Anyone as old as me will remember Nintendo Game & Watch and Tiger Electronics' handheld. These single-game consoles with their LCD displays brought video games to the school playground back in the 1980s.
The games' aesthetics were a product of the hardware limitations of the format at that time, with fixed LCD panels and printed background art being used instead of pixel grids. But the look became iconic, and now an indie developer is showing that a modern revival of the aesthetic was long overdue.
Coming out next week, Future Knight looks something like a cross between the Donkey Kong Game & Watch and Megaman. It feels familiar and fresh at the same time, with a combination of originality and nostalgia that could be powerful enough to make fans of classic games shed a tear (also see our pick of the best retro game consoles).
Developed by Studio Koba and Aeternum Game Studios, Future Knight blends a retro LCD-inspired hand-drawn art style with modern animations and controls and epic boss fights.
The 2D Shoot 'Em Up also has a very bizarre story. You have to travel eight hours into the past in a retro-futuristic Tokyo to try to stop the leader of a cult from erasing humanity's memory by washing her underwear. Each hour, you have to ruin her plans, whether it's taking a stroll in the park or eating a buffet meal.
To accomplish that mission, you have to continually switch between two characters: an aging robot hero built from the remains of a soap star and his benign tumour, which you can eject to perform lethal super dashes, climb walls or squeeze into small spaces across levels that include both horizontal and vertical environments.
We've seen lots of retro indie games using pixel art or voxel art styles, but I can't think of many titles that have aimed to replicate the look of segmented LCD art. Judging by the trailer, it appears to work very well. As well as the nostalgia factor, it's highly readable, and the UI reinforces the design language.
The developers describe the look as a "neo-retro aesthetic" and say they were inspired by the mind-bending, visually fluid animated films of the late manga artist Satoshi Kon.
Future Knight will be released August 13, 2026. You can wishlist the game on Steam
