Developer: Yacht Club Games
Publisher: Yacht Club Games
Rrp: £10.99 (Steam), £11.29 (Gog.com), £10.99 (humblebundle), $15.00 (Shovel Knight)
Released: 26th June 2014
Available on: Gog.com, Steam, Humblebundle and their own site
Played Using: An Xbox 360 Control pad
A blanket of evil shrouds this land brought about by The Enchantress and her cadre of corrupt Knights known as ‘The Order of No Quarter’. Only one man and his shovel stand in their way and that man is Shovel Knight. But Shovel Knight as a personal stake in this quest too, for his beloved Shield Knight is in need of rescue from the clutches of The Enchantress!
Shovel Knight is a retro inspired 2D side-scrolling platformer in a similar vein to Megaman or Castlevania. It was funded through a very successful Kickstarter and was one of Kickstarters early successes. Sadly I wasn’t a backer of this one, though I wish I had been.
Unfortunately I have to start with some bad news, my capture software decided it can’t take video of Shovel Knight, so no video for this game which is a shame because this game is best when seen in action.
Shovel Knight is quite possibly the closest thing to classic Megaman I’ve ever played (besides Megaman itself), and in some ways I think its actually a bit better than Megaman.
The question of whether Shovel Knight borrows, steal or pays homage to other games is a matter of opinion. All I can say is that there are a lot of attacks, items, enemies etc that put me in mind of other games. Like Shovel Knights downward attack, the way that worked made me think of Scrooge’s pogo attack in the Ducktails game.
The development team have taken great efforts to emulate how NES games used to act. For example, enemies respawn as soon as you go off screen. With the NES this was a limitation of the technology at the time, in this game its a stylistic choice that is faithful to the feeling of nostalgia they were clearly going for. It also adds to the difficulty of the game because fleeing from an attacker can have some serious repercussions.
The controls for Shovel Knight feel extremely responsive, and thank god for that because some of the moves they ask you to pull really do need quick reaction times, especially when it comes to the challenges (keep reading to find out more on those).
The main gameplay loop strikes on the fine between ‘difficult yet enjoyable’ and ‘tear your hair out with frustration’. Usually the mistakes a player will make is due to greed when it comes to the treasures or impatience with their attacks.
Throughout the levels there are treasures (as I mentioned earlier) to be collected, you don’t need to collect them but doing so does make your life much easier later on as you can use it to buy upgrades to your weapons and armour in one of the towns.
In the entirely likely event that you should die you drop some of the treasure you’ve collected. It sticks around as winged bags of gold that you can recollect, but if you die again all that money is lost, and sometimes you will have died in such a way that it’s actually impossible to get it back.
You can purchase relics that will help you in town (or sometimes within the level if you can find the merchant). These relics use up your magic and can make your progress in a level a bit easier, although they are all quite specialised and will be ineffective in some situations.
All the relics you own are kept with you throughout each level you go to and you can quickly swap between them using [LB] and [RB] or alternatively you can press the [SELECT] button to access inventory screen where you can select as well.
Shovel Knight has a unique feature in that the player has is the ability to destroy the checkpoints. You may wonder why you would do such a thing? Well destroying a checkpoint gives you a lot of treasure, but obviously doing so makes the checkpoint unusable.
Once you complete the main game for the first time it unlocks a challenge mode, new game plus (unlocked by selecting your current save) or a mode where you play as a different character.
There are three main differences in new game plus (besides already having all you existing skills and armour), one of which is that mid level health drops seem to have been replaced by bombs. The second is that instead of enemy attacks dropping your health by half a point they now take an entire point, effectively halving your health. Lastly there are fewer checkpoints on each level, so you have to travel further should you die.
The new character isn’t mere palette swap either. It has a completely different set of skills, upgrades and even an additional currency to collect. Along with all this it also changes the levels in some ways.
Without a doubt this a high recommendation from me. If you like platform games, or yearn for a game that will take you back to your youth (but actually has decent controls) then this is the game for you. I also wish I’d sprung for the deluxe edition with the soundtrack as the chip-tune music they have for this is great.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Freedom Planet
Ducktails
Guacamelee
