David Jones has confirmed that he is working on a new entry in his beloved Magic Knight series, just in time for its 40th anniversary.
"2025 will bring a new Magic Knight game," he says on BlueSky. "The series stopped in 1987, and now, for the 40th anniversary of the launch of the first game, there will be a new one."
The first instalment in the franchise, Finders Keepers, launched in 1985 on the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX and Commodore 64. It was followed by Spellbound in the same year, Knight Tyme (1986) and Stormbringer (1987). All of these titles featured the heroic Magic Knight.
The game is being developed in C++ on PC, and the fact that it has scrolling screens means that a 128K Spectrum version "isn't practical," according to Jones. He is, however, looking into the possibility of making a version for the Spectrum Next and is also considering Android and iOS versions.
"MK5 is set in a remodelled version of the place where Spellbound took place," Jones says. "There’s no lift to change floors, but doors in the front and back layers of rooms will take the player to other parts of the mansion. The original Spellbound cast are back. The game style will be very familiar to those of you who played Spellbound through to Stormbringer. The idea is that it’s a graphic adventure with elements of both text-based adventures and platform-style games."
Jones is holding a competition to pick the game's eventual title and has stated that it will boast "drastically improved graphics as this game is written for PCs with much higher resolution and many more colours." There will be more animation, different play layers to each location, mouse and keyboard support and no sudden, unexpected deaths – unless, of course, you choose to play in the "Hardcore retro mode".
"There’s a LOT of work to do, but I’m working quite hard at it," explains Jones. "The game should be out sometime in 2025 and will probably be on Steam. If I get a good response, I intend to make a trilogy of it with the next episode set in the future. The hardest part is building the interface for the puzzles and story, and (apart from pencilled-in interface upgrades) that’ll all be done before I get to MK6."
Interestingly, Jones has hinted that Magic Knight's assumed gender may not be correct, which has led some to speculate that the character is female—perhaps we'll see a Samus-style reveal during this fifth outing? Before we jump to any conclusions, it's worth noting that Jones is quoted as saying the situation is "a little more complicated than that," which could point to some interesting developments for the series' protagonist.
This has apparently (and not unpredictably) gone down poorly with a very small sector of the retro gaming community: