Our spade-carrying hero traipses through eight main levels, each overseen by a different opponent, and several smaller sub-levels which test your abilities with a new item, a new enemy to battle, or lots of treasure to plunder.īetween spading enemies, bouncing on blocks, and uncovering secret passages, Shovel Knight collects lots of treasure. You might call it “heavy borrowing,” but I like to think that Yacht Club took the best aspects of these older games and mixed them together into something magical. Jake Kaufman, of WayForward fame, has produced a meaty, lovingly-crafted score that feels exactly right for this kind of game. You may recognize elements of Mega Man, Zelda II, DuckTales, and more as you play the game. Shovel Knight carries a lot of other games in its DNA. Shovel Knight is a love letter written to gamers like me who grew up on 8-bit games but appreciate all the improvements our hobby has made in the past three decades. With absolutely no expectations, I was blown out of the water by this old-school action platformer. As it turns out, going in blind may be the best possible way to play Shovel Knight. I didn’t even really know what the game was apart from character art I’d seen suggesting a blue knight who carried not a sword, but a spade. Specter Knight has loads of unique curios-heirlooms by a different name-like the chronos coin that slows time, and Plague Knight has all his bombs that change his combat and bomb jump completely.Aside from the game’s numerous delays, I didn’t know thing one about Yacht Club Games’ Kickstarted Shovel Knight before I got a review copy last week. The heirlooms-additional weapons that cost vigor, which is a numerical limiter to how much one can use heirlooms-don’t feel as unique as in all the other games. The levels are not fun to traverse, and King Knight doesn’t feel fun to move. However cool Joustus is, the main gameplay of King of Cards is the stages, and they lack the charm of the other three stories. With these arrows, you can set a card atop another, and it can choose which way to push the other card. The cards have arrows that come out of their sides, so they are able to push other cards. To collect a gem, one must push a card of their own onto a gem. They can be placed, and they can push other cards. The game is over when the main board is filled. The game is played on a two by two or three by three tile board with an extra row of tiles on the perimeter of the board but not the corners. Joustus is similar to Skylanders skystones mini-game with two players-one who is often, if not always, an A.I.-who take turns placing tiles or cards to collect gems. One of these spaces is where the card aspect comes in.Ĭompletely new is the mini-game Joustus. The map also is slightly larger with more places to stop at. Like its predecessor, Kind of Cards also has a world map however, I feel that the movement on it is all too clunky and fast. Otherwise, the player must land before they can dash again. This dash can also be used to a second time after the first if the spin hits an enemy or another object like a lamp or bubble. If a dash is successful, he spins up into the air. King Knight’s unique gimmick is that he can dash into anything. King Knight-the protagonist of King of Cards -is the final and newest playable character in Shovel Knight, as well as arguably the worst. Plague Knight uses alchemy to make bombs that let him jump, and Specter Knight has the ability to ride rails and climb walls. The other iterations of the game follow three different knights of The Order of No Quarter, each of which change the gameplay ever so slightly. As you run through stages, you find The Order of No Quarter-a band of eight knights who work for the enchantress-whom you must defeat. You play as the game’s namesake Shovel Knight and wield the shovel blade to subdue foes. The base game of Shovel Knight is a simple platformer similar to Mega Ma n. One of my favorite games that came out on the Nintendo Switch is Shovel Knight.Įven though the game came out nearly four years ago, it just got two new additions to its expansion: Shovel Knight: King of Cards and Shovel Knight Showdown. The Wii U was a failed console, but it walked so the Nintendo Switch could run.