The Joylancer: Legendary Motor Knight Preview – True Joy
The Burst Arm, or the Joylance, feels less like a weapon and more like an elemental force that you harness; less a tool as some powerful being that deigns to let you utilize its power for a time. You will hurtle across the battlefield with its power, striking down enemies before you even know they’re around you. You will shatter walls and fly into the sky, shooting across expanses without your feet touching the ground. You may pause for a moment as you gather energy within the tool and wonder at the power that’s been given to you – at the sheer exhilaration of using it. But you won’t wonder long before you give in to its incredible power again, smashing foes with ease. This is life while playing The Joylancer: Legendary Motor Knight. There is indeed true joy in lancing.
I don’t know what the story of Alpha 6 Productions’ game is. Maybe evil robots? Aliens? I don’t know. The preview might have told me, but I was soon lost in the sheer joy of fighting and moving around in the game. Everything is powered by your Joylance, a gigantic multi-purpose drill that’s mounted onto the main character’s arm. Each of the drill’s moves have been seamlessly tied together to be as intuitive and fluid as possible, turning the weapon into an extension of the player within moments. In most action games I am aware of my button presses and the complex inputs I need to do to execute a move. The Joylancer does away with complexity in favor of a natural, flowing dance of speedy destruction.
The Joylance needs charging to do most of its moves, which is done by holding down and hitting attack. This doubles as a defensive measure, and will block some enemy attacks, encouraging you to charge whenever you need to. There’s no sneaking out of combat to recharge – you just pull up those defenses and start revving up. Once you’re full, your moves will do more damage, and a simple press of the attack button sends you flying into your enemies with a combo. The best part of that is that attacking will parry some other enemy attacks, which discourages turtling up with defenses and encourages always being on the offensive. You need to time it properly, but the game still wants you to be attacking or preparing an attack at all times.
I mentioned a fluidity in the moveset, though. A basic attack can send you flying, but doing that same attack while sliding will do an upward dash. Attacking downward is just as easy as pushing down and attacking while jumping. If you want to toss someone into the sky, start charging that drill and then slam up and attack. It might not sound like much on paper, but all of this means that it’s very easy to close the distance and get in your enemy’s face. It feels natural, too, so I never had to think of what buttons to press to shoot forward or attack straight up. You simply see your enemy, assess how best to attack, and then launch into it without a second thought to how to execute moves. You want to attack up, you press up while attacking. Hit down to strike downward. It’s all very simple, which makes combat feel natural, but also very fast.
This also works because moves link together well, thanks to the defensive charge. Charging transitions into the upward attack, which can be fired off quickly if you don’t think the defensive charge will block your enemy’s attack. You can also fire off a quick slide, as this will trip some enemies and stun them for a quick combo. Every move you can do has offensive and defensive properties, so it’s very easy to choose what to do. It’s easy to switch it up if you choose poorly, as the defensive charge can cancel out any move you’re doing. If you goof up, start charging and you’ll stop dead.
When I say that revving your drill doubles as defense, you might be thinking of something boring like blocking attacks. It does this, but it also stuns the enemy, letting you transition into powerful counters. Knowing the right stunning move allows for some spectacular counters, all of which are different depending on the enemy (and there is a pretty good variety of enemies that behave differently in combat). You want to knock them off-balance using a slide, block, or timed attack, as the damage payoff is huge, often splashing onto nearby enemies, but also because it just feels good. When you grab that enemy that’s kicked you around and do a spiraling attack in the air that drives their head into the ground, you feel pretty good about your life decisions up to that point. It’s also the natural finisher to a combat system that’s easy to execute, rewarding smart move choice with a quick end to your foes. If you play well, the game will just flow.
As a result of having a fluid, straightforward moveset and such multi-purpose attacks, combat is controlled chaos. I thought the art style and the sheer amount of mayhem in combat would make it hard to play, but I always knew where my character was and what I should be doing. Enemies flash when they’re about to launch a powerful attack, making sure you’re paying attention, but even when I wasn’t, the emphasis on offense and the power of the defensive charge usually kept me in control. You know where you are at all times because you’re always in the center of the explosions and chaos, lashing out with the Joylance. All you have to do is keep an eye on the new enemies that are about to wander into that deadly space and you’re good.
If you are having some trouble seeing things, the game has several different color schemes to work with. Customizability is a big deal in The Joylancer, and you can choose one of the many different ways to view your game. You can go with classic Game Boy colors, which suits the game well considering that’s the visual style the game leans toward. You can color them in to make enemies that much easier to make out, and can do so in several different ways. I like the default myself, but there are several other interesting styes to choose from. In keeping with the customization, the game also lays out your control scheme however you feel comfortable from the start. The game wants you to feel right at home, once again ensuring that playing the game feels like second nature.
The visuals are straight Game Boy, looking like it would be right at home on the old system. It makes some of the finer details a little harder to make out, but the game goes for more larger details and bigger sprites, so it still looks pretty nice. It’s also very easy to tell your enemies and their combat styles apart with a quick glance, even with this visual style. It lends itself well to the chaos that ensues, as enemies and your character blend together in combat until you see an explosion, followed by your character emerging from a burst of broken robot parts. The locations looked like the usual odd mish-mash of platforms and buildings you might see in one of the Game Boy games, sticking to a city for the duration of the Early Access build. Nothing Earth-shattering, but I came here to hurt things – not look around.
I thought the music was good as well. I enjoyed the track that played during the main game, but the track that played during the Dark Tower portion of the game was what I really liked. If you need to get pumped for anything, put that track on and you will be ready to wreck things. Combining that with the roar of your drill and the crash of broken enemies, and you will be a very happy Joylancer. The sound gives the game some real weight, even using sounds that fit in with the tunes of the Game Boy era.
The Early Access build is a little short on content, which made me sad because I really didn’t want it to end. The three levels took me a little under an hour to beat, including tutorials. The addition of the Dark Tower, a survival mode where you keep pressing further into harder groups of enemies, didn’t last all that long either. I would say that’s a downside, but the game has several difficulty levels to make those three stages more interesting. Also, getting to the end of a stage is great, but doing so with style is how to do it. I instantly started replaying stages when I was done, as I felt like I could do better. As I improved my skills with the movesets, I wanted to get through the stages faster. Stop less. Never get hit. The sweet, intuitive combat style begs to be used efficiently, at speedrun-like skill levels. I could play these stages for some time and never get tired of just how fun it is to use the Joylance.
I am hopelessly in love with The Joylancer: Legendary Motor Knight‘s combat system. I wish there was more to it in this stage, but with bug fixes and new little additions coming out every Monday while the game is in Early Access, I’m not worried on being short on content. I just crave more of this game. Still, I haven’t perfected these levels on the highest difficulty, a task that only looks better and better as I get more practice. I was never much of a speedrunner, but with combat this graceful, brutal, and natural to use, it’s hard not to want to try it.
And the Dark Tower music is now the soundtrack to my life.
The Joylancer: Legendary Motor Knight is available on Steam Early Access for $9.99. To learn more about the developer, you can go to their site, head to their itch.io page, or follow them on Twitter.
