Sights & Sounds
- It's fairly obvious from the promo material, but the game features plenty of incredible retro-looking pixel art. The characters and environments all look outstanding
- The sound effects are pretty faithful to what you would have heard emanating from lots of living room CRTs in 1992
- The soundtrack is awesome. It terms of sound and quality, the closest comparison I can think of is Mega Man X
Story & Vibes
- Initially, there doesn't seem to be much depth to Shovel Knight, and that may have indeed been true for the base game. Thankfully, Treasure Trove adds unique prequel campaigns for 3 of the base game's bosses. These serve to add a bit more context and background for the main story
- The overall vibe of the game is cozy. Even when the mood tries to shift into heartfelt or dire, it's hard to budge from the idea that everything is still chill. Maybe it's because the pixel art is all cute? Not sure. Nothing ever feels discordant, but it is a little difficult to acknowledge the feelings that the game is trying to make you feel about duty and honor when you just picked up a health consumable from a dancing apple fish 5 minutes before
Playability & Replayability
- Take the pogo mechanic from the NES DuckTales game, then add the ability to attack left and right. That covers about 80% of the moment-to-moment gameplay. It may sound reductive, but both games really do play similarly. Lots of hopping, digging, and gem collecting in both titles
- The other 20% would include the addition of harder to find secrets, "spell" powerups, and more interesting boss fights. Speaking of boss fights, they're all pretty good and just challenging enough to be interesting
- This changes a bit for each of the other characters who have their own abilities and platforming mechanics, like Spectre Knight's dash or King Knight's shoulder bash
- These additional campaigns do add a bit of replayability for those who are interested; it just depends on how much you want to know about what Plague Knight was up to before you met him. There's also some multiplayer in the Showdown mode, but I didn't delve into that
Overall Impressions & Performance
- The game is already a classic that's roughly a decade old at this point. I played it on the Nintendo DS when it originally released on that platform and was curious to see how it's held up after playing dozens and dozens of retro platformers since then. It's still a quality game with good mechanics, but I don't think it would have nearly the same impact if it were a new release today
- Even if you're planning on playing all 4 campaigns, the full price is quite steep. You're not going to see a sale very often, so if you do, that's definitely a good time to snag it for a fair value
- I'm happy to report that Shovel Knight ran and played extremely well on the Steam Deck
Final Verdict
- 8/10. Still a high-quality platformer after all these years. Not the most interesting or challenging game of its genre, but all that audiovisual charm is hard to ignore
- It's fairly obvious from the promo material, but the game features plenty of incredible retro-looking pixel art. The characters and environments all look outstanding
- The sound effects are pretty faithful to what you would have heard emanating from lots of living room CRTs in 1992
- The soundtrack is awesome. It terms of sound and quality, the closest comparison I can think of is Mega Man X
Story & Vibes
- Initially, there doesn't seem to be much depth to Shovel Knight, and that may have indeed been true for the base game. Thankfully, Treasure Trove adds unique prequel campaigns for 3 of the base game's bosses. These serve to add a bit more context and background for the main story
- The overall vibe of the game is cozy. Even when the mood tries to shift into heartfelt or dire, it's hard to budge from the idea that everything is still chill. Maybe it's because the pixel art is all cute? Not sure. Nothing ever feels discordant, but it is a little difficult to acknowledge the feelings that the game is trying to make you feel about duty and honor when you just picked up a health consumable from a dancing apple fish 5 minutes before
Playability & Replayability
- Take the pogo mechanic from the NES DuckTales game, then add the ability to attack left and right. That covers about 80% of the moment-to-moment gameplay. It may sound reductive, but both games really do play similarly. Lots of hopping, digging, and gem collecting in both titles
- The other 20% would include the addition of harder to find secrets, "spell" powerups, and more interesting boss fights. Speaking of boss fights, they're all pretty good and just challenging enough to be interesting
- This changes a bit for each of the other characters who have their own abilities and platforming mechanics, like Spectre Knight's dash or King Knight's shoulder bash
- These additional campaigns do add a bit of replayability for those who are interested; it just depends on how much you want to know about what Plague Knight was up to before you met him. There's also some multiplayer in the Showdown mode, but I didn't delve into that
Overall Impressions & Performance
- The game is already a classic that's roughly a decade old at this point. I played it on the Nintendo DS when it originally released on that platform and was curious to see how it's held up after playing dozens and dozens of retro platformers since then. It's still a quality game with good mechanics, but I don't think it would have nearly the same impact if it were a new release today
- Even if you're planning on playing all 4 campaigns, the full price is quite steep. You're not going to see a sale very often, so if you do, that's definitely a good time to snag it for a fair value
- I'm happy to report that Shovel Knight ran and played extremely well on the Steam Deck
Final Verdict
- 8/10. Still a high-quality platformer after all these years. Not the most interesting or challenging game of its genre, but all that audiovisual charm is hard to ignore