Couch co-op indie game 'Knights and Bikes' captures childhood like no other

There is an inherent conundrum in making nostalgic art.

Usually the intent (especially in games) is to relive cherished childhood memories, getting you as close to them as possible. But in reality, the whole point of nostalgia is the sense of distance, a longing to return to something you can't ever really go back to.

The recently released indie game Knights and Bikes, created by two friends who grew up playing co-op games just like this one together, is the rare gem that manages to do both.

Its world sees everything through the eyes of a child, taking that unbridled imagination at face value.

Each detail is designed to immerse you in inexhaustible childlike wonder. The hand-drawn aesthetic superimposes pencil drawings onto things like incinerators, turning them into dragons. Health recovery requires only some bandaids and a high five from your BFF. The phenomenal sound design imbues your "super powers" and the running state with the mouth sounds we all used to do while making a toy car come to life.

Even the currency and upgrade system embeds the bartering tactics of a grade school play yard. You dump all the random stuff you collect around town onto a table, and a guy gives you bike upgrades based on his general estimated value for it in action figures and eyeball key chains. There's no fixed number, price, value, or anything needed for an adult economy. This is a kid stock market.

Then there's the nature of the couch co-op itself, requiring some genuine real-time cooperation between you and your companion IRL in order to solve the puzzles (though there is also options for online co-op or a solo adventure).

Like the best childhood play, you feed off each other's unadulterated investment in the adventure, the true cooperation coming from the collective will to turn fantasy into reality. Then there are the racing competitions, which do not matter beyond the pride and joy of winning — and boy does this game make it feel like that matters a whole lot in the moment!

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

At the same time, Knights and Bikes doesn't shy away from the excruciating pain of needing to leave childhood behind.

The unrelenting problems of adulthood hang above protagonists Nessa and Demelza's adventures like the impending doom of a storm cloud that never goes away. While always couched in the perspective of children who do not have the language to name or understand what's happening, they're coping with everything from homelessness, to loss of a parent, to neglect from alcoholism, to eviction, to poverty.

The story revolves around an ancient curse being reawakened and now terrorizing their small UK town, which is inspired by the game's artist Rex Crowle's hometown of Cornwall. But none of the adults believe that it's real -- and they're too busy being consumed by their "real" problems anyway. So it's up to Nessa and Demelza, two girls of very different backgrounds but equal spirit, to save the town through little more than the power of play.

Knights and Bikes is a rarity in so many ways, including the fact that it's a video game starring two young girls.

As a girl who grew up loving games but never saw herself in them, there is an unspeakable joy in playing something so close to my own memories of girlhood play -- all scraped knees, mud, and tenderness. Any of this game could be a scene from then, like when my best friend and I committed so much to the fantasy of having to survive in the wilderness of her backyard that we ate random plants the entire afternoon.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

While I unfortunately had to play the majority of Knights and Bikes solo, I felt adamant about taking the opportunity to play a co-op game about lady friends with my own lady friend (and colleague, Alison Foreman). And unlike the last time we tried to scratch the itch with Wolfenstein: Youngblood, this time it really felt like a return to the very serious playfulness of girlhood.

But so much of Knights and Bikes revolves around the moment in childhood when everything suddenly changes, becoming much scarier, estranged, and unknowable. One day your world is contained and protected, then the next it's been overrun by ghosts possessing the adults and turning them evil.

What I love most about Knights and Bikes is that both its narrative and player experience answers to growing up by clinging onto whatever vestiges of play you can. Because play is the most powerful weapon we have against the worst of adulthood, no matter how old you are.

And no matter how scary things get, life is always more conquerable when you’re two heroes on an adventure to save the world.