The Shovel Knight amiibo may be the most unique and interesting amiibo, simply because it is the first indie amiibo to be released. In a recent interview with Ian and David from Yacht Club Games, they talked about how the Shovel Knight amiibo came to be.

David D’Angelo: That started in 2014, the possibility of it even happening – what it would look like, what it could do.

David: Yeah, Nintendo said “pitch us on it” when they showed us the New 3DS. We started chatting about ideas with amiibo and they asked us whether we wanted to formally pitch to do an amiibo. That kind of thing is strange, like you’re sending a paper to no-one! But the whole thing was shocking, really, they kept saying let’s move this forward, and we couldn’t believe it was going to happen.

Ian: The excitement leading up to it was something else. What was funny was that we were waiting for the announcement, website, trailer and stuff like that, and retailers kept leaking it. It was tricky to get the information out there. It’s one thing to leak that it’s a thing, but it’s another to leak that it’s in a game series it’s not! There was a lot of information around, and we couldn’t easily say it was wrong without talking about it fully.

Ian: Yeah, we had to say it was a mis-listing, so not denying everything. We had people getting pre-emptively mad about the release date, pricing. All mad at details that were incorrect. We’re pretty receptive online and tried to answer queries.

Ian: So we tried to calm everyone down and put out a definitive update with full details. But that was fun, a few guys were at PAX for the reveal at the [email protected] event, and we were all excited that we had prototypes in a box. The guys were keeping them under their coats at the hotel so that we kept a lid on it, yet the whole time that was happening images were online. It was a bubble where the guys at the event were keeping a secret, but EVERYONE in the entire would knew about it.

But still, it was an immensely exciting day with everything coming together.