Have you ever wanted to participate in a game of D&D but never wanted to gather a bunch of people for it? You are in luck, Knights of Pen and Paper +1 is right up your alley. Select from a wide range of favorites like Grandma, and the ever-popular Nerd character, thanks Big Bang Theory! Take a seat and prepare to roll the die for victory or death. The story is in the hands of the dungeon master, so you may get the girl in the end, or she may already have a boyfriend… you’ll just have to play and find out!
Knights of Pen and Paper +1 adapts the 8-bit gameplay style, and it suits the turn-based RPG experience. The characters you choose all have their own passive abilities. Grandma has a tendency to be extremely loud, so she has 100% threat generation and would make a perfect Warrior or Paladin. The classes themselves are standard fare for the RPG genre. Rogues and Mages are heavy hitters, Druids and Clerics are support, and Warriors and Paladins serve as tanks.
This title allows our eclectic cast of characters to level up, equip items, and forage for materials in the wild. You can accept quests by talking to the dungeon master, and they appear in the form of slaying beasts, collecting items, escorting, or rescuing people from danger. The main quests will take you through the story, and this is possibly the biggest letdown of the title. Anyone that is familiar with D&D knows that it is all about the randomness of the quest that keeps people coming back. Knights of Pen and Paper’s story focuses on a linear path, and every new game will end up being the same.
Our heroes roll the dice to travel and rest, but it has no uses other than that. Now I’m not asking for the game to be the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure, but I was looking for a more organic tabletop experience. It is a fun little title, but it’s actually an up-scaled version of an already released android game. It even has a pay-per-item system directly from the mobile version, and that is a no-no for a game that costs $9.99 out of the box.
I’ll admit that I had a good time playing this title for a couple of hours, but I don’t see myself continuously coming back to play it over other titles. Knights of Pen and Paper +1 receives three stars out of five from Geek Citadel. It’s an engaging mobile game, that lacks the mobility and ups the price for a simple port to Steam.
Jack Keane is a strange title that immediately assumes that you’ve played the first one. Jack wakes up in a filthy Chinese prison with an intricately decorated black man preaching to him about amulets. They are suddenly warped to a different dimension and the large man dies in both the dream and the real world. With the idea of an amulet in his mind, he must break out of prison and search for the mystery behind the glowing trinket and the dreamscape in his brain.
Jack’s adventure sends him around the world to learn how to fight villains and to overcome his inner fears. The premise of the game is to roam around the world looking for fighting strategies so that Jack can learn to beat an opponent. Now don’t get too excited, these pugilist opportunities are based on selecting the correct card before the time runs out. Jack may win his fights but he usually drifts off to slumber-land after completing a task. When Jack is unconscious, he will slip into a dream world where he must find a way to kill himself and wake up to a vision of a new treasure location.
Despite this being an adventure game at heart, there are even sections where the player has to platform. Jack can jump stiffly into the air and over objects and gaps to reach a destination. It’s cool that they wanted to add some variety, but it controls horribly with the mouse and keyboard. I actually feel like the entire game was trying to do too much, and it ended up with “Master of None” syndrome.
The adventure game elements like interesting puzzles and amusing dialogue are mediocre at best. The title is as funny as a baby kitten choking on sand in the middle of the Sahara desert. I could hear the jokes, but I didn’t feel the need to laugh, smile, or even care that they were being spoken. The puzzles will have Jack running back and forth completing fetch quests for various characters. I can at least say that the graphics are unique and remind me a lot of Zeno Clash. It’s just too bad that the main character looks like a piece of clay that melted in the microwave.
I really wanted to like this game, but it’s so mediocre that it’s actually bad. The voice acting is dull, the comedy is drab, and the animations are wooden. Jack Keane 2 receives two stars out of five from Geek Citadel. I have not played the first game, but I don’t think I ever want to.
These titles were supplied to us by the publishers!
