Sir Lovelot [Xbox]
Pixel Games’ Sir Lovelot follows the titular character on his quest to find love, rescuing (and shacking up with) many a damsel on his way. Done in a 2D-platforming style, it captures the same essence as many before it, with an element of Super Meat Boy mixed in - albeit far more relaxed. In order to woo each of your admirers, you must collect each level’s gift, before climbing up the Maiden’s Tower via her long hair - like a more ‘adult’ Rapunzel, with the gift-lists growing larger with each new area.
Levels get progressively harder as you go, particularly if you’re looking to complete all of the tasks within each level. Level completion is tied to gaining the gift for your lover (whether that is a flower, or jewellery, etc.), as well as optional objectives such as completing the level with less than a certain number of deaths, collecting all of the treasure, and finding all of the secret golden eggs guarded by geese hidden within the walls - so always be on the lookout! Checking all of the blank sections of wall is key whilst playing through the game - it doesn’t add much time to your overall time spent in a level to brush up against the walls you’re already passing anyway, and it’ll save you a lot of backtracking to replay levels in the long run.
Visually, Sir Lovelot has a really nice pixel style that comes off as very paint-like. The use of bright colours with plenty of depth and shading gives each level this really well done effect, whilst keeping them easily readable for you to figure out where to go. The levels are well designed, with the four corners of Lululand having their own distinct appearances. New gameplay mechanics, such as swimming, are introduced as you play, tied to the level theme. The four areas of the map consists of Jungleland, Swampland, Spookyland and Volcanoland. Enemies throughout the game are mostly the same, with a couple of new types introduced in each of the different areas, all of which have very appealing, almost goofy style. The soundtrack, by Alexander Falinski, is very fitting - and has a joyful, relaxing style to it that carries across the world, slightly varying depending on the map region.
Within the levels you have collectible treasure in the form of gold coins, and the aforementioned golden eggs that go towards level completion. For some levels, collecting all of these is pretty straightforward - but many of the levels will prove to be quite the challenge. From hidden areas that take some precision to reach, or coins that have many hazards around them, there’s plenty you test you. Thankfully, levels have plenty of checkpoints placed at the start of each new screen, and upon death, any already-collected goodies will remain ticked off, so no need to risk yourself multiple times for the same thing.
Priced at £8.39 on the Xbox Store, it’s a fun yet challenging game that manages to balance between feeling relaxing, without feeling too easy. It also has a Free Trial available, if you want to get a feel for the game before you buy. This is always a great thing to make use of, as ultimately, game preferences are subjective - and while I (and other reviewers) can give you the general feel of the game to decide if you want to part with your hard-earned cash, nothing beats testing the game out for yourself. We’ve had a great time with Sir Lovelot so I’d highly recommend you at the very least check out the trial!
In the end, we decided to give Sir Lovelot the Collecting Asylum rating of 8.5/10.
Have you played Sir Lovelot yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to EvolvePR for the Sir Lovelot Xbox review code!
