Most modern Metroidvanias make things way too easy for us. They highlight the path, give us infinite dodges, and gently pat us on the back. Skautfold: Moonless Knight is not that kind of game. It is a game that gladly kicks our teeth in, stitch our arm to an eldritch abomination, and laugh while we bleed out.
Welcome to 1900. Alternate history Japan. You play a Britannia knight named Gray, and you’re dropped right into a religious coup. If you strip away the story, you’re left with gritty, incredibly dense action-platformer. It’s rough around the edges. Bizarre, even. But it’s also the most mechanically gripping thing we’ve touched all month.
Guard System: Taking health damage permanently shrinks your guard meter for the rest of the fight, forcing hyper-precise defensive play.
Usage-Based Progression: Stats grow organically. Taking hits raises toughness; swinging big swords makes them cost less stamina.
Animation Feints: You can instantly cancel attack wind-downs or movement abilities to bait enemies or save your own skin.
Non-linear Boss Hunting: The map lets you tackle main objectives and bosses in whatever order you want.
The Meat Grinder
Moonless Knight isn’t Hollow Knight. You can’t just spam dash and poke. Combat is a brutal tug-of-war. Your guard is your shield and if an enemy breaks it and hits your actual health, your maximum guard shrinks. Make one sloppy mistake and the rest of the boss fight is an uphill battle on ice.
But then something happens and your brain rewires itself.
You realize you can cancel out of almost any animation in the game. Swung a massive claymore a half-second too late? Feint it. Suddenly, combat isn’t stiff anymore. It’s frantic. You’re baiting attacks, timing parries, and literally kicking freaks into spike traps.
After a while, Moonless Knight really hooks you. It’s cool that it lets you, for example, level your defense by taking a beating. Similarly, you level your evasion by actually dodging. You want to get better with heavy weapons? Swing them until your stamina cost drops. The game forces you to actually live your build. It’s absolute chaos, but it works.
Steve’s Uncompromising Vision
Who builds a game with systems this weirdly specific? One guy. Steve.
Moonless Knight is the fourth game in the Skautfold series. It carries the weight of everything Steve learned from Shrouded in Sanity, Usurper, and Into the Fray.
This is an uncompromising vision. You get brilliant, interlocking combat mechanics, but you also get clunky menus that look like a 2004 spreadsheet. You get sudden difficulty spikes that feel like a personal insult. It’s pure creator intent, flaws and all.
The PS5 barely knows this game is running. It’s a GameMaker Studio 2 project. The frame rate is rock solid. No dips. No crashes. Is it pretty? Not really. The pixel art is muddy and the animations are stiff. But it functions exactly how it needs to.
Blood on the Blade
Moonless Knight demands your patience. It actively punishes button mashing. Yet, when you perfectly parry a monster, feint a heavy swing, and kick the bastard off a ledge? Nothing else hits that exact nerve. It’s a deeply weird, hyper-specific experience for players who like games that fight back.
Narrative (7/10) The alt-history Lovecraft setup rules, but the story is buried under dense text dumps that expect you to know the lore of three previous games.
Gameplay Mechanics (8/10) The guard system and animation feints are a triumph, even if the inherently sluggish game engine makes learning them a chore.
Audio (6/10) Combat sounds chunky and satisfying, but the music mostly just hums in the background without leaving a mark.
Graphics (5/10) Gritty, oppressive atmosphere that works for the setting, but the stiff animations and muddy pixels show the game’s low-budget roots.
Overall Score (6.5/10) A structurally brilliant, mechanically deep Metroidvania hiding under a thick, undeniable layer of indie jank.
ID Card
- Developer: Pugware
- Publisher: Red Art Games
- Engine: GameMaker Studio 2
- Platforms: PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC
- Release Date: March 2020 (PC), April 9, 2026 (Consoles)
- Genre: Metroidvania / Action-RPG
Dev & Play Media 
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