Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield is an endless runner, 3D side-scroller game that has you parkouring through a futuristic Tokyo styled Detroit. Is this game a speedrunner’s dream? Let’s find out together.

Storytelling light

You play as Wally, who is on a journey to uncover evidence about what happened to the city of Detroit. Hopefully, you’re fast enough to outrun your enemies. Expose the truth and try to uncover the mystery of what happened. The story is told in rudimentary cutscenes, without text or voice acting. It’s really vague what is going on exactly. The makers obviously wanted to add some purpose to the game but the way the story is told leaves something to be desired.

Fast-paced gameplay

The game controls with 4 buttons only, these are the buttons from either the D-pad or the control stick. The D-pad is more precise with the direction you want to go so that was my preferred way to play. Pressing up gives you a big jump to jump over high obstacles. Pressing left gives you a small hop. This is used to jump through small holes or over smaller obstacles. Pressing down lets you slide under obstacles. Lastly, you can press right to dash forward. The dash is used to dash through objects and to complete the levels faster for the speedrunners. Every direction comes with color as well. This makes it easier to see which option you should choose. This is especially useful when playing on the harder difficulties.

Time your actions

Sometimes multiple options are possible to get around the obstacles but pressing the correct button is faster and grants you the best time. The important thing is that you need to press the button at the right timing. The timing however is pretty forgiving but this comes with some visual glitches. Sometimes you appear to be clipping through the obstacles but still making it through. You die when you failed to pass the obstacle. When you do, you have to option to restart the level from the previous checkpoint or restart the whole level entirely.

There are 3 difficulties, Normal, Hard and Insane mode. In Normal, you will have a long slow down and a warning before the action needs to be performed. In Hard, the slow-mo is shorter and in Insane mode, there is no slow-mo and warning and more obstacles are added in. Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield is built for players who love to speedrun but offers a decent experience as well for the casual players

The details

The soundtrack is made by “Danime-Sama”, an artist from Detroit, together with vocals from multiple artists worldwide. The art style is polygon-based with low textures, similar to Superhot. Unlike Superhot, however, the lighting and other effect are not as full fletched. The models, from the landscape to the other assets as well, are pretty rough around the edges.

The game consists of 13 levels. With an average playtime of 1.5h on Normal mode, the first run of this game can be enjoyed in a single afternoon. The game is not done yet do, try to improve your score and master the game.

Conclusion

The game costs €12. This price is way too steep for what the game has to offer. The gameplay is ok, but there is a lack of content and depth to the levels.  There is a free demo available as well to try out yourself and see if you enjoy the game. For me, however, this game is definitely nothing to write home about.

4/10

-tested on Nintendo Switch