Edit: you know what? 5 stars mate
Basically 4 amazing games in one package, the culmination of an indie studio's dedication and passion over the course of several years of development. Add on top of that a fantastic co-op mode, platform fighter mode and loads more extra content and secrets and you have the recipe for a near perfect game.
'Retro' platformer games were never really my thing but shovel knight takes all the best parts of what made the classics beloved and amplifies them to just pure, unadulterated fun. There's still hints of classic design philosophy that I can sometimes find a challenge to navigate, like constant instant death pits and a few occasions where the dedicated old school style conflicted with my ability to translate what was happening onscreen. However, these are so minor and shovel knight does a lot to be fair and even generous to the player - with its dynamic, high utility signature moves that can allow you to quickly escape an undesirable situation, insanely useful (and at times even overpowered) relics / items & level design that really accommodates playfulness and expressiveness in your movement and actions, moreso than i've ever really found in a video game of its style.
What's really interesting about Shovel Knight's platforming and level design across its 4 different campaigns, is how they feel like they're designed in an almost puzzle like fashion without sacrificing the natural flow and forward momentum of classic platformer game design. When moving to a new 'screen' in shovel knight, you're presented with well thought out placements of obstacles and enemies to overcome and to me the fun came from trying to navigate these in the most efficient ways possible - and each knight has a very different approach when confronted with the same set of obstacles. There's also some really cleverly placed secrets and rewards scattered about stages that encourage you to take risks and try new paths.
Shovel Knight bounces with his shovel drop, so the majority of the time you're trying to find the most optimal movement to bounce from one platform or enemy to the next. He also has the largest variety and some of the strongest options in his relics. What you see is what you get with Shovel Knight and he's a great introduction to the more complex characters in the campaigns that follow. Plague Knight is definitely the most difficult to control and has a much steeper learning curve than any other controllable character in the game, but once you master his unique set of actions, it's great fun to zip across stages and blast over enemies with ease. Plague Knight's inherent design definitely lends itself to speedrunning and creativity in expression with movement, as well as expression with his different bomb combinations. Where lots of effort clearly went into Plague Knight's complex movement options with bomb burst, Spectre Knight on the other hand feels much more simple and streamlined in design. Specter Knight's stages are built around his moves really well, and it is always clear what routes you're supposed to take. Combining wall running and dash slashes make Specter Knight feel like a ninja, with tight combos and movement windows, his animations and visuals also make his different states really clear, like when your wall run has reached its peak or when your dash slash will take you on an up or down trajectory. I found Specter's Knight's stages particularly easy to breeze through because of the clear limitations in his options, but the lengths they go to to make his stages feel unique and interesting is seriously impressive. Ultimately I think Specter ends up having some of the coolest levels in the game. Then there's King Knight, with his very clear nintendo inspirations. He has wario's bash attack and mario's spin from super mario world, as well as shorter stages and a general higher level of focus on just pure platforming than navigation or taking out enemies. But there's still that puzzle element to him and his stages that seep their way into every campaign of shovel knight, like working out exactly what walls you can bash into, how you can chain your bashes in the air and how you can bounce yourself between different platforms with his spin. The devs find clever use out of his bash attack too, I particularly liked the explodatorium stages where you bash into test tubes to get the corks to explode out, creating platforms. I also love the axolongl alcove level, where you use the bash attack to play 'snake' with the axolongls, changing up the platform layout - genuinely really smart and not something i've ever seen before.
The core gameplay of shovel knight, then, is incredibly well thought out and an absolute blast to play. There's maybe a couple of occasions where instead of just feeling challenging, the platforming could feel awkward, like the changing winds of propellor knight's stages or the fact that Plague Knight can sometimes feel like you're on ice and the burst move’s trajectory can be a pain to accurately judge, but aside from this rare occasion, it is spot on. I think it is great that shovel knight does away with a lives system, often a staple of the games it is directly influenced by, and instead uses a much more player friendly punishment system for dying where you lose a decent sum of your money which you can retrieve from the spot where you died. This puts emphasis on just having a good time trying to navigate the levels rather than having to constantly restart, and it also encouraged me to take more risks when attempting to recover my lost earnings from the spot where I last died.
