Tharkys the Knight

Tharkys the Knight came out on the 31st of May 2026 and the Spectrum community has been buzzing about it ever since. Today we are playing it on the MiSTer FPGA with full gameplay and commentary, and if you have landed here for the first time, welcome to the channel. This is exactly what we are here for.

The game was created by Jay-droid133 and runs on ZX Spectrum 128K hardware. It is a free release on itch.io and is openly inspired by two of the most beloved titles from the legendary Ultimate Play The Game catalogue, Sabre Wulf and Atic Atac. The developer has been completely upfront about the fact that the entire codebase was produced using AI tools, with no single line written manually. Custom editors for sprite design, room layout, sound tuning, and music were all built using the same process. The source code is publicly available on GitHub.

The story of the game is embedded within the software itself, so playing is the only way to get it. You take on the role of the knight Tharkys, moving through a world populated by skeletons, ghosts, serpents, and bats across castle buildings and gated environments. Both health and stamina are tracked on an interface styled after both sides of an old pocket watch. When hunger sets in, you can eat whatever junk food you find scattered through the world, but eating rubbish comes with toxic consequences. To reverse those effects and fully restore your health and stamina together, you need to find a well and drink from it. Be careful though, because any active power-up you are carrying gets washed out at the same time.

To recover stamina you rest, but standing still for too long is dangerous because the boogeyman will hunt you down if you give it the chance. Navigation through the world uses a default compass that always points toward your next objective, a magic compass that shows the precise route to take, and a map that appears randomly during play and must be grabbed quickly before the wind carries it off. The game is linear despite the open world feel, meaning objectives must be reached in sequence. There is no time limit, but every passing day the creatures become faster and more aggressive.

The game also supports an English and Spanish language option, keyboard, gamepad, and touchscreen controls, and received a controls update for FUSE emulator compatibility within days of launch. A TAP file is available for use on real hardware and MiSTer FPGA.

One player in the comments described it as the best thing they had played in twenty years. Another completed it in a single session without wanting to stop. That is the kind of reception this one has already earned.
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Available from https://jay-droid133.itch.io/tharkys-the-knight