Gryphon Knight Epic - A Fantasy Take on the Shmup Genre

Join Sir Oliver on His Epic Quest to Save a Kingdom

Nowadays successful indie games find their way onto the Nintendo Switch. I'm no switch owner myself, but there's an air of legitimacy that comes with the platform. Games like Gryphon Knight Epic are a case to be made for ambitious indie projects and just how they can become a shining example of small-studio success. Gryphon Knight Epic didn't rise to the heights of other indie smash hits, but that doesn't mean that it should be overlooked, as you'll see, there's some serious value in this artfully crafted adventure game. 

The game starts with a pretty typical premise that many fantasy stories end on. A group of warriors from across the land slay an evil dragon and rescue the princess. Everybody gets a magical weapon and their share of loot, save for Sir Oliver, who was so busy wooing the princes that he only got an innocuous amulet. It's not like Oliver was shortchanged in the epic tale, he marries the princess and lives happily ever after, for a while. Years later and Oliver lives as an aging knight with his wife, baby and trusty griffin. On a fateful trip to the grocer, Oliver learns that his amulet has separated him from his own evil self and that the rest of the magical weapons have corrupted their users. Sir Oliver must liberate the six kingdoms and collect the magical weapons to restore oder to the land. That's a lot of indie pixel art and cool things to shoot at. 

Shmup games often reward the player with new backdrops, sprites and music to reward the player for their progress. Gryphon Knight Epic features six separate kingdoms so that's a lot of indie pixel art and fantasy design to deliver. Each kingdom has it's own locale, mobs, bosses and even sub-bosses. It's a huge benefit that the game didn't re-use or recycle any sprites or backdrops, instead it delivers with a load of fantasy pixel art and concepts. From Nordic mountain tops to an a underground pirate's lair, there's so much variety and detail to every stage and it's corresponding mobs that it's like several games in one. Other shmups sometimes recycle art assets throughout the game to save resources, but not here, it's all fresh and novel, A good thing considering that Gryphon Knight Epic lives up to it's "epic" moniker with a three hour campaign that sets it apart from the typical cabinet style shmups. 

There's the risk of becoming one of the typical sideways shmups because the core of Gryphon Knight's gameplay is a shmup, so not only the presentation, but the execution needs to differ, lest this become another typical bullet-hell affair. Don't be mistaken, this isn't Super-Gryphon-type by any means. The game does autoscroll, but in multiple directions even letting Sir Oliver steer his griffin 180 degrees and backtrack through segments of the stages, this allows players to change the screen's movement and set the pace of the game. Oliver will slowly ascend and descend mountains and towers too, avoiding all kinds of obstacles and even solving puzzles. The slower pace to the movement and camera tracking stifle the bullet hell element, but allow the fantasy theme to breathe. A purposeful choice to making an entry that plays as unique as it looks. 

Both fantasy and shmup games have a shop feature, Gryphon Knight Epic is no different. Ye olde shoppe sells the fantasy flavored consumables and upgrades that anyone on an epic quest would need. Helper drones are now squires and all of the six weapons can be upgraded after unlocking them. You'll need some healing potions and consumables too, these will be all manner of useful potions to buy before heading out on the next adventure. Where other games would punish you for picking the wrong weapons and items, Gryphon Knight differs by letting players pick the right weapon, potions and even squires during the action. It's less like choosing a ship type in a shmup and more like having an RPG style inventory to sift through. This kind of system leans more toward the action rpg and away from the bullet-hell realm, to Gryphon Knight's benefit. 

Gryphon Knight Epic really is an epic. On knight difficulty it took me three hours to beat the entire game with minimal retries. Moving from one fantasy stage to another and seeing all kinds of pixel fantasy art was a real treat, compounded by the slower speed and sub-bullet hell level of on screen projectiles. Seeing how every boss had succumbed to their weapons appeal to their dark side was an interesting concept and the idea of Sir Oliver suppressing his own evil self and not noticing until he was separated from it. The story is a lot deeper than most shmups are, but that's one of Gryphon Knight Epic's strong points.