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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.

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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