King's Valley II

Sometimes it is not about reflexes, but about whether you can piece together a path out of a maze in your head. King's Valley II asks exactly that of the player — it is a logic platformer where success depends not on the speed of your fingers, but on clever planning of how to reach the goal through piles of obstacles, traps and enemies hidden in ancient corridors.

In 1988 Konami put something into it that was extraordinarily progressive for its time: a level editor. Players could thus design their own puzzles and share the experience beyond the pre-made content — an early form of what we today call modding and user creation. This feature extended the game's lifespan by orders of magnitude and made it one of the most interesting logic titles in the entire MSX library.

Each level is essentially a standalone logic task: you must weigh the order of steps, use the environment to your advantage and find the sequence of moves that leads you to the exit without getting stuck or dying. That moment when the solution you have been searching for for minutes finally clicks into place in your head is exactly the kind of satisfaction for which people love puzzle games.

It is worth mentioning that this line of logic classics belongs to the best the MSX offered. Alongside King's Valley II there is, for instance, Eggerland from the studio HAL, the predecessor of the famous Adventures of Lolo series — proof that the Japanese computer scene of the late eighties could produce clever, elegant brain-teasers that hold up to this day.

For today's player, King's Valley II is a reminder of a time when even small home computers did not stand in the way of big ideas. The level editor, thoughtful design and pure logic make it a title you will appreciate if you enjoy thinking over movement and are looking for something in retro that will tax the brain instead of the thumbs.

Why play it: A clever logic platformer with a pioneering level editor — for anyone who prefers thinking to reflexes.