Spiral Knights is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Three Rings Design and published by Sega. The free-to-play, Java-based game was released to advance testers on November 12, 2009 and to the general public on April 4, 2011.The game was released through the Steam software distribution system on June 14 of that year, and through Kongregate on September 22.
In the game, the player controls a knight of the Spiral Knights order, which has crash-landed on the mysterious planet Cradle. Knights collectively explore the Clockworks, the mechanized, constantly reorganizing dungeon that fills the planet’s interior. The knights equip armor and weapons to aid them in their battles against the monsters inhabiting the Clockworks. When they are not exploring, knights trade with each other and with vendors, in order to improve their equipment.
Spiral Knights is a top-down, third-person, real-time action-adventure game, comparable to The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. While thousands of knights may be participating in Spiral Knights at a time, any given knight interacts directly with only a small subset of them. For example, in Haven there are typically tens of knights present; however, there are tens of independent copies of Haven being maintained simultaneously. When a knight is in the Clockworks, he interacts with only three (or fewer) other knights, as well as numerous monsters.
When a party of knights begins a Clockworks level, they appear together at an entry point. Their goal is to make it to the elevator, which allows them to descend to the next level or to return to Haven. The knights’ route through the level is controlled, to some extent, by a sequence of gates. For example, one kind of gate opens only when the entire party stands together on a platform in front of it; when the gate opens, another gate immediately closes behind the party, sealing off the route from which they came. There are also switches to activate, keys to retrieve, and traps to avoid.