Another huge feat for this game is its general aesthetics. The pixel art style is an absolute treat, it took a bit of time to get used to but the detail put into this game's huge array of sprites, backgrounds and user interfaces is astonishing, especially when given its ambitions. Every level has a unique aesthetic that is wonderfully translated into the art design, enemy design, the music and the level design. There's an alchemical lab with lotions and potions scattered all around and a myriad of wild colour combinations, there's a massive mechanical factory with tons of moving parts and an absolutely wild mecha boss fight and then there's the tower of fate with its luscious black and green motifs. The use of shadows in the lich yard and the ascent up the tower of fate are so cool, if very tricky to navigate sometimes. There is so much CHARACTER in shovel knight too, each of the different knights have so much personality and I love all of them (but my favourite is definitely plague :)). The character designs are bursting with flair and the dialogue serves up this game's simply brilliant sense of humour. For the most part, shovel knight is a silly game with wacky characters, enemies and setpieces, but it also knows when to get serious sometimes. The Black Knight and Specter of Torment's tragic stories are honestly written really well and are very interesting. There's even some hints of vulnerability in its characters, shovel knight misses his long lost love, plague knight seems indifferent to everyone but actually harbours feelings and insecurities, specter knight harbours regret and feels he must make up for his past mistakes and king knight - well, king knight is just a bit of a dick hahaha.
I should probably talk a bit about 'joustus' - the card game that you play in king knight's 'king of cards' campaign. At first, I wasn't sure what to make of it but was also somewhat put off by its perceived similarities to final fantasy 9's 'tetra master'. I'd only recently finished ff9 and ff9 forces you to have to play tetra master to finish the game and it sucks. But unlike tetra master, joustus is actually fun and doesn't have random bullshit mathematics involved! It is fair and easy to learn and gets pretty damn creative with its different card skills, different board layouts and obstacles and variety of cool mini boss fights. The mini boss fights in which you challenge different characters to a game of joustus are really cool because they all seem to have different decks, strategies and win conditions that you need to overcome. Figuring out what their game is and overcoming it also means you can take their cards, usually you want to take their signature card which is usually a card of themselves, I really did end up enjoying beating all of these different characters and adding their signature cards to my ever expanding deck! While its definitely pretty simple and doesn't go as deep as some card games, it has just the right level of depth for what it is going for and the type of game in which it appears, so I think its actually pretty darn good!
Finally, the music. I really like the shantae games, they're simple and not the most groundbreaking titles, but they have a great sense of humour and some absolute banging tunes by Jake Kaufman. Kaufman would then go on to compose for this game and boy does he go all out. The 8 bit chiptune style music does so much to drive this game's feeling of fantasy and adventure and harks back to many of the classics. While there's definitely a lot of familiarity and nothing drastically new to be found, there's a certain meticulousness to the music arrangements in shovel knight that serve its different levels and aesthetics so perfectly. There's a couple of grating tracks but almost all of them hit and they hit hard, like with the shattering bit crusher percussion of tinker knight's stages that sounds like clanking gears and machinery or the floaty, whistful and downright motivating 'high above the land' that accompanies propellor knight's stages. These are some of the hardest stages in the game but this music is seriously like, really encouraging.
Overall a fantastic experience and a lot of fun, i'd played shovel of hope in co-op before but something just really made me want to come back to this and try it out again along with the new campaigns. If you like retro style 2D platformers this is just a must play, it's also like, really important to the history of indie games and stuff. Alongside undertale it is among the most important indie games ever, a shining example of what a kickstarter backed project can achieve, and I just know that it has and will continue to inspire video game devs and video game enjoyers alike!
