Future Knight is a Nostalgia

Future Knight is a Nostalgia-Filled Throwback that Needs More Love | Couch Soup

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Future Knight is a Nostalgia-Filled Throwback that Needs More Love

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Iain McParlandIain McParland
| September 15, 2026
 | Nintendo , PC , Playstation , Reviews , Video Games , Xbox
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As I write this review for Future Knight, a stylised 2D action platformer created by Studio Koba and Aeternum Game Studios, it only has eight reviews on OpenCritic. That’s not even enough for an official score, and while it’s not super surprising that a small indie game hasn’t managed to garner much attention (especially with what’s around the corner in September), it’s a damn shame. I found Future Knight by accident while I was looking for a new game to play on the PlayStation Store, and when I first saw it, I was blown away by the art style. This is something I just had to play.

And so I did. 

I have played Future Knight for around eight hours now, completing a normal and a hard playthrough. I’ve been taking this weird LCD animated android and his symbiotic tumour on their quest to stop an old lady from taking over the world, and I can tell you one thing: this might be the most slept-on game this year. It’s not perfect, but it’s hella fun, and it’s a travesty that, as of now, only 17 people according to PSNProfiles have booted it up on their PS5s. 

Let me tell you why.

Story, I Guess?

It’s 1993, and The Lady of the Past, the leader of the Pyramid cult, is about to wipe all of humanity out of existence. You play as Future Knight, an android built out of a 90s telenovela actor, as you travel back in time to thwart The Lady of the Past before she ends the world. However, you’re not just Future Knight, because inside the mechanisms of the robot, a tiny, strange tumour with a face and personality also resides called Two More. Think of him like a benevolent Krang from TMNT, except more powerful in his own right when he’s outside of the suit. 

So, there you have it. You travel back in time to eight hours before the mass Men in Black mind-wiping event, following The Lady through her schedule like going to the park or eating at a restaurant, and it’s your job to try and f*ck her up. Really, it’s just an excuse for the different biomes and gameplay, but it’s a serviceable enough reason. The Pyramid cult has a surprising amount of different types of goons to take out, too, and some of these are only introduced in the final level of the game, which I’m pretty impressed with. The variety and level-specific enemies are actually great storytelling in and of themselves.

The Longer You Play, the Better it Gets

On the face of it, Future Knight is a pretty straightforward 2D platformer with simple combat. You can shoot in eight different directions (up, down, left, right, and diagonals) and melee. You have a dodge roll, a duck and a jump to traverse the world as Future Knight. You can also expel Two More, who has a powerful shot and two dash charges to get around the world quickly. However, this comes with some risk, because Two More is a one-shot kill. The health bar for Future Knight is in three segments, but it’s not over if you get hit three times, which is easy to achieve. The android husk expels Two More, who fights alone for a cooldown, and then the robot is available to call. When you’re in the form of the tumour, your health as Future Knight recharges slowly, but you can’t recharge your dashes, and vice versa. It’s definitely a risk-reward balancing act, and one that I thought was more of a hindrance than anything else.

But then I began to target the time goal for each level, and, oh mama, did it get interesting.

When Two More is around, you’re more nimble, can climb walls, and are generally more powerful, but you’re fragile like a glass cannon. However, if you dash back into Future Knight, you melee for INSANE damage. So, do you play it safe and tank attacks, try to dodgeroll, or do you wait for the specific moment where the enemy is next to Future Knight and one-shot him? Believe me, to achieve some of the target times on the bosses, you need to learn the damage dash, and it almost makes them trivial. I did enjoy the eight main bosses (and the secret one), but if I’m being honest, I found screens with more enemies more difficult than a large one with telegraphed attacks. They were interesting to fight, though, and all very different. 

The longevity of the game comes from chasing the target times, hard mode, and the collectables. There are 69 (nice) pyramid collectibles, three on each stage aside from stage 7-3. Some of these are in very awkward positions, but all but one I’d say are in visible locations if you explore a little. One of them was a little biatch. Hard mode is basically just normal mode without checkpoints, so the target times are actually much easier on that difficulty because you have to finish the level in one sitting. Nothing felt unachievable with a little practice, and I came to love learning these levels (except one; that can get in the bin). 

Take me Back!

Future Knight is a throwback. If you look at the interface, it looks like you’re playing on a handheld system from the early 90s. In fact, that handheld has a name: Little Nakamura. Its art style is flipping gorgeous, with pixelated black line drawings superimposed over what appear to be static, washed-out backgrounds at first glance, but are actually detailed environments. The animations are impressive, but aren’t 100% smooth, as if the developers were attempting to make it feel like you remember it, without compromising on modernising the gameplay. 

The music also feels very nostalgic. It has an upbeat tempo that is fitting with the general vibe of the game, and the tunes can be very catchy. The tutorial song “Tuto Tuto Tutoriale” got stuck in my head for hours. The soundtrack works well in the game, but it can get pretty repetitive if you become stuck on a level for a lengthy amount of time, sometimes to the point of frustration. I was like, “Stop being so upbeat! I’m mad!” 

Performance was generally good in my eight hours of playtime, but I did have some issues. There were times during screen transitions that my game completely froze and no inputs were registered. I think it had something to do with trying to teleport into Future Knight as Two More during the transition, but I’m just guessing. I also had a couple of moments when Future Knight “died”, and when I took control over Two More, it magnetized to the top of the screen until I pressed the jump button. None of this annoyed me too much, but it’s worth noting. 

Support Indies Doing Cool Stuff

Future Knight is one of those games you see a trailer for and think, “Huh. That looks cool.” And then you usually forget about it, never seeing it again unless it somehow beats the odds and makes it past the algorithm. This time, I was determined to not let that happen, so I did what every real one should do: wishlist it. When it finally released, I bought it immediately and started playing. I’m so glad I did, because it is indeed a very cool game. 

But more than that, smaller developers have a major task to enhance visibility in the video game space. Hundreds of games (maybe even thousands) are released every month, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to stand out from the crowd. That’s why the team at Aeternum Game Studios appealed to the users of twitter to boost their game. And while I wouldn’t condone posting about any old game because corpos say so, when it’s a small team making a passion project like this, then I’m all for it.

Summary

Future Knight is not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but it is more interesting to me than most AAA releases this year. Its art style took me back to when I was a kid, playing with my Shinobi handheld, but it plays like you remember it feeling, not how it legitimately did. Future Knight has smooth 2D platforming, good combat, and cool boss fights. The longer I played, the more appreciative I became of the depth of combat. 

However, there are some things that didn’t hit as well. The music, although fun and catchy, became very repetitive, especially if I got stuck on some tricky platforming. I also had a couple of hard crashes during on-screen transitions, with my only solution being restarting the game. Finally, the bosses, despite being cool set pieces, were actually a lot simpler of a challenge than many of the battle rooms, which is just a bit of an anticlimax sometimes.

None of these affects my opinion of Future Knight substantially, though. Whether it was the risk-reward combat, the nostalgia I felt from the visual style, or the simple pick-up-and-play nature of levels that last less than five minutes each, I really enjoyed my time with this game, and I would recommend it to anyone with a penchant for awesome 2D platformers.

Future Knight is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch right now for around $15. It’s well worth it.

Have you played Future Knight? What did you think of the gameplay? And what about that art style? Let me know in the comments!

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Future Knight is a Nostalgia-Filled Throwback that Needs More Love

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