You've always wanted to be a big, bad knight, right? Well, uh... hope you didn't have your heart set on the whole "big" thing. Nitrome need a little hero for a big challenge in their turn-based micro puzzler Turnament, which is just 50x50 pixels like J-J-Jump before it. You play a red knight, and though there's no story given, we're going to say you're on the great journey of Ow, My Eyes, because seriously... ow, my eyes. Luckily, if squinting isn't your thing, you can trade in Itty-Bitty-Vision for a blown-up (but distorted) view by clicking the expanding arrow icon in the options menu. Use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move around. Each move counts as a turn, which means that enemies don't move until you do, so try to lure them in closely, since you're both vulnerable to a single hit and you'll be booted back to the last checkpoint you touched if you get slammed. Simply moving into an enemy counts as an attack, which means I like to pretend you have an enormous, icon-clad belly, maybe with some spikes, that you bash into things. What?! It's how I'd roll if I were knighted. Your Majesty, are you paying attention? I would defend the butts out of you. Call me!
The goal is to gather all the coins on a floor and keep proceeding upwards. The father you go, the more complex and deadly the tiny castle becomes, so plotting a course of action several moves in advance is extremely important. For such a small game with such a simple concept, Turnament can be remarkably tricky without a whole lot of bells and whistles. The amount of detail and challenge they can squeeze into such small confines is impressive, though Turnament isn't exactly what you'd call exciting. It's a careful, clever little title, however, and is just the ticket from some truly bite-sized puzzling... enough so that I'd actually love to see this expanded more into a big, full-size release packed with even more Nitrome goodness and madness. In the meantime, though, conquering Turnament won't be a small feat... even if our hero's feet are small. Eh? Eh?!... ahhh, I got nothin'.
Thank goodness there's a large version of it, my eyes were screaming at me when I tried to play it in 50x50!
That said, this has got to be the best game Nitrome released in quite a while. It feels like a bite-sized version of DROD (in more ways than one), and I love how every single level adds a new twist to the whole thing. "Think those slimes are easy to kill? Well, try to get rid of some spiders then. Now on ice."
Well done Nitrome :D
How awesome was
Floor Bonus!!!
!!!
How do you get passed the spiders?!?!?
Miasere,
To get past the spiders in Floor 4:
Walk either way around the path, then when one is jumping at you, walk towards it instead of away. You can avoid them after that and just hit the save point to the upper right to be rid of them.
Hope that helps!
I think the Nitrome store should offer a square magnifying glass.
I liked this one a lot. I loved the puzzle elements and how this game requires careful thinking. It didn't take too long to beat, but I definitely enjoyed it.
The floor bonus was seriously epic. That last area with all the enemies...I nearly smashed the computer trying to get past them all. It was pretty much the only area I had real trouble with.
With that out of the way, I think I'll work my way through the Ice Breaker series in preparation for the iOS version.
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