Basically 4 amazing games in one package, the culmination of an indie studio's dedication and passion over the course of several years of development. Add on top of that a fantastic co-op mode, platform fighter mode and loads more extra content and secrets and you have the recipe for a near perfect game.
'Retro' platformer games were never really my thing but shovel knight takes all the best parts of what made the classics beloved and amplifies them to just pure, unadulterated fun. There's still hints of classic design philosophy that I can sometimes find a challenge to navigate, like constant instant death pits and a few occasions where the dedicated old school style conflicted with my ability to translate what was happening onscreen. However, these are so minor and shovel knight does a lot to be fair and even generous to the player - with its dynamic, high utility signature moves that can allow you to quickly escape an undesirable situation, insanely useful (and at times even overpowered) relics / items & level design that really accommodates playfulness and expressiveness in your movement and actions, moreso than i've ever really found in a video game of its style.
What's really interesting about Shovel Knight's platforming and level design across its 4 different campaigns, is how they feel like they're designed in an almost puzzle like fashion without sacrificing the natural flow and forward momentum of classic platformer game design. When moving to a new 'screen' in shovel knight, you're presented with well thought out placements of obstacles and enemies to overcome and to me the fun came from trying to navigate these in the most efficient ways possible - and each knight has a very different approach when confronted with the same set of obstacles. There's also some really cleverly placed secrets and rewards scattered about stages that encourage you to take risks and try new paths.
Shovel Knight bounces with his shovel drop, so the majority of the time you're trying to find the most optimal movement to bounce from one platform or enemy to the next. He also has the largest variety and some of the strongest options in his relics. What you see is what you get with Shovel Knight and he's a great introduction to the more complex characters in the campaigns that follow. Plague Knight is definitely the most difficult to control and has a much steeper learning curve than any other controllable character in the game, but once you master his unique set of actions, it's great fun to zip across stages and blast over enemies with ease. Plague Knight's inherent design definitely lends itself to speedrunning and creativity in expression with movement, as well as expression with his different bomb combinations. Where lots of effort clearly went into Plague Knight's complex movement options with bomb burst, Spectre Knight on the other hand feels much more simple and streamlined in design. Specter Knight's stages are built around his moves really well, and it is always clear what routes you're supposed to take. Combining wall running and dash slashes make Specter Knight feel like a ninja, with tight combos and movement windows, his animations and visuals also make his different states really clear, like when your wall run has reached its peak or when your dash slash will take you on an up or down trajectory. I found Specter's Knight's stages particularly easy to breeze through because of the clear limitations in his options, but the lengths they go to to make his stages feel unique and interesting is seriously impressive. Ultimately I think Specter ends up having some of the coolest levels in the game. Then there's King Knight, with his very clear nintendo inspirations. He has wario's bash attack and mario's spin from super mario world, as well as shorter stages and a general higher level of focus on just pure platforming than navigation or taking out enemies. But there's still that puzzle element to him and his stages that seep their way into every campaign of shovel knight, like working out exactly what walls you can bash into, how you can chain your bashes in the air and how you can bounce yourself between different platforms with his spin. The devs find clever use out of his bash attack too, I particularly liked the explodatorium stages where you bash into test tubes to get the corks to explode out, creating platforms. I also love the axolongl alcove level, where you use the bash attack to play 'snake' with the axolongls, changing up the platform layout - genuinely really smart and not something i've ever seen before.
The core gameplay of shovel knight, then, is incredibly well thought out and an absolute blast to play. There's maybe a couple of occasions where instead of just feeling challenging, the platforming could feel awkward, like the changing winds of propellor knight's stages or the fact that Plague Knight can sometimes feel like you're on ice and the burst move’s trajectory can be a pain to accurately judge, but aside from this rare occasion, it is spot on. I think it is great that shovel knight does away with a lives system, often a staple of the games it is directly influenced by, and instead uses a much more player friendly punishment system for dying where you lose a decent sum of your money which you can retrieve from the spot where you died. This puts emphasis on just having a good time trying to navigate the levels rather than having to constantly restart, and it also encouraged me to take more risks when attempting to recover my lost earnings from the spot where I last died.
