Knights In The Nightmare – A Taste Of A Shooter/Strategy RPG Smoothie

I briefly checked out Knights in the Nightmare, Sting’s deviant DS game. Like the trailers suggest Knights in the Nightmare is an effective blend of bullet dodging and grid based tactical combat. But, you don’t move troops on an isometric board or anything like that. You control a wisp, a glowing spec, by dragging it with the touch screen.

The wisp can breathe life into otherwise soulless soldiers by touching them. A blue light emits from an awakened soldier showing you the attack direction. Let go of the stylus and the warrior unleashes an attack. Menus on the side allow you to equip your lifeless troops with weapons by drag and drop deliveries.

While the tactical combat is going on glowing orbs scatter in the background. If you touch one the time meter depletes and the wisp loses rounds to finish the battle. Sting doesn’t skimp on the time sucking orbs. In the demo the screen was full of them and it was like navigating through an asteroid field. Unlike other strategy RPGs you can’t have a snack while selecting commands, Knights in the Nightmare is fast and furious.

There are some very cool concepts introduced in Knights in the Nightmare, but the Nintendo Channel demo barely scratches the surface of the system. Sting’s game is intriguing and I think we should start bothering Atlus to pick this up. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Atlus is already working something with Sting out since lately Atlus is publishing nearly everything Sting makes.

Images courtesy of Sting.