ominous Morgana Le Fay, she’ll typically give you a balance between a blessing and a curse. For instance – Enemies in the forest will have 50% more health, but you deal 10% more damage. It’s a little give and take that comes completely at random, so there is some risk involved, think you’re brave enough?

On the visual front, Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur relies heavily on a mix of old cartoon drawing styles. It means that objects that don’t need a lot of animation will instead get a lot more detail, while objects that need to move around or need more animation will, in turn, have less detail and feature a more cartoonish look. This does add a nice contrast between what’s going on and makes it so you never lose track of Arthur or anything else around you. While this art style does give the game a more 3D feel to it, it also leans more towards 2D as well, but it can’t quite be called 2.5D either. The unique enemy, boss, and Giant designs for each biome add a nice touch to the game as a whole, they can become a bit drawn out when you need to spend an unholy amount of time just grinding, and they start to lose their unique appeal. Adding a bit more variety and mixing things up can help to keep each run fresh and maybe even give the game as a whole some longevity.

The one thing you’ll notice right from the start with Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur is the soundtrack, focusing heavily on calm instrumental music, it builds a false sense of security that soon gets squashed by how the story unfolds. The background music does take a subtle shift to become a bit faster during a fight, but it still adds to the atmosphere as a whole. While Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur is mostly voiced, it seems that some parts of the dialogues aren’t voiced at all, which can be a bit weird when things suddenly go quiet, and you have to read the text in the middle of a conversation. However, even though the voice acting is patchy, it’s still brilliantly done where it is.

Overall, Knight Vs Giant: The Broken Excalibur has quite a few flaws and needs some serious polish to be classified as a good Roguelike. The biggest flaw at hand is the seemingly endless grind for almost no reward in the early stages and the game’s desperate need for some quality-of-life fixes, all this aside, you’ll be treated to a strange and intriguing story that will have you coming back for more. Sadly, the game needs more polish to make it worthwhile to keep coming back to the story just for the sake of seeing what happens to Camelot in the end.

Jay Claassen (@R3GR3T_3NVY)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed