Knytt remains a classic
TVTropes is a malicious force in storytelling, but it occasionally puts a name to something it's useful to name. I like "Flanderization", which is a fun word to say, and the process by which a character, often in a sitcom, becomes a parody of themselves. Named after The Simpsons' Ned Flanders, who warps across seasons from a relatively normal, albeit improbably perfect figure of envy for slothful oaf Homer, into an absurd Christian fundamentalist whose niceness is a pathological disorder.
I find this word useful because I think the same process happens to videogames. Brendy's "self-playing games" can be understood as being at the extreme end of the process: parodies of the entire medium of videogames, mimicking the structure of upgrades and progress in order to deliver dopamine without the fullness of complexity of their original genres.
But Knytt, originally released in 2006, represents an earlier stage of much the same process. Knytt is Flanderized Mario.
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In a brief opening cutscene, the nameless and