Story time! Back in early 2025, I discovered an indie game called Knytt Underground through Morusque's website. I had discovered this musician thanks to the website for the 2025 remake of the 2008 indie game OFF. I became a big fan of the original OFF back in 2018 or so, so I was very curious about Morusque's style of music and how different it'd be from Alias Conrad Coldwood's, the game's original compositor!
Because of this curiosity of mine, through his website, I downloaded some of his albums and checked out one of the video games he contributed to, which happens to be Knytt Underground, the third and final in a series of indie games made by Nifflas that is simply called Knytt.
I waited for the game to go on sale (despite the low price because I'm frugal) and bought it in June 2025, to finally play in mid-July 2025. Now in September 2025, while Hollow Knight: Silksong is taking the spotlight when it comes to indie video games, I feel like there are things I'd like to talk about when it comes to that game I've played.
Chapters? Really??
Upon going through a short tutorial, I found myself in a hub leading to different rooms, three of them being marked as "Chapters". I recall that the higher the chapter number was, the more platforming I had to do to reach its corresponding room, it was quite the nice touch.
After having finished all three chapters, I'm actually baffled by how deceptive this was. Chapters 1 and 2 are actually both roughly 1-hour-long tutorials for the two forms my character can have in Chapter 3!
Chapter 3 instead takes the form of a pretty big open world environment, making it about 20-hours-long given that I've been pretty thorough regarding quests and secrets. Both the hub and Chapter 3 have secrets, but I believe the first two chapters lack those- more on that later.
Those first two chapters, if I recall correctly, each take place in a different section of Chapter 3's open world, with some differences to block access to the rest of the open world, I believe under the premise that time has passed and earthquakes happened so the terrain has changed, they are underground after all.
The first chapter can only be played in the form of a "Sprite", Sprites are some of the human-like creatures that inhabit the underground, and the protagonist has the ability to climb walls. Meanwhile, the second chapter can only be played in the form of a bouncing ball.
Because they're relatively short compared to the third chapter, and because the player can switch between both forms at will in it, I've been comparing them to tutorials. I find them to be relatively boring, which isn't too problematic when they're thought of as tutorials.
However, the game immediately puts an equal sign between all three chapters, by calling them chapters!
The classic "it gets better later" problem with media
I said I was a bit bored throughout both chapters, but imagine I got bored enough that I wasn't willing to give Chapter 3 a chance! I would have simply dropped the game before giving what is essentially the main game a chance, because I would have assumed Chapter 3 to be an equivalent to the previous two chapters!
Let me stress that Chapter 3 is most definitely the main game and its open world format makes it significantly different from the other chapters. If I was to recommend Knytt Underground to someone, I would stress that to them too.
Essentially, I'm saying that the game is doing itself a disfavour by presenting its third chapter as something that is exactly like what the player experiences in the other chapters. I'll explain more why the pair of small chapters is lacking later in this post.
So, should the game have presented its first two chapters as tutorials? Or...?
Remove Chapters 1 and 2 from the game
Beyond the presentation, I think the very existence of those two chapters actually worsens the experience a player might have with Chapter 3, which is why I think the game would be better off without them, albeit with changes to the third chapter to compensate, mainly to incorporate Chapter 1's lore. I'll talk about story and characters later, sorry this post is so disorganized.
A big part of why I enjoyed Chapter 3 was the exploration aspect of the open world. So, do you remember earlier when I told you the previous chapters take place within some of Chapter 3's sections?
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed revisiting those areas with the ability to switch forms! But, I think I would've enjoyed them better by stumbling upon them like I did with the other areas. If there was some character in such areas that I wanted to see the evolution of from chapter to chapter, or really an evolution of anything, then maybe I would have said otherwise.
Aside from that, let's say that they were really meant as tutorials, then I'd argue that they weren't needed and not necessarily because few areas gave me a serious challenge but because of Chapter 3's nature as an open world!
Whether or not a player skips the first two chapters and jumps straight into the third one, they might find a room that is a little difficult or frustrating. They might try to finish the room until they succeed, or they might give up for the time being and backtrack to the last branching path they've traversed, where they'll proceed into an unvisited room that might be easier for them.
Chapter 3 features a few rooms that I call "hallways", they propose no challenge and allow the player to move across freely. Because of that, I can also argue that if Chapters 1 and 2 have anything to teach to the player, then they can instead be implemented in Chapter 3 by replacing a few hallways.
Removing two out of three chapters from the game may sound radical, but really, you just need to keep in mind that would mean removing less than a fifth of the game!
