Ember Knights is a very good and well-balanced Indie game that surprised me. It was recommended by a friend, and I enjoyed it immediately.

You play as a little flaming Knight, that needs to save the world by defeating the evil sorcerer Praxis. You battle through four different worlds and eventually defeat Praxis.

The whole concept of Ember Knights is to start a ”run” trough the rift, in which you travel through different worlds and levels. Throughout the levels, you acquire gold, upgrades, new skills, ember (main currency of the game) and stat upgrades.

If you die, or when you complete the worlds and defeated Praxis, you are teleported back to the main world hub. You can then spend your collected ember on permanent character upgrades.

Every time you come out of the rift, something has been unlocked, and you restore a piece of the Ember Tree. New weapons are also unlocked every time and each of these weapons have a unique playstyle. You can choose melee weapons, ranged weapons, magic and heavy (but slow) weapons. The experimentation is really fun.

Ember Knights looks very nice and colorful. It has a unique art style, and the animations are fluent. The 2D and 3D effects are very well rendered.

The music is epic and enhance the experience. The Boss music is also a work of art.

When talking controls, this game plays fluent. The mechanics are simple to understand and contains unique double features when holding down buttons, like a charged attack.

My only problem with the game is that everything goes a little too fast sometimes. You enter a level, enemies spawn all around you, and you, the enemies and your co-op partner start spamming attacks, magic and destruction all around you. Sometimes I just completely lose sight of my character.

Unlike games as The Binding of Isaac, which also features “one time runs”, Ember Knights gives purpose to the repetitive nature. Every run you unlock a new merchant, NPC, weapon, skill, or game mode. Eventually, you become very powerful and can attempt runs on higher difficulty with modifiers enabled that make it even more challenging.

Every run seems to go a little better because of the improved stats and you see your progress every time you attempt the run again.

In the end, I think Ember Knights is a great game. It is also one of those games that you can pick up any time during a casual setting with friends.

Definitely recommend this game.