Knight’s Retreat is a chess puzzle game focused primarily on the movement of knights. Your task is simply to move each of your knights to a designated space on the game board. The challenge comes from the chess board having numerous squares removed, as well as each square only being usable once (there are exceptions to this rule).

The puzzle design in Knight’s Retreat has a fantastic sense of progression. The early puzzles are simple, allowing you to grasp the basic concepts without an explicit tutorial. It feels like you are thrown to the wolves and have to figure out the puzzles for yourself, rather than having someone explain how to solve it. Admittedly, this does have the negative side effect of keeping some mechanics too obscure, at least in my case. I actually made it to the 79th level before I learned a basic mechanic that was introduced around level 25. Still, I appreciated the unguided approach because it allows you to solve levels in a variety of ways, without needing to learn how to do it the “right way”.

Puzzles are divided up into different groups, all with a specific visual theme and some sort of new mechanic that sets them apart, aside from the last group which is a blend of every mechanic in the game. One group introduces the concept of moving squares, another might introduce multiple knights. Without spoiling everything, there is a lot to experience and none of the mechanics were disappointing. The game gets progressively harder, but it never became tedious; aside from maybe level 79 when I was forced to do it twice after encountering a bug.

My only major issue with the game is the undo function. First, it only allows you to go back one move. This was possibly done because each level has many ways to be solved and the developers felt like it could make the game too easy. Secondly, the game sometimes has incorrect visuals after using the undo function too often. This also may have played a role in the developers’ decision to limit how often you can use it. Because the bug appears to only be visual, it can make you think that you have solved a puzzle, when in reality, you made a mistake and need to restart. This is even worse than the game simply breaking, because you tend to get only a move away from solving it before you realize the puzzle is unsolvable.

Interestingly, because the undo function is limited in scope, it changes the way you solve the puzzle. With unlimited undos, you would be encouraged to use trial and error more often. By limiting it, you plan your moves in advance, as if you are actually playing chess. I assume this was intentional on the developers’ part and I give them credit for making a puzzle game with a distinctive style of puzzle solving, even if the puzzles themselves aren’t wholly unique.

When it comes to presentation, Knight’s Retreat is great. The visuals are polished with a consistent theme for each section of levels. Visual clarity when it comes to differentiating bishops and queens is occasionally a problem, depending on the camera angle, but this is only a minor complaint. The soundtrack is comprised of relaxing ambient music that doesn’t pull your attention away from the puzzles at hand. It all fits together nicely to create a pretty game with a chill atmosphere.

Knight’s Retreat is a solid entry in the puzzle chess genre. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it successfully builds on a well established genre without feeling like a generic puzzle game. Fans of chess puzzles will most likely enjoy it, although genre purists might be disappointed. It’s a cheap game that’ll give you ~5 hours of fun, something that plenty of more expensive games fail to do.

7/10

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