Another huge feat for this game is its general aesthetics. The pixel art style is an absolute treat, it took a bit of time to get used to but the detail put into this game's huge array of sprites, backgrounds and user interfaces is astonishing, especially when given its ambitions. Every level has a unique aesthetic that is wonderfully translated into the art design, enemy design, the music and the level design. There's an alchemical lab with lotions and potions scattered all around and a myriad of wild colour combinations, there's a massive mechanical factory with tons of moving parts and an absolutely wild mecha boss fight and then there's the tower of fate with its luscious black and green motifs. The use of shadows in the lich yard and the ascent up the tower of fate are so cool, if very tricky to navigate sometimes. There is so much CHARACTER in shovel knight too, each of the different knights have so much personality and I love all of them (but my favourite is definitely plague :)). The character designs are bursting with flair and the dialogue serves up this game's simply brilliant sense of humour. For the most part, shovel knight is a silly game with wacky characters, enemies and setpieces, but it also knows when to get serious sometimes. The Black Knight and Specter of Torment's tragic stories are honestly written really well and are very interesting. There's even some hints of vulnerability in its characters, shovel knight misses his long lost love, plague knight seems indifferent to everyone but actually harbours feelings and insecurities, specter knight harbours regret and feels he must make up for his past mistakes and king knight - well, king knight is just a bit of a dick hahaha.
I should probably talk a bit about 'joustus' - the card game that you play in king knight's 'king of cards' campaign. At first, I wasn't sure what to make of it but was also somewhat put off by its perceived similarities to final fantasy 9's 'tetra master'. I'd only recently finished ff9 and ff9 forces you to have to play tetra master to finish the game and it sucks. But unlike tetra master, joustus is actually fun and doesn't have random bullshit mathematics involved! It is fair and easy to learn and gets pretty damn creative with its different card skills, different board layouts and obstacles and variety of cool mini boss fights. The mini boss fights in which you challenge different characters to a game of joustus are really cool because they all seem to have different decks, strategies and win conditions that you need to overcome. Figuring out what their game is and overcoming it also means you can take their cards, usually you want to take their signature card which is usually a card of themselves, I really did end up enjoying beating all of these different characters and adding their signature cards to my ever expanding deck! While its definitely pretty simple and doesn't go as deep as some card games, it has just the right level of depth for what it is going for and the type of game in which it appears, so I think its actually pretty darn good!
Finally, the music. I really like the shantae games, they're simple and not the most groundbreaking titles, but they have a great sense of humour and some absolute banging tunes by Jake Kaufman. Kaufman would then go on to compose for this game and boy does he go all out. The 8 bit chiptune style music does so much to drive this game's feeling of fantasy and adventure and harks back to many of the classics. While there's definitely a lot of familiarity and nothing drastically new to be found, there's a certain meticulousness to the music arrangements in shovel knight that serve its different levels and aesthetics so perfectly. There's a couple of grating tracks but almost all of them hit and they hit hard, like with the shattering bit crusher percussion of tinker knight's stages that sounds like clanking gears and machinery or the floaty, whistful and downright motivating 'high above the land' that accompanies propellor knight's stages. These are some of the hardest stages in the game but this music is seriously like, really encouraging.
Overall a fantastic experience and a lot of fun, i'd played shovel of hope in co-op before but something just really made me want to come back to this and try it out again along with the new campaigns. If you like retro style 2D platformers this is just a must play, it's also like, really important to the history of indie games and stuff. Alongside undertale it is among the most important indie games ever, a shining example of what a kickstarter backed project can achieve, and I just know that it has and will continue to inspire video game devs and video game enjoyers alike!