Shovel Knight was to be a quadrology, a series of games revolving around the same general story from multiple perspectives... and to that end, before they did anything too wild with the idea, they needed to do something that I think only Nintendo had accomplished up to that point.
Look at Mario: he had established so elegantly a gameplay, a cast, and a story so malleable that it could be supported to fit anything they could possibly desire. Paper Mario so convincingly fits the general idea of the platformers into the form of a JRPG; Yoshi, introduced in Super Mario World proved so capable that they continue to make games all about him and his species; and Wario manages to take everything Super Mario had done, deconstruct it and still somehow manage to make it all work.
From his footsteps would other franchises and series also take root - including Sonic the Hedgehog, and platformers as a whole, such as Mega Man and Castlevania.
And Yacht Club, in the year 2014, made a Mario to call their own.
Shovel Knight learned so much from the games before it, and managed to deliver something practically on par with the bests, and surpassed many.
Its design is focused, deliberate, determined on allowing the player to make the most of their kit in very intuitive ways: even the Chaos Orb and Alchemy Coin, the two most unintuitive relics, have their own uses under the right situations. Its pacing is great, its ichor and checkpoint system ensures that people will be able to complete the game no matter what without feeling patronized...
Perhaps it's conservative - but what Shovel Knight does is establish a solid base to further elaborate upon and experiment with.
But I'm a bit of a base person, myself. Shovel Knight is approachable, easy to get, well paced, with a narrative that's primarily shown through symbolism more than anything. Perhaps its feats can get a little too tedious - but that's the only slight I could say about the game.
It's games like this that make me love platformers.
Look at Mario: he had established so elegantly a gameplay, a cast, and a story so malleable that it could be supported to fit anything they could possibly desire. Paper Mario so convincingly fits the general idea of the platformers into the form of a JRPG; Yoshi, introduced in Super Mario World proved so capable that they continue to make games all about him and his species; and Wario manages to take everything Super Mario had done, deconstruct it and still somehow manage to make it all work.
From his footsteps would other franchises and series also take root - including Sonic the Hedgehog, and platformers as a whole, such as Mega Man and Castlevania.
And Yacht Club, in the year 2014, made a Mario to call their own.
Shovel Knight learned so much from the games before it, and managed to deliver something practically on par with the bests, and surpassed many.
Its design is focused, deliberate, determined on allowing the player to make the most of their kit in very intuitive ways: even the Chaos Orb and Alchemy Coin, the two most unintuitive relics, have their own uses under the right situations. Its pacing is great, its ichor and checkpoint system ensures that people will be able to complete the game no matter what without feeling patronized...
Perhaps it's conservative - but what Shovel Knight does is establish a solid base to further elaborate upon and experiment with.
But I'm a bit of a base person, myself. Shovel Knight is approachable, easy to get, well paced, with a narrative that's primarily shown through symbolism more than anything. Perhaps its feats can get a little too tedious - but that's the only slight I could say about the game.
It's games like this that make me love platformers.