[Review] Sir Lovelot - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Pixel.lu, Sometimes You (porting duties)
Published By: Pixel.lu
Categories: Platformer
Release Date: 03.03.21

In Sir Lovelot the goal is to love…a lot. Go from tower to tower, princess to princess, like it’s nothing. Hope you at least bothered to get them gifts.

Sir Lovelot is a twitch platformer, like Super Meat Boy and the like. You gotta move fast, everything kills you in one hit, and stages are usually never longer than a minute or two. The goal in each stage is to get to the princess’ tower before the sun goes down. Of course, the princess wants a certain thing, usually a flower. Be a gentleman though and get her some gold you find, big rings, gooses that lay golden eggs. A good hunk of these are hidden, it pays to try and hug walls that might seem a little suspicious as they’ll have shortcuts or these hidden rooms with the gifts. After you beat one of the many stages in each world, you’ll have some fun time with the princess…and then immediately break her heart to do it again. Sir Lovelot sounds like a jerk…

Something that does differentiate Sir Lovelot from it’s contemporaries is the ability to shoot. You’ll run into monsters and other things getting in your way from bedding the “cheeky damsels”. Shoot them before they kill or eat you. I like this addition as in most of these twitch platformers, you’re completely defenseless. Sure, your shots aren’t really that powerful and enemies usually take a lot of hits, but I like the option.

This is an absolutely beautiful game, the spritework is top of the line. Sir Lovelot is also an example to me of a game where I don’t like the designs so much, but still think the spritework for characters and enemies is fantastic. Outside of it occasionally looking like you’re wearing a onesie. Music has a kind of generic, whimsical medieval theme to it, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s bad. UIt’s good generic music for what kind of game this is. The sound effects are good, but it is a tad strange that our “lovable” knight has a squishy footstep sound.

I’m a sucker for nice spritework, if you’ve read some of my previous reviews, I point it out. So when a game comes out in a genre that normally has very “8bit indie” sprites that come off as low effort and didn’t look like anything that the games they try to emulate look like, I get excited. I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of this sub-genre of platformers, but Sir Lovelot’s sprites and little quirks to spice it up including the questionable premise do help to keep the game as a standout in the genre.