Cards are primal. Card games have existed in millions of forms going back thousands of years. They are some of the earliest expressions of itemised 'games' as art in culture. Inevitably, everything will eventually become a card game. We feel something older than words looking into cards. They are a reflection of our inner selves. So why does Shovel Knight 1.75: King Knight's Bad Fur Day have the most fun single-player card game I've played in years?

Before I talk about the game proper, I need to talk about what it represents as a symptom of one of modern indie gaming's most pervasive illnesses. We trap our most exciting developers in gilded cages. The only way to break into this industry independently (which I'm glad is possible at all) is to get that one big hit. For most, it never comes, but some get lucky. You work on all these disparate projects for so long, and one finally hits! How can you not pour extra care in? Updates, DLC, merchandise, mobile spin-offs, cameos in other games, whatever. Now it's time for your next game. You've talked to financiers, you see the buzz on social media, and the right move is clear. It's the only way you'll get the freedom to fulfil your newfound ambitions and audience expectations. One big hit 2! By the time it's out you've suddenly dedicated a decade of your career to this property. It kills me to see! These exciting developers, the world at their fingertips, are stuck babysitting a game they already made. It happened to Yacht Club for nearly a decade (Part of the reason I'm so ecstatic for Mina the Hollower), and it happened to many of my favourite developers of the previous decade (please Relogic, I love Terraria but make a new game) it's happening to Team Cherry right now (bite me). It's my least favourite thing in the entire world! I understand it's just how surviving this industry works and is not limited to indie devs. But I am devastated to see talented studios strapping an iron ball to their foot by immediately pigeon-holing themselves as 'the people that do only that one big hit.'

So I'm coming into this with a bit of prejudice, is what I'm saying. But I'm by no means writing this off as entirely cynical. My expectations going in were that YC would be itching to spread their wings. I was right! There's a goddamn card game in this thing! They went in directions very different to what I'd have guessed.

The meat and potatoes, the running and gunning of these lean platforming stages, are lovely! Collectables are super findable but still satisfying. It's one of the few platformers I've ever felt compelled to go for all exits/medals on the first go around. But I'm not sure how I feel about King Knight's moveset. Calling movement needlessly abstract sounds like nonsense until you see how he moves. I just never fully got my head around it. It never clicked as satisfying.

And these shorter levels are way more at risk of the weaker elements of YC's level design. If ever, as a developer of games, you think you have a novel take on the autoscroller, remember these words. You don't, it still sucks. Trust me here. Overall, they're a great, very playable time, but does it ever shift into the high-gear lights-out fun of Shovel Knight? Does it ever feel as challenging or engaging as Shovel Knight? Do I ever feel as satisfied in the disparate boss fights (the final one is an homage to Donkey 94 IM NOT CRAZY) as in Shovel Knight's? No. They're always a small but firm step below what came before.

Joustus is the real star of the show here. I've had little chance to talk about it on this account (I'm in a real fallow period with the genre), but I'm a card game fanatic. In its ten years of existence, I have, at a lower bound non-hyperbolic estimate, ~2000 hours in Hearthstone, and many more split among games like Slay the Spire, PTCG, Runeterra, and whatever. So few card games make genuinely fun long-term single-player experiences. Joustus has elasticity (caused by its layouts) and constantly scaling encounters that make for a genuine single-player card game experience. Best in class since Hearthstone stopped doing proper adventures in my book (on that note, fuck you Blizzard). As a plus, it's simplistic. I was pleasantly surprised with Marvel Snap when I gave that a shake a year or so back, and this scratches a similar itch with finding its depth in player decisions rather than the cards themselves. If I have to complain, I'm never over the moon for cards that are straight upgrades of others, and you can absolutely bulldoze opponents by having 'better' cards (especially with how limited archetypes are here). But it's a single-player game. I'm not here for intricate balance. For the extra real ones out there, it reminds me of Skystones. If you know what that is then collect your complimentary 'real-one' stamp at the door. Anyway. It's great!

This is the first Shovel Knight expansion I've played (I've heard they get less similar to the base game as they go, and I want to give Plague Knight the fairest shake I can), so I had no idea what to expect with the storytelling. The writing retained the slightly arched comedy I've loved. New, was an increasingly disquieting level of psychoanalysis into the useful idiot / wilful psychopath you find yourself playing as. The final scene with Cardia is a fascinating revelation of his internal machinations. I don't even quite know what to make of it. It is far smarter than it may initially appear, though any reservations I had disappeared by the midpoint, so I was prepped for how intensely perfect Shovel Knight's second of screen time was. Couldn't have been better.

This is quintessentially lesser than the sum of its parts. I like almost everything about it, but it's oil and water. Sticking Joustus and capitalist Celeste together does neither favours. The pace of this thing is completely scattershot, almost random. I can't imagine ever wanting to play it again. It's a far cry from the genetically engineered perfection of Shovel Knight proper, a dev team desperately scrounging for more water to squeeze out of a rock they wrung dry years ago. Yacht Club games are so good that they still did it. But imagine how good it'll be when they get a new rock!

Weakest entry in the series but still quite enjoyable. I love when games ask the bold question: what if there was a stupid little card game? Joustus is kind of fun, but it's kind of like if Gwent was not as good. I suck total ass at it so I stopped engaging with it about 1/3 of the way through. The levels are much shorter in favor of adding lots of joustus content and several ways to traverse the overworld. They are still challenging though, and despite this I actually spent the most time completing this game out of all four. At its core, its still the same old Shovel Knight, there's just less of the content that I'm in it for. King Knight's story might be the funniest of the four, and the flying ship is a great hub world. If I liked joustus more? This game might be a 5. But I don't.

Bizarro como esta DLC é um extremo desserviço para o jogo. É uma prequel fraca, com cenários fracos, level design horripilante e que não inova em absolutamente nada da campanha principal e das outras (boas) DLCs. Todas as mecânicas introduzidas são esquecidas no cenário seguinte e simplesmente não retornam no resto do jogo inteiro. A decisão de trocar as fases extensas e com um boss no final por mapas gigantes com mini-fases foi horrível. Os bosses são chatos e desinteressantes, e a gameplay do King Knight não é suficiente para me fazer querer explorar os fracos cenários dos mapas. Os upgrades que nas outras campanhas eram divertidos e úteis foram escanteados e simplesmente o jogo só te dá lixo. Nenhum power-up é bom ou aplicável em boss fights nem em exploração, exploração essa que é completamente jogada fora neste jogo. Praticamente toda fase tem uma sessão de auto-scroller gigantesca, feita apenas para criar a ilusão de tempo de jogo ou de dificuldade. O joguinho de cartas é até interessante, mas ele não dá incentivo para continuar sendo procurado pelo jogador, no máximo uma cartinha nova ou uns trocados. A parte da história e o próprio King Knight são o que carregam esta expansão. Não arrisca muito e se mantém fiel ao que é o personagem do King Knight no jogo original, mas mesmo assim adicionando camadas rasas no personagem. O humor continua ótimo como é de costume da franquia. Resumindo, péssima DLC. Espero que a Yacht Club esteja feliz nadando em rios de dinheiro enquanto sua galinha dos ovos de ouro morre de fome.