There are some games where you save the world.
There are others where you become a legendary warrior, defeat ancient gods and spend 100 hours becoming the most powerful being alive.
And then there is Box Knight.
You’ve finished work. It’s Friday. You’ve survived another week of meetings, emails, awkward conversations and whatever other corporate bullshit has been thrown your way. Surely the reward is a quiet weekend?
Nope.
Instead, you turn into a knight made from cardboard and go on a murderous rampage through a monster-infested office tower.
Honestly, I was sold from that description alone.
Box Knight from We Made A Thing Studios is a wonderfully silly action roguelite that mixes beat-’em-up combat, roguelite progression, elemental builds and local co-op into one of the strangest workplace experiences I’ve had in a game.
And while it certainly isn’t perfect, there is something ridiculously enjoyable about it.
Welcome to the World’s Worst Workplace
The premise is one of the best things about Box Knight.
The office has essentially gone to hell. Your colleagues have transformed into horrible creatures, the building has become a fantasy dungeon and somewhere at the top is the CEO waiting for you.
So naturally, you become the Box Knight.
The entire game understands that the concept is ridiculous and completely embraces it. This isn’t some deep examination of corporate culture. It’s basically the fantasy of finally getting revenge on the workplace by smashing your way through it with a cardboard sword.
And bloody hell, it’s fun.
The office setting gives Box Knight an identity that many smaller roguelites desperately need. You immediately know what you’re looking at, and the visual style makes it even better.
Everything is colourful, cartoonish and deliberately exaggerated, while the enemies are suitably weird and grotesque.
It looks like someone took an office, a fantasy dungeon crawler and a Saturday morning cartoon and threw them into a blender.
Somehow, it works.
Simple Combat That Feels Good
At its heart, Box Knight is a beat-’em-up.
You move through each floor, smash enemies, dodge attacks, collect upgrades and eventually face a boss before continuing your climb.
The combat is straightforward, but the controls are responsive, and that matters enormously in a game like this.
You can attack, dodge and use special abilities without fighting against the controls themselves. There’s a satisfying rhythm to moving into a group of enemies, laying into them and getting the hell out of the way before they surround you.
It’s not going to redefine action combat, but it doesn’t need to.
It feels good.
And sometimes that’s more important than having fifty different buttons to remember.
One of the more interesting elements is the use of elemental effects. Your attacks can gain different properties, giving you another layer to think about when deciding how to build your character during a run.
That adds more depth than the game’s cartoon presentation might initially suggest.
It’s Basically Castle Crashers Goes to Work
If I had to give you a quick comparison, I’d probably say Box Knight feels a little like Castle Crashers decided to get a proper job.
The colourful characters, straightforward brawling and humour immediately bring that comparison to mind, although Box Knight adds the roguelite structure and build progression on top.
And that’s actually a pretty good combination.
You’re not simply playing through the same linear campaign every time.
Each run gives you opportunities to improve your character, choose different bonuses and experiment with different combinations.
You might increase your basic damage. You might add elemental effects. You might improve survivability or lean into a particular style of attack.
As you get further into a run, those decisions start to stack up.
That is where Box Knight becomes considerably more interesting.
The Roguelite Loop Is Surprisingly Addictive
The basic loop is incredibly familiar:
Start a run. Fight. Upgrade. Fight some more. Get killed. Upgrade permanently. Try again.
But it works.
There’s something about knowing that the next run could be the one where everything clicks that makes it difficult to stop playing.
You’ll inevitably tell yourself that you’re only going to have one more attempt.
Then you make it slightly further than last time.
Then you unlock something.
Then you convince yourself that you can definitely beat the next boss.
And suddenly you’ve lost another hour.
The developers have also clearly aimed to give players plenty of room for experimentation, with weapons, elemental specialisations, build crafting and permanent progression all contributing to the replayability.
It isn’t the deepest roguelite I’ve played, and that’s probably the biggest limitation here. Some upgrades are more incremental than transformative, and I would have loved to see even more outrageous combinations that completely change how a run plays.
But there is enough here to keep me coming back.
The Elemental System Adds More Than You Might Expect
This is one area where I think Box Knight deserves more credit.
It would have been very easy for the developers to create a basic brawler where you simply hit everything until it dies.
Instead, elemental effects give you another reason to pay attention to what you’re building.
As you progress through a run, you can start stacking effects onto your attacks and creating builds that feel increasingly powerful.
It isn’t going to give the hardcore theorycrafters the same level of insanity as something like Path of Exile, but that’s not what Box Knight is trying to be.
It’s accessible enough that you can understand what you’re doing while still giving you something to experiment with.
Then You Add Co-op
This is where I think Box Knight could become an absolute winner for groups of friends.
Local co-op.
Two cardboard idiots running through an office filled with monsters.
What could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot, actually.
And that’s half the fun.
Playing Box Knight with another person changes the feel of the game. Suddenly you’re not just trying to survive another run. You’re laughing at stupid situations, shouting at each other when one of you gets surrounded and inevitably blaming the other person when everything goes tits up.
That’s exactly the sort of game co-op is supposed to create.
Steam Remote Play Together also means you don’t necessarily need to be sitting on the same sofa, which makes the co-op even more appealing.
