First Impressions: Knock Knock (NS)

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Knock Knock for the Nintendo Switch from developer Ice Pick Lodge, publisher Sometimes You, and Indie Gamer Chick through her #IndieSelect event late last week.  The game was given without promise or exception of a positive review, only that I talk about the game and share screenshots/video through social media channels.  All of the words contained in this article, unless otherwise noted are my own from my own personal experience playing the game.

Before playing Knock Knock, I was previously familiar with the game, but only in that it was sitting in my Steam wishlist since September 2015.  Cannot say for sure why I never picked up the game amidst the numerous sales that happen each year, but there it forever sat until this morning when I finally removed it.

So from what I have been able to tell, Knock Knock is an interesting game. The core mechanic/genre is that it is a survival horror game where you play a character whom I believe to be some kind of scientist living alone in the woods when events start to happen to/around him.  These events seem to be a combination of dreams and waking world hallucinations.  The house too changes in-between stages, although I do not know if they are procedurally generated or if the layout is the same for each playthrough.  At present, the game seems to be broken up into two sections, and which section being a hallucination seems purposefully ambiguous.  The first stage involves waking up in a bedroom with a lantern where you wander the house for a bit, interact with a clock that looks a lot like the character, then you wander around outside until you find the house again (?), then when you go back to the house, the second stage starts.

In this stage, you wake up in what looks like a laboratory (still in a bed though), but now you have a candle instead of a lantern, and additionally, there is a clock which counts down to dawn.  This second stage, from what I can tell is where the action happens.  Armed with your candle, you walk through the rooms of this house, fixing/turning on lights, climbing stairs/ladders, and avoiding ghostly apparitions that attempt to come in contact with you which sets your clock back quite a bit, forcing you to play longer. 

There are a number of other mechanics, most of which deal with sound design, which Ice Pick Lodge has done a fantastic job with.  The banging sound of doors slamming, the knocking upon the doors, the ambient room sounds, the two voices that talk to you are also appropriately creepy and I sometimes cannot tell if they are trying to help or hinder my progress.

There is also the element of having your character stand still when entering a room and letting their eyes adjust, which will sometimes reveal objects in the room that you can either interact with (hide behind). 

Ultimately, I am not 100% how well I am playing the game.  I know I am progressing because at the end of each stage, a little character avatar moves along, what I presume to be, a map of the game, leading me towards some massive doom.  This kind of bothers me a bit, especially in the first stage part where I end up going outside, as I feel like there is something that I am missing.  Why does my character go outside?  What is the point to this part where you essentially wander a bit inside, then wander outside?  Is any of this actually happening or is it all in the character's mind?  I almost feel, at least right now, that Knock Knock will warrant a second playthrough after reaching the end of the game for the first time.

That is where I am currently at feelings-wise.  I am on the seventh of possibly 13 stages (heh, 13), and if there is a good/bad ending, which would not surprise me at all, I may just have to replay this, which is not a bad thing because so far, I really love what Ice Pick Lodge has done and the Switch port that Sometimes You has published.  Now if I could only figure out the subtleties that I feel like I am missing. . .

Yet to figure out if this is anything besides being pretty creepy when it happens.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
A Deadly Being