Billy Goat offers you a lance, cricket bat or rubber duck in comic joust iOS game KnightyKnight

There must be something in the cultural ether.

Last week, publisher Alawar released its jousting-based game Shake Spears, which I really enjoyed, giving it a Pocket Gamer Silver Award.

Northern Irish studio Billy Goat had had the same idea. Its game KnightyKnight came out earlier however - mid-June.

Like Shake Spears, it's colourful and tongue-in-cheek, with plenty of ye olde world vocab, such as thees and thous, combined with weapons ranging from lances and axes to cricket bats and rubber ducks.

Taking a rock-paper-stone approach to gameplay, you choose your weapon before each round of the joust. They have different attributes in terms of damage and gallantry (which acts a damage multiple), as well as whether you can hold a shield. For example, the axe and cricket bat require two hands so you can't also hold your shield.

Once heading towards your opponent - the movement is all automatic - you get to choose one of three areas (helmet, shield, torso) to attack and one of the three to defend. The joust keeps going until one of the knights has had their health reduced to zero.

Mode include Quick Play, Tournament and Multiplayer, which is the most fun mode as it's local, via Bluetooth.

KnightyKnight is out now as a universal build for iPhone and iPad, priced 99c, €0.79 or 69p.

You can get some idea about the comedy theme in the following video.

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