How Knack’s unlockable gadgets work

Following the release of PlayStation 4 in North America on 15th November, today is finally the day that PlayStation 4 will release in Europe and the rest of PAL. Two weeks ago, we sold over a million units in the first day, which set a record for any console in the PlayStation family. Now, we’re excited for Europe and everyone else to finally get their hands on the new console.
Knack releases with the hardware, which is also very nice and a culmination of a lot of hard work! We’re excited to have the game out in the wild, so to speak, and now that it’s out, we wanted to take a little time to explain how having a friends on PlayStation Network can really enhance the experience of the game, by boosting the number of gadgets you can collect.
But before we go into more details, we want to share with you an exclusive gameplay edit for Knack to celebrate the launch of the game and, of course, of PS4:

As you may have heard, there are over 60 secret rooms in Knack, and contained within these rooms are treasure chests – when Knack opens a chest, a random item pops out. Most of these items are parts of gadgets that will help Knack in his quest.
There are eight gadgets in all, and they vary greatly in their difficulty to construct, the simpler gadgets are made of three parts, and the tougher gadgets are made of up to seven parts. You’ll need to all of the parts in order to build the gadget.
However, you have help! If any of your friends have found this same secret room, you can see the item that they found there. And if you’d prefer the item that a friend found – perhaps it is the final part of a gadget you’re trying to complete – then you can choose that instead. So if you have a friend or two playing the game, it becomes much faster for Knack to construct and use these gadgets. It’s a huge boost when you’re looking for the final part to complete a set. Simply put, if you’re playing by yourself, you’ll probably only pick up one or two gadgets on your first playthrough – but with friends, you will be able to build and use almost all of them!
Additionally, you can also collect these parts while you’re on the go. Knack’s Quest is a free downloadable game for iOS devices (Android version coming soon), where you can also unlock gadget parts and rare Relics for use in the full Knack game on PS4. This game is a standalone three-in-a-row jewel game featuring Knack himself. Gather parts to help Knack grow before the time runs out to clear the level. Unlock endless mode by beating all levels, and post your scores in global and friend rankings.

One of the most useful gadgets is the Combo Meter, which is made out of seven parts. That’s quite a few, but if you’re playing with friends, it’s not too hard to collect all of them. Once you’ve built it and equipped it, Knack will have a new ability – the more times he can damage an enemy, the stronger his attacks get. In the screenshot you can see he’s managed to hit the enemies 24 times, which is quite strong!
Another extremely useful gadget is the Secret Detector. You need to collect sets of parts in order to build the gadgets, and the parts are all in treasure chests in hidden rooms, right? If you have the Secret Detector, you are alerted whenever you are near one of these rooms – as a result you’ll be picking up collectibles much faster.

There’s also a Relic Detector you can build. Whenever you are near relics, it flashes – which means that you’ll never walk by a source of relics again without knowing it. Here you can see Knack in Viktor’s palace… did you know that there are relics in the floor waxers?

The Time Dilator takes a bit of effort to master, but it can also be very useful. When it is equipped, time slows down if Knack damages a number of enemies in succession within a short time period. The more enemies Knack hits, the slower time gets – so you’ll have more time to strategise about which enemy to attack (and how to attack it) in order to keep the chain going. Getting hit will end the chain, though, so be careful to dodge enemy counter-attacks!

There are two gadgets that boost Knack’s special moves. The Sunstone Battery is pretty simple – it allows Knack to store an additional super move’s worth of energy. The Double Battery is much tougher to construct (some of the parts are very rare), but it allows Knack to accumulate twice as much sunstone energy and then release it with much stronger super moves. There are very, very few enemies in the game that can survive the Shockwave super move if Knack has equipped the Double Battery and then filled up the sunstone gauge.

The final two gadgets are the Transmuter and the Harvester. The Transmuter really comes in handy in a pinch – when Knack is low on health and breaks sunstones, the Transmuter uses the sunstone energy to heal Knack.
The Harvester is quite different – when Knack defeats enemies, they release sunstones. It may not seem as if Knack is picking up much energy from the defeated enemies, but over the course of a level it adds up! Knack can do quite a few more super moves with the Harvester equipped.

So those are the eight gadgets in the game! If you have friends playing Knack, you can really take advantage of that when build the gadgets, it’s almost like “trading” with them. If you don’t have any friends playing and you’d like to see all of the gadgets, what you need to do is load an already completed game and then select “continue,” you’ll start the game at the beginning but you’ll be keeping all of the items you already picked up. You should be able to have all gadgets collected by the middle of your second playthrough – and likely you’ll have unlocked Vampire Knack as well. But that’s a subject for another post!