Prepare to Dig In
Review
Shovel
Knight, Yacht Club Games (PS4/PSVITA)
Abstract: Shovel
Knight is a remarkable experience in gaming. This phenomenal title from
Yacht Club Gamers exudes confidence, passion, and design intelligence that is
amazing to behold. With Mega Man as a
clear inspiration, Shovel Knight is
able to capture the feeling of sitting down at your NES in the early 1990’s,
while adding significant and sophisticated modern touches. Playing Shovel Knight is a journey to the past,
a look at the present, and an unabashed joy. Shovel Knight is successful on so many levels, and is more than
deserving of your time and attention.
If I had to
name the number one game I regretted not getting to last year, it would
absolutely be Shovel Knight. No
single game was as glaring an exclusion from my completed games list. Shovel Knight gained a lot of traction
early in its development, with a fairly widely known and financially successful
Kickstarter campaign funding the game’s release. Shovel Knight, from Yacht Club Games, looked to reimagine an old
school game genre with its own unique aesthetic and modern design foundations. Shovel Knight is a Kickstarter success
story: the developers were transparent throughout the development process, the
scope and stretch goals for the game could be reasonably achieved, and the game
was finished and released across PCs, Macs, and the 3DS in summer 2014. Shovel Knight was met with phenomenal
reviews and, come year’s end, made it onto so many game critics’ top games of the
year lists. Like so many other things, one reason or another kept me away from Shovel Knight throughout 2014. In
December at the PlayStation experience, Shovel
Knight was announced for release on the PS4 & PSVITA. I knew at that
point in time, once it came out on Sony platforms, I would jump in. Shovel Knight was released in April
2015. True to my word, I bought it on release day and got started.
In many
ways, Shovel Knight is a spiritual
successor to the Keiji Inafune era of classic Mega Man games. Everything about Shovel Knight, from its aesthetic to its protagonist to its world
and bosses, would feel right at home alongside the phenomenal Mega Man 2 or any other of Inafune’s
remarkable games. You play as Shovel Knight, as you might have guessed, tasked
with saving his land from a terrible evil. Alongside his partner Shield Knight,
Shovel Knight fought the forces of darkness until a powerful enchantress
captured Shield Knight and spread darkness across the land. As Shovel Knight
you have to fight your way through the hordes of monsters the enchantress has
unleashed upon the land, powerful roaming warriors, and the eight deadly
knights of the Order of No Quarter. You goal is to make your way through the
lairs of each of the knights of the Order and move your way closer to the
treacherous keep in which the enchantress has Shield Knight kept. In this way,
the sense of progression in Shovel Knight
is nearly identical to that of the classic Mega
Man games: 8 bosses in 8 unique stages, with one final mega (pardon the
pun) stage where the final battle takes place. Just replace the Robot Masters
with the Order of No Quarter, and Dr. Wily with the enchantress. None of this
is bad, though. In fact, it’s great. Mega
Man got to be such a well-loved franchise because the games, the genre it
established, is just so darn fun to play. The sense of progression, the variety
of stages, the challenge: all of it was fantastic then and remains great today.
Without a proper Mega Man game from
Capcom since Mega Man 10, Shovel Knight exists to bring the world
more of what it loves, and what it had been missing for years. If Shovel Knight were just a new take on Mega Man it would be great. Thankfully, Shovel Knight is much much more.
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| Mega Shovel Man doesn't have quite the same ring to it. |
Like the Mega Man games before it, Shovel Knight has exceptional gameplay.
In each of the Order of No Quarter stages, you move from one screen to the
next, tacking platforming challenges and fighting through waves of enemies, All
of this is grounded in a highly precise movement and physics engine. Everything
thing you do, each attack, each jump, each ladder climb, each bounce, has an
exactness to it. As you play, you know exactly the height and distance of your
jump, the length of your attack ark, and how much damage you do. It all comes
together so perfectly. Moving through the world is skill intensive, but
rewarding. Because you can master these systems, and because of your growing
familiarity with the world, you steadily feel as you, the player, are getting
better at Shovel Knight. And the game
gives you more to work with, especially on the fighting side, the longer you
play. Saving up money you collect by killing enemies or digging up piles of
dirt (you use a shovel, remember?) lets the player buy powerful relics that
work essentially like items from Castlevania,
powerup attacks for your shovel, new armor sets with different bonuses, and
health and magic upgrades. The second you think you know every way you can take
on an enemy, a boss, or a level, Shovel
Knight gives you a new toy to play with. As you move through the game,
however, you will have to get used to the noticeably ‘heavy’ physics it
utilizes. Many platformers these days are fast and frantic, with sprint
functions to allow quicker movement or long jumps. Shovel Knight eschews that completely, opting to go with a slower,
more deliberate approach. Shovel Knight
wants you to think about what you’re doing in each world, and each screen of
each world. Progression through the game is about learning the world, learning
the systems, and learning yourself—not just a race to the finish. After some initial
frustrations getting used to Shovel
Knight’s brand of movement and attacks, it clicked. It felt great. I could
see some frustrations for a younger crowd that had not experienced that kind of
design, though.