The gameplay is surprisingly good
Throughout Chapter 3, I controlled a mute Sprite called Mi Sprocket that is accompanied by two fairies with opposite personalities. She essentially has to go to the four corners of a big map to ring bells so to be allowed to ring a final bell at the middle of the map. Now that I'm typing this, I'm being reminded of games like Breath of the Wild, huh.
Given that the whole map is supposed to be located beneath the surface of the Earth, Mi has to climb up and down a bunch of walls in addition to avoiding deadly obstacles such as lava and... robots that really want you dead? Yeah sure.
This third chapter is full of exploration throughout places that are both imaginative and pretty. The other chapters inherently have some of those places, but you are tasked to go from Point A to Point B with some detours because of the quests that are blocking your way.
Quests aren't bad, in fact I recall many in Chapter 3 that were either funny or had an interesting/intriguing topic. That chapter's quests weren't really blocking much, when they blocked any path, it usually was a dead end dedicated to the quest like with the whole Monastery ordeal.
(note: I forgot about how the quests were in the first two chapters, the fact that I forgot in itself should suffice to tell you about how I feel about them)
All of the main bells are locked behind a character and a door that will only let you through if you give them certain items. In that sense, the quests in Chapter 3 are soft-required to finish the game as they give you such items as a reward.
For example from what I can recall, there are 8 artifacts left behind by Humans, and there is one of the bells' gate that requires 6 artifacts, or 5 and some coins. Therefore, 100% completion is not needed to unlock a gate.
But, what if you could bypass those gates anyway?
The Disorder, or the bad idea of introducing consumables
The Disorder is the name given to an alternative dimension you can access by breaking (consuming) crystals, which are limited items you can collect both through quests and on the ground by exploring the regular map. It is described by the game as a way to quickly traverse the regular map, as going through one room in the Disorder is roughly equivalent to going through ten rooms in the regular map! Unlike Minecraft's Nether, I'm pretty sure it's not a proper conversion, but just something arbitrary.
It is made to be pretty scary, as you will get kicked out of it back where you first entered it in the regular map after one minute spent in it assuming you didn't leave it yourself, and an oppressive darkness invites itself a mere 10 seconds after having entered the Disorder, making it hard to see where to go.
Hints are given in specific spots on the regular map regarding how to fight that darkness and even how to exit the Disorder in the first place, they can be tricky to get and a player might just finish the game without understanding what the deal with the Disorder even is.
Players on Steam might look through the achievements and find one about how you can ring all bells without paying anything to the gates, and it didn't take me long to connect the dots and figure out the Disorder can be used to access the bells and simply bypass the gates. A hard-to-get hint in the regular map confirms that, and even suggests the existence of four secrets in that other dimension!
I will argue that I have used the Disorder as a device to get across the map roughly thrice, mostly at the end of the game. That's because such a device is low-key useless when I have rooms nearby that I haven't explored, in a game that is, at least to me, all about exploration!
Who cares about breaking a few crystals when the Disorder is such a minor thing? But with the introduction of objectives like bypassing the gates and investigating the secrets that lie there, just how many crystals will be needed to do everything there? Keep in mind that it's an unfriendly dimension, and I had several failed attempts which effectively translated to wasted crystals.
That dimension is presumably unaccessible while not in possession of any crystals, and it's unrealistic to be able to do more than one thing in a single trip, meaning you need to have as many crystals as possible if you don't wanna get locked out of any secrets, and I sure don't!
Knytt Underground doesn't do autosaves, it lets you manually save your progress in dedicated rooms in the regular map. Effectively, you can save scum, and you will feel the need to do that if you're a completionist, solely because crystals are consumables, there is no item that lets you access the Disorder as many times as you'd like.
Save scumming is annoying and feels bad, the game shouldn't expect the player to resort to such tactics if it does have these expectations, and to be fair, I don't believe it does! I'm sure some players felt satisfaction from discovering seemingly everything that dimension had to offer under the pressure of a depleting ressource, or that it was at least the developer's intention. I just don't want that pressure, at least not from such a game.
Secrets for the sake of having secrets?
As mentioned earlier, Chapters 1 and 2 seem to not have secrets, and are kinda the only parts of the game like that. Chapter 3 has secrets, its alternate dimension has secrets, the hub world has secrets, and those secrets sometimes have secrets!
Chapter 3
Those in Chapter 3 come in various ways, for example there are hidden paths that lead you to the other side of the map and will (sometimes?) give you an achievement for going through them. There are hard-to-reach places with greek letters that are difficult to see that give you an achievement for reaching them.
These letters can be so hard to see that sometimes, I'd just get the achievement by surprise while trying to find some of those hidden paths I've been talking about. If they were meant to provide a challenge, then honestly, they should be shining brightly instead, in my opinion.