For me, this is one of Box Knight‘s biggest selling points.
The Bosses Don’t Mess Around
If the regular enemies can sometimes feel like a warm-up, the bosses certainly don’t.
Some encounters can be bloody brutal.
You’re not only dealing with the boss itself but often additional enemies and attacks that can quickly turn the screen into complete chaos.
There were enough complaints about the difficulty spike after completing the first run that the developers responded extremely quickly.
The August 28 update reduced Elite enemy damage by 20% and health by 10%, while also increasing the spawn cost of some problematic enemies. Story Mode and Horde Mode XP were also increased to reduce the grind.
That’s something I really like seeing from an indie developer.
They didn’t simply say, “Get good.”
They listened.
The game also received an earlier patch addressing stuttering during longer play sessions, along with various progression and quest fixes.
There Is a Repetition Problem
Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the office.
Box Knight can become repetitive.
The combat is fun, but you’re still fundamentally doing the same thing throughout a run: move through rooms, smash enemies, choose upgrades and continue.
That’s the nature of a roguelite, of course, but the best games in the genre constantly throw new mechanics and combinations at you.
Box Knight doesn’t always reach that level.
Some upgrades can also feel like simple statistical improvements rather than something that completely changes your strategy.
That’s probably the biggest area where I would like to see the game expand.
Give me more ridiculous weapons.
Give me crazier combinations.
Give me upgrades that make me wonder how the hell the developers allowed me to create such a broken build.
There’s already a foundation for it.
I just want more.
Some Rooms Can Get a Little Too Busy
There’s another issue that cropped up in early player feedback: enemy spawning.
Some players reported rooms where enemies seemed to keep appearing long after they expected the encounter to be finished.
That can become confusing because you’re left wondering whether you’ve missed an objective or whether the game simply hasn’t decided that you’ve killed enough things yet.
Interestingly, the developers have already reduced the spawn frequency of some problematic enemies in the latest patch.
So again, this is something I’d keep an eye on rather than treating it as a game-breaking problem.
It’s Not Trying to Be the Next Hades
This is probably the most important thing to understand about Box Knight.
If you’re expecting the narrative depth, weapon variety and build complexity of Hades, you’re probably going to find Box Knight lacking.
But I don’t think that’s a fair way to judge it.
Box Knight is a smaller, sillier game.
It’s designed to be easy to pick up, fun to play and even better when you’ve got somebody else beside you.
It doesn’t need to compete with the biggest games in the roguelite genre.
It needs to make you smile while you’re murdering monsters in an office.
And it does.
A Little Game With a Lot of Personality
That is ultimately what I kept coming back to while playing Box Knight.
Personality.
There are countless indie roguelites available today. Some are technically brilliant. Some have incredibly complicated progression systems. Some have hundreds of hours of content.
But not all of them have an identity.
Box Knight does.
You know what it is within seconds of picking it up.
You’re a cardboard knight.
You’re fighting monsters in an office.
You’re climbing towards the CEO.
You’re getting stronger with every run.
And if you’ve got a mate with you, you’re probably going to have a bloody good laugh doing it.
Final Verdict
Box Knight is bloody good fun.
It’s not the deepest roguelite I’ve played, and there are definitely areas where I’d love to see the developers push the game further. More dramatic weapon differences, crazier upgrades and greater build variety could take this from a fun little brawler to something genuinely special.
But what’s here already works.
The combat is responsive, the office setting is brilliant, the elemental system adds some welcome depth and the roguelite progression gives you a reason to keep coming back.
Then you throw local co-op into the mix and the whole thing becomes even more appealing.
It’s also worth giving We Made A Thing Studios credit for how quickly they’ve reacted to early feedback. The game only launched on August 25, and within a few days the team had already released patches addressing stuttering, progression issues, enemy spawning and the difficulty spike in Elite Mode.
That’s exactly the sort of support you want to see from a small indie studio.
Box Knight isn’t trying to be the next giant roguelite sensation.
It’s trying to be a bloody good time.
And you know what?
It succeeds.
So forget saving the kingdom.
Forget becoming the chosen one.
Clock out on Friday, put your cardboard armour on and go beat the living shit out of your workplace.
Sometimes that’s all the therapy you need.
Box Knight Trailer
Read more awesome reviews >>here<<.
The game was provided to us for the express purpose of reviewing.
Written by myself then edited and formed by my partner.
Reviewed and played on PC.
Review Summary
What is Box Knight?
Box Knight is a silly, fast-paced roguelite brawler where an ordinary office worker transforms into the cardboard-clad Box Knight after 5pm, battling monsters on his way towards the CEO.
What does Box Knight add?
It delivers accessible brawler combat, elemental builds, roguelite progression, plenty of humour and excellent local co-op, with Remote Play Together making it easy to play with others.
What are the problems?
The combat can become repetitive, upgrades are relatively shallow, weapons don’t always feel dramatically different, and some encounters and bosses can be surprisingly punishing.
Is Box Knight worth playing?
Yes. It is a bloody good time, particularly if you’re looking for a funny, accessible brawler that works brilliantly in co-op. It isn’t the next Hades, but it doesn’t need to be.
What score does Box Knight get?
8/10
