Sir Lovelot is a pixel-art 2D platformer with a day/night cycle. Usually, the classic day/night cycle would be expected in, say, an open-world game, but it’s a little surprising to find it in a 2D platformer (though Sir Lovelot is certainly not the first to do it).
Here’s an example of day:
vs. night:
At first, this seemed like it was simply an interesting detail that the developers added to the background to make the game world feel a little more fleshed-out. But then it dawned on me why the game would have such a feature. And I have to admit, it’s a little saucy.
The general gameplay loop of Sir Lovelot is that this flighty little fellow finds a flower, at which point a princess in a tower lets down her hair so he can offer her the flower and climb into her window. The level ends, and you see hearts float out of the window.
Then, when you start the next stage, a rooster crows and Sir Lovelot is kicked out of the tower. The princess has a broken heart icon over her head before she slams the door.
It actually took me six or seven levels with this pattern before I realized what was going on here. In case you’re even slower than I was at putting these pieces together, let me reiterate: As night falls, Sir Lovelot enters a tower with a princess. in the morning, he gets kicked out, then he moves onto a new princess.
Now do you see where I’m going with this? Sir Lovelot is progressing through a series of one-night stands.
And, I mean, I don’t have a problem with games being a little sleazy. I’m ridiculously excited for the collector’s editions of the No More Heroes games, after all (I even hugged Suda51 one time), and those are sleazy as all get-out. I also spent an absurd amount of time creating a sex cult in The Sims 4. But Sir Lovelot isn’t that type of game. It doesn’t revel in its innuendo the way No More Heroes does, or use sex as a game mechanic the way The Sims does. It’s surprising to find such blatant hints of sex (while very much PG) at the core of a game like this. Perhaps this is why it took me so long to even realize they were there at all.
Of course, you could easily make the argument that this is a storytelling shortcut. There could have been years in between the cutscene with the floaty hearts and the rooster’s call. There’s no text that says “The next morning….” or anything like that.
Or perhaps this is a metaphor for going through several consecutive relationships that eventually don’t pan out. Night falls on one relationship, and the sun rises on a new one.
Still, all the pieces are there — the Sims-style woohoo hearts as night falls, the broken heart icon as the rooster crows — to paint a picture of a knight that’s a lovemaker and a heartbreaker. And I don’t know how I feel about spending this much time thinking about the sex life of a pixelated blob with an adorable little knight helmet.