There should be nothing secret about a place that just gives you an achievement for reaching it, because an achievement is kinda a lame reward by itself! At least there's the feedback of getting the achievement, if there wasn't that then I'd feel like I was doing something wrong upon reaching one of the letters.
Aside from the secret paths to the bells in the Disorder, there are four items to be found in there that are themed around the Sun and the Moon. I gathered them and... that made a fifth item appear which unlocks a scene after the normal ending. I unfortunately don't remember if I looked up how to find that fifth item, but I do remember thinking "now what" after getting that fourth item.
Similarly, there are four corner pieces of a puzzle that I've gotten in the regular map though they're not really hidden, but this time around I know they did nothing for me, as I was supposed to use them in a hidden path I hadn't found, and I didn't have any idea about that; in fact, I looked it up right now! I believe this unlocks a short joke scene.
The scenes are just not worth it. Upon exploring all the rooms shown on the minimap, you do get almost every item in the game except for the ones in the Disorder and maybe others I'm unaware of due to the nature of the game, so you really just stumbled your way upon those items instead of looking for them in order to get anything.
It's whatever to find an item with two exceptions, sometimes the items are cute like with human artifacts that are assumed by the Sprites to have the completely wrong function (much like how it is in Pikmin, a franchise dear to my heart) and when you get the final item of a collection as it gives a light feeling of accomplishment.
Finding a hidden path is neat and can be useful, reaching a greek letter after several attempts is also satisfying, but the items are more than often worthless, especially when you're not gonna be spending those for trading for crystals or for accessing the bells! When the items have rewards, they're just not worth it.
Hub World
If I told you the credits had at least one secret, would you be surprised if I told you the place where you choose which chapter to play has secrets? They all come in the form of secrets paths, which can lead to the ball transformation, levels, or even more secret paths!
I can't pretend having found everything of course, but almost all that I found was worth it, maybe the only exception being the level with the princess parody because such humour flies right above my head, but no big deal can be made about that, especially when the game does more than that when it comes to parodies.
A thing I wanted to mention but couldn't find a better place to do that was about how I enjoy the levels and rooms in themselves, the bouncing ball works surprisingly well given that it's essentially a physics element and physics in video games can be tricky to get right.
One of the secret levels I'm almost nostalgic for features rooms lacking floors and full of deadly walls and friendly robots the bouncing ball can attach itself to, which makes for quite the precision challenge as it's easy to build momentum you don't want as it'd throw you right into a deadly wall.
I have no problems regarding the extra content itself, it was fun for me to discover and beat though it became hard to keep track of as nothing was really labelled. What I'm gonna put into question is rather the placement of that content, as in, why is that content secret?
With Chapters 1 and 2 being so proudly displayed by the game and that extra stuff being so hidden away as if out of shame, I just couldn't help but wonder if the game wasn't just sabotaging itself with its presentation, the extra stuff is cool, why does it got to be hidden? Was it for the purpose of having something hidden? Wouldn't it be better to just give that content to the players for free, especially when that content in itself is already a challenge?
Maybe it is a Knytt or Nifflas thing to always have hidden things so to reward curious players, maybe not. If it is, then I don't know how to feel about this. I know that if I made the game, I would have not made most of it secret, I would've put on that the "Extra" label so players can experience it after Chapter 3... and not stumble upon it after Chapter 1 like I did, cough cough.
None (or almost none?) of that content gives an achievement, meaning its existence is only mentioned on the internet, like in this very post!
The blind completionist's nightmare
I would kinda consider myself a completionist, I usually try to get all achievements or 100% completion in solo video games, with some notable exceptions being Portal's challenges because of skill issue and some miscellaneous things in OMORI as they didn't feel worth it after two thorough blind playthroughs.
With this being said, I have only gotten 9/20 achievements of Knytt Underground on Steam, with one or three involving looking something up on the web. Considering that I did enjoy the game, there are multiple factors that contributed to this, mainly that it's the sort of game that can't be finished completely without a guide, and by the way, guides do exist if you look for them!
In fact, those guides aren't solely for the achievements, they also feature the secret areas that don't give out an achievement, the game's small community created those over the years and that's really cool to see!
And yet, I can't bring myself to use them. To me, Knytt Underground is all about exploring blindly and finding something neat by chance, so using a guide to look at things under another light isn't interesting to me. That's probably an issue that is specific to me, and is unlikely to affect most people, I'd guess.
This simply wouldn't be a problem to me if most of that extra content wasn't hidden. Knowing I was missing stuff I wouldn't find without a guide made me feel conflicted when I exited the game for the last time.
