Nonstop Knight (free-to-play, Android and iOS) is a race to the never-end. The quest to vanquish evil never stops, and neither does the game. It’s half endless runner, half idle RPG and I can’t get enough of it.
It’s incredibly rare for an iOS game to pull me away from Hearthstone on my iPad for longer than a night or two, and it’s even rarer that one of those games pulls me away from Hearthstone long enough to warrant writing about. Nonstop Knight has been a staple on my iPad for a few weeks and I almost feel guilty not writing about it until now. It feels like I’ve been hoarding this secret from you all this entire time, and now it’s time to come clean:
Nonstop Knight is very fun and well worth your time.
Nonstop Knight rotates through an endless loop of the knight running from enemy to enemy, methodically clearing each of the zone’s segments. After clearing enough zones the player can activate the Boss to spawn into the level. Bosses are gatekeepers and the only way to progress through the levels they are at the end of is to summon the boss and defeat it.
If you are not there to tap the button to initiate the boss battle, the knight remains in that zone and the enemies spawn indefinitely allowing for endless farming…if your knight can survive.
Because the enemies increase in difficulty through each zone, it is crucial that you utilize the gold you collect from slain monsters to increase the attack power of your weapon and the defensive strength of your armor. A magical cloak is the third gear option and, depending on the equipped cloak, it can affect attack power, defensive strength, or ability power.
There are six different abilities that the player can choose to use, and each of the six abilities have five different variations. For example, Whirl is an ability that causes the knight to quickly spin around and deal damage to enemies on all sides. It can be modified to poison all enemies the knight hits or to slow them down with frost. Another ability, Clone, summons in a shadow form of the knight to briefly fight alongside him, and it can be modified so that an extra shadow clone spawns or so that the clone that spawns focuses on healing the knight instead of dealing damage to enemies.
These abilities are not passively activated, so the knight can’t use them unless you are physically tapping the buttons to use the ability. This encourages you to actively partake in the combat because the knight is significantly stronger when these abilities are used.
The variety of the abilities offer enough options that can significantly change the way you play. I had a lot of fun testing out the abilities (which can be changed on-the-fly) to see what fit my current situation; was I looking to plow through as many enemies as possible to farm gold faster, or was I battling enemies that were clearly stronger than I was?
The items that you get from chests (which are dropped from bosses or through watching brief advertisements) award you either a new weapon, armor, or cloak. Each item has unique stats and perks, and you can hold onto items to mix and match those stats and perks with abilities that compliment them. So a cloak that grants you double attack power when you’re at full health should be paired with abilities that work to regenerate health as fast as possible, ensuring that you’re dealing twice as much damage as often as you can.
One thing that I really enjoy about Nonstop Knight is how it handles its advertisements. As a free-to-play game, I expect there to be ads. Some games force them onto players between levels or in some other intrusive way. Nonstop Knight does not force players to watch advertisements. As you battle your way through a zone you’ll randomly get purple chests. There is a random item in these chests that you can only get by watching a short ad. Even if the item isn’t something you want, you can sell the item (and any others, by the way) for gold. So it never feels like a waste of time to watch an ad. Typically when you resume the game you’ll have the option to watch an ad to double or triple the amount of gold your knight collected since the last time you played. This is almost always a good decision as that fat pile of gold can really go a long way toward your progression right away. Nonstop Knight also offers IAPs, but at no point while playing did I feel like the game was penalizing me for not buying anything.
Nonstop Knight is satisfying to play. The smooth gameplay, even on my aging iPad Mini 2, and the constant feeling of progression as each defeated foe bursts into gold coins come together to deliver an enjoyable experience. The added benefits like collectible pets (you probably noticed my little healing-panda buddy in the screenshots), non-intrusive advertisements and a competitive multiplayer mode (wherein you race to see who can defeat the most bosses) serve as the icing on this endless cake.
