Shovel Knight Wii-U Review

Shovel Knight was a Kickstart success story while it was on the clock to become funded. The crowd funding ended on April 13th, 2013 and when the dust settled, after setting a $75,000 goal, Yacht Club Games received over three times that amount and $311,502 was pledged to the creation of this game. What was originally described as “a sweeping classic action adventure game with awesome gameplay, memorable characters, and an 8-bit retro aesthetic,” Shovel Knight has now released just over a year later. So now that it has, was it worth all of the support that it received and live up to its promises?

Presentation

From the second the game starts, Shovel Knight truly feels like you are playing a different era of gaming. The looks, the characters, and the sounds all come together to feel like a game that folks can imagine playing on a NES. To add to the overall feel of this being a retro game, there is no actual verbal hand holding in this title. The first level may be pretty simple so players can get used to it, but if you cannot figure out how to jump or dig, the game itself will not tell you. From then on in the world map to the town, everything has nostalgia to past retro titles without feeling like a rip off but a complete entity of its own. I also have to say that The Order of No Quarter, the alliance of bad guys who are your main bosses, are very charming and interesting characters that I loved meeting throughout the entire game.

Gameplay

The gameplay feels great. The game features some very unique platforming experiences and mechanics, all of which feel very crisp. Shovel Knights main combat is his ability to thrust downward onto his enemies with his shovel and continue to bounce on to other platforms or enemies. I have seen many complaints about the game not being difficult enough but I think Shovel Knight nailed it with how they handled how difficult to make the game. There is no actual difficulty setting that you can change, but you choose how to make the game difficult. My favorite way they did this was by making checkpoints optional. When Shovel Knight arrives at a checkpoint the player can choose to not accept it. The player can destroy the checkpoint and receive extra loot to spend on power ups or armor. But by doing this, if the player dies, they get brought back either to the nearest checkpoint that was not destroyed or the beginning of the level. A gamer like myself, one who died a lot through the first play though, would get frustrated without the checkpoints and probably not finish it. Now that I have gotten better though I will be trying to not use them at all in my next go around. If going through the game without checkpoints is not tough enough still, a player can get to the final boss without getting a single item or upgrade if they would like to.

Lifespan

The game took me personally about seven and a half hours to complete the first time all the way through. I had gotten about 70% of the items and died just over 200 times. I died a lot and parts got frustrating for me but never felt impossible and it kept me coming back to get through it. After beating it once and figuring out the tricks, I wanted to jump right back in and play it again, find the items that I was missing and beat my previous score. So despite it being a rather short game, this is a title that can have a lot of replay value just out of how much fun the game play is. There are also plenty “Feats,” objectives that are similar trophies and achievements, to go back and accomplish as well. That is all for what is in the game now but Shovel Knight is supposed to have free DLC on the way including the ability to play as some of the bosses, and a 4-player battle mode as well which are very welcome additions.

Overall

This is a gem to the Nintendo E-shop but it is also a gem to all games this year. With memorable characters, fun gameplay, innovative difficulty settings, and a killer soundtrack, Shovel Knight is not only a Kickstart success story from the amount of money it received, but also it is a success in the product that came from that successful Kickstart campaign.