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| Everything in Shovel Knight is tough but fair. Yes, even the Kratos boss fight. |
All of the
great design in the movement and attack systems would be moot if the world were
not interesting, but Yacht Club Games created an extraordinary place to
explore. Each of the eight unique stages for the Order of No Quarter are
totally different from one another, and thoroughly interesting. The boss fights
at the end of each are challenging, exciting, tough and fair. The levels are
nice and long too, which gives the unique elements within each time to breathe
and show players what they have to offer. Within each of these levels are tons
of hidden secrets—gems, health items, collectable songs, and more. Shovel Knight rewards the player for
looking for everything the game has to offer, and gives players plenty of tools
to do so. A checkpoint system is smartly incorporated into each level, limiting
player frustration when they inevitably die (and you will, a lot). The
checkpoints aren’t a crutch, however, and sloppy play is still punished. When
you die a substantial portion of the money you collected is lost, left floating
on the screen in which you died. You can recollect all your losses if, and only
if, you can make it back to that location without dying again and are able to navigate the platforms
successfully enough to grab it all. This creates a great tension when exploring
new areas, making the player stunningly aware that if you play too recklessly,
you might not have enough money for that new armor set or shovel powerup you
wanted to buy.
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| Gems, music sheets, and bottomless pit fishing? Yep. |
There is a
richness to Shovel Knight that’s hard
to put into words. When playing through the game, you can feel inspiration
behind every single element that’s at work in the game. From the enemies to the
background to the Order of No Quarter to Shovel Knight himself, everything has
a handcrafted, tailored feel to it. Shovel
Knight’s world is tremendously successful because of this approach. This
kind of design brings with it an indescribable joy to the game. Playing Shovel Knight puts you in the minds of
these talented, passionate developers. It feels like you can see the vision and
inspiration for the game as clearly as the people who made Shovel Knight. This richness is most evident in the sheer number of
ideas that made their way into the final product. Each and every level is
visually, audibly, and tangibly distinct. Getting through one level feels
nothing like getting through any of the others. No idea in Shovel Knight is ever left to stagnate, either, as the game works
to constantly reinvigorate itself. Like a certain challenge the Treasure
Knight’s stage introduced? You’ll find it there and there alone. A certain
enemy type? Almost never recycled between stages. In each of the nine main
stages there was a moment where I had to pause the game and sit back, in awe of
the new elements Shovel Knight kept
throwing at me. The levels themselves aren’t the only richness in Shovel Knight, however. The game is
packed to the brim with different things to do and see. There are towns to
visit, optional challenge levels that test your skill with a particular relic,
and a nice handful of challenging optional bosses. Odds are if you think of
something you want to do, Shovel Knight
lets you do it.
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| Shovel Knight never stops giving the player new things to see and do. |
The team at
Yacht Club Games also demonstrates impressive intelligent design in every facet
of Shovel Knight. The game is just so
smart. Shovel Knight takes everything that worked well for the classic Mega Man games and brought them into the
present. The list of great design could go on for quite some time, but let me
just name a few. Bosses are crazy and fun, challenging but not too hard,
memorable, and reward the player with a great feeling of accomplishment upon
their defeat (all the more reinforced by the great slow-mo killing blow that
happens when a boss goes down). The relics you obtain have to be earned,
discovered in hidden areas and purchased, and offer the player new tools for
combat and exploration simultaneously. Shovel
Knight knows how much players love to explore, and consistently finds novel
ways to reward exploration. The game smartly finds a way to nail its
retro-inspired aesthetic while still creating a beautiful modern game. It
perplexes and amazes me that Shovel
Knight could both be confused, and never be confused, for a NES era game. Jake
Kaufman’s 8-bit inspired soundtrack is among one of the best of recent memory. Shovel Knight also knows not to overstay
its welcome. Completing the game took me a little over 8 hours on my first
playthrough, which included collecting nearly everything I could along the way.
My second playthrough, a speedrun, took me a little over 2 hours. And finally,
in this long list of smart design decisions, is Shovel Knight’s ability to know who its target audience is. Yacht
Club Games knew that Shovel Knight
would appeal to a ‘hardcore’ audience—the people who grew up with Mega Man and came to expect those tough
as nails experiences. To offer up more incentives for the most devoted of the
genre, Shovel Knight included a
wealth of insanely difficult challenges to complete, like beating the game in
an hour and thirty minutes, beat the game without dying or spending any money,
etc. These challenges are no joke. I
had a perfect serving of the game my first time through, but I could certainly
see myself getting around to doing these challenges at some point in the
future.
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| If you have any interest in great games, kick back, relax, and give Shovel Knight a try. |
Shovel Knight is a game that makes me happy. I’m
happy it exists, I’m happy to have played it, and I will be happy to play it
over and over again in the years to come. Shovel
Knight is one of the most detail-rich and complex ‘simple’ games in recent
memory. Shovel Knight is the best Mega Man game I have ever played. The Shovel Knight developers clearly wanted
to share their joy and passion for old games with the world, and I want to
share my joy and passion for Shovel Knight
with you, my readers. So just do yourself and favor and give it a try?
Shovel Knight
5/5