The writing
Cilia and Dora, the two fairies that are always with Mi during Chapter 3, are worth listening to 1/3 of the time notably thanks to their opposite personalities and their backgrounds that get fleshed out throughout some of the quests.
Before another character gives you a quest, because Mi is mute, the player has to choose which fairy should speak to the questgiver. I find the existence of that choice questionable, as it usually leaves out the other fairy even though the conversations should benefit from the fairy that has been left out.
The player is left to their own devices to balance the fairies by picking Cilia who is the sarcastic fairy would sometimes goes too hard on the edge whenever they're feeling bored, and picking Dora whenever they feel like they've had enough of Cilia, or when they fear that she'll tell a child to kill themselves. Well, that was my experience at least.
Out of the two fairies, Cilia is probably the most fleshed out and (maybe consequently) my favourite. The surprise LGBT representation doubled my interest, and the surprise foul language kept me from ever skipping dialogue, the fact that the game wasn't aiming to be kid-friendly was a pleasant surprise that made it more accessible to me. Maybe I'm trying to say that a fairy saying "kys" is funny partly thanks to the contrast.
Some of that applies to some of the secret levels as well!
Other characters? Other chapters?
Chapter 1 can be thought of as a prologue that explains why Mi has two fairies hanging around her, if that needed explaining. Chapter 2 probably explains why one of the tombs in Chapter 3's graveyard has the name of a certain "Robert". When it comes to writing, that is all I can say about those chapters.
Other characters... I mean, there are NPCs, traders and questgivers in Chapter 3. The NPCs can give you genuinely interesting information about the world of Knytt Underground, regarding the different races and beliefs and why they are underground, nothing of the sort can be said regarding traders though. I was able to find a mute copy of one of the traders and that gave a creepy feeling to the protagonists. That's all.
Regarding questgivers in Chapter 3, some quests can be interesting and don't even give any item as a reward, though the worth of items is questionable to begin with. I'll actually list those that I remember finding interesting so you can have a good idea of what I'm talking about!
- There's a quest about fetching mushrooms. Unfortunately, those mushrooms are famous for making it easy to gaslight their consumers, or in other words, the questgiver wanted the mushrooms so that they could feed it to the person they were living with. Both people disappear before you can give out the mushrooms or do any confrontation, though I was able to find the victim again under odd circumstances, as in, they wished for Mi to die before forcing her to enter the Disorder.
- There's a quest where you are given the choice to poison or not the water well of some sort of real estate monopoly, with of course both fairies having their own opinion on the matter.
- There's a quest that involves talking to the person who used to be Cilia's university teacher, but has changed in ways that are hard to accept for Cilia.
- There are multiple quests involving a treasure hunter where you fetch for her the treasures she seek so that she doesn't die trying, only to find her dead a few rooms before a treasure, as she couldn't live without risking her life.
Some quests weren't interesting, but I'd say they were worth it as they proposed a direction to go to when you didn't know where to explore.
The exploration aspect
The word "exploration" came up quite a bit in this post, so before I make any sort of conclusion, I would like to stress that the exploration aspect was what I liked the most in this game, because the environments were unique and nice to look at, and the music very often fit well.
If you look at a few screenshots of Knytt Underground, you will realize it definitely has its own style, and it is a style that I like. The screenshots won't convey the music, the ambience, the context behind how the room was reached in the first place... They're all nice things!
I would say the game doesn't have too much going for it without such things. I didn't really mention the puzzles, but they're nice. Aside from that, I think I mentioned or hinted at everything the game has to offer, at least from what I discovered.
It manages to be a bit more interesting than a walking simulator, notably through the various challenges that sometimes fit the mood of the rooms very well.
Conclusion
I liked this game and you might like it too if you give it a try. I wrote this post which now spans more than 4000 words because I like this game, and because it could have been a better game.
I believe it could have been better through several ways, like:
- Removing Chapters 1 and 2 altogether, and adapting Chapter 3 to those changes
- Having most of the hub's extra content exposed in the hub
- Not locking the Disorder behind consumables
- Having both fairies involved in most quests (not having a choice)
It's not a gem, but I think it's more hidden than it deserves to be. It deserves more attention, but at least this review may make someone discover a game that they might end up liking. If you have played that game, or once you're done playing it, do let me know what you thought of it!
And just in case you're hesitating, do give it a try if you think it might be worth the price! I can't tell you how to play the game, I don't feel comfortable telling you you should skip Chapters 1 and 2 because that's clearly not what the developer intended you to do, in fact I complain about Chapters 1 and 2 because they're deceiving the player regarding Chapter 3, but they can't deceive you if you have read this far.
Some of my problems with the game came down to presentation, and this review just so happens to present the game under a different light, what you choose to do now that you are given this light of mine is up to you!