A dungeon-crawling RPG where you control a party of pals who are themselves playing a tabletop RPG is a pretty cute idea, but I heard the charm of Knights of Pen & Paper wore off in grinding. Developers Kyy Games went away to work on a sequel, and now Knights of Pen & Paper 2 [official site] has made its way from pocket telephones to PC for your dungeon-crawling delight. Hypothetical delight. I haven’t heard too much about this follow-up yet.

Right, so, yes, seeing your party seated at a table as ~the world of imagination~ swirls around them is pretty cute, and I especially enjoy ideas like customising your game room to affect the players, it’s a shame the game doesn’t run with it more. It mostly manifests as characters chatting about what’s going on and making remarks of a humorous nature drawing reference to other creative works and manifestations of culture.

When ‘references’ are listed as a feature, I reach for my Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch and raise the hand grenade up on high, saying, “O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy.” And the Lord does grin, and the people do feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and I shatter my own hands with a ball-peen hammer (second hand’s smashed holding the hammer in my teeth) so I can never do that ever again. While I’m apparently grumbling about the broader idea of referential jokes in games, it usually gets my dander up when a game goes “Hey, check it out, I’m doing this thing that’s really annoying in other games ho ho those foolish games” – yes, I notice you’re doing that annoying thing, because it still sucks. Never forget that even if you’re doing something ironically, you’re still doing it – so think hard about it. You wouldn’t ironically eat poo, would you? That… was not where I thought that tangent was going. It’s not even particularly directed at Knights of Pen & Paper. I just came here to tell you Knights of Pen & Paper 2 is out, you know.

Knights of Pen & Paper 2 is out for Windows, Mac, and Linux through Steam for £7.99. Here, have a launch trailer to make up for my cold-addled rambling:



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