Knuckle Sandwich

An indie turn-based RPG with an outstanding world and excellent story beats, but tired pacing and inconsistent combat veer it from fun into seriously frustrating.

Knuckle Sandwich is at its best when it goes off-script. It’s just that when it finally has to go back on-script, we find that the script is a rather tedious one. I spent 15 hours to see the ending in hopes that all the boredom I experienced was building to some sort of pay-off. That there would be some tremendous punchline at the end that brings reason to all my suffering. There was none. Just a fading bruise.

Knuckle Sandwich is uniquely bizarre across all facets of its design, but it helps it stand out as one of the more creative and enjoyable experimental RPGs out there. Sure, its humour won’t be for everyone and some of its mini games could be a little frustrating, but for the most part it, stands out as a memorable and anarchic experience that feels different to almost every other RPG out there. It’s finely crafted, full of funny moments, and gives players plenty of quirky little tasks to complete, with Knuckle Sandwich’s weird adventure always an entertaining one.

Knuckle Sandwich is clearly a love letter to classic 8-bit role-playing games but with a twist. Bright City has some interesting characters and interactions (I particularly love the washing machine save points). The story goes places. And the core mechanics are easy to learn and varied.

Knuckle Sandwich is a charmingly absurd and lovingly crafted RPG adventure that delights in surprise. Its wonderfully nostalgic, SNES-like glitchcore visual and audio design constantly shifts style, and its rollercoaster of a plot happily sets up player expectations, subverts them, and then subverts them again. Unfortunately, the game is let down by a frustratingly restrictive inventory and some game balance issues leading to lengthy, repetitive boss encounters. However, Knuckle Sandwich's charm and dry humour shines through at every step and is sure to leave you chuckling.

Andy Brophy's Knuckle Sandwich will likely go down as the year's strangest and most endearing video game. It takes the framework of past icons such as Mother and Earthbound and injects a little bit of ocker into the mix to create an off-the-wall roleplaying game that'll play to both the nostalgia harboured for our sunburnt country as well as the genre's decades-long history.

Knuckle Sandwich is a unique and stunningly vibrant and gorgeous pixel-animated RPG that will test your resolve with its mini-games and turn-based sequences.

...the game that ultimately comes together is more than the sum of its parts. It might buckle under its own weight at times, but Knuckle Sandwich is an endearing and wild ride worth going on.

Knuckle Sandwich revives a lost genre while sparking a whole new one. It's uniquely clever and effortlessly funny.