Worst Game of 2014: Shovel Knight

[Lucky]

The free expansion is out, at last.

Spoiler

Plague of Shadows Now Available!

By: Yacht Club Games on September 17, 2015

World class platforming, music, storytelling, and art all return in Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows, available now to all owners of Shovel Knight! Pick up the FREE DLC on your platform of choice – Wii U, 3DS, Xbox One, PS4, PS Vita, PS3, Windows/Mac/Linux (Steam, GOG, Humble)! Extract the potion’s key ingredients from Plague Knight’s former allies… the villainous knights of the Order of No Quarter! Take on the explosive quest with a new play style, new story, new bosses, and more!

Wait…how do you download a free update! If you’re lost, check this page out to find your way!

Make sure you pick up the original quest first!


What’s new!
Okay…really though…what is Plague of Shadows? Let’s break down all the content:

Pick up the New Adventure!!

A new adventure starring Plague Knight!

• See your favorite game from a new point of view. Play through Shovel Knight’s quest, but as the explosive trickster Plague Knight with new gameplay and story.
• Explode onto the scene as Plague Knight! Use explosives, bomb jumps, and alchemy to blast your way through the game in a whole new way!
• Combine casing, fuses, powders to create your favorite bomb. Customize your jump and arcana and discover all 9,720 attack combinations!
• Find new armors, secrets, collectibles, easter eggs, and more!
• Master Plague Knight’s mobility to defeat new bosses!
• Discover brand new areas and new paths through the classic levels!
• Use your arcana in challenging new side areas!
• Learn more of the background story behind the beloved characters in the village and the villainous Order of No Quarter.
• Is your science up to snuff? Take on Plague Knight specific challenges with new Feats!

Prove your mettle in Challenge mode

• 10 Shovel Knight Courses: timed challenges, puzzles, enemy survival, and intense platforming!
• 5 Plague Knight Challenges: Prove you’re the master of Plague Knight’s new bag of tricks!
• 32 Boss Challenges: Revisit the boss fights as Plague Knight and Shovel Knight under new conditions – low health, limited weapons, time limits, and higher stakes!

Brushing up on your alchemy!
If you’re still confused, get out your beakers and Bunsen burners, and get to work studying the science behind Plague Knight:

Plague of Shadows Instruction Manual

Plague of Shadows Mobility Design

Plague of Shadows Mobility Tips and Tricks

Plague of Shadows Press Kit

We poured our hearts and souls into Plague Knight, and we hope everyone truly enjoys the new update! Please let us know what you think!

Don’t forget, you’ll need to clear the game as Shovel Knight to take on Plague Knight’s new adventure and Challenge Mode! There might be another way to unlock Plague Knight too …

Celebration Stream!
We’re super excited about the launch of the game, so we want you to join us instead of playing, ha! For those of you who can pull yourselves away from the new update or multi-task, we’ll be playing lots of games and talking about the development at 8PM PDT Today (9/17). Join us on our twitch channel then!

The title kind of reminds me of 'Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow'. Probably incidental.

 

[Gozma]

Pretty much agreed re: Dust. While it's an impressive job for one dude (I think he outsourced the music and voicework but thats about it?) objectively it's just bad compared to other games of the same genre. I think it's pretty illustrative that games like Cave Story and Iji are far superior overall, despite also being the work of a single guy and having very cheap graphics. Iji in particular is amazing and not known nearly well enough, it's a crime that Cave Story got discovered but not Iji.



Fucking hell I need to play that game again.

The art having that "I was drawn by a 17-year-old nonasian anime fan with very low capacity for self-criticism" look probably doomed it.

 

[pakoito]

If you guys are complaining about Dust, try Valdis Story instead. Metroidvania, combat is okay but not great, 4 characters now, nice bosses.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Shovel Knight is fucking great. I usually despise these modern indie cash-grabs with vomit inducing shitpixels, but Shovel Knight doesn't fall into that category at all. It's a lovingly made game that really shows the team's profound understanding of sprite techniques used at the time. It's got tons of personality, and feels like playing an ideal NES game with a much broader color palette and no annoying flicker. It's got a killer soundtrack, too. It really doesn't feel like the people who made this want to evoke nostalgia for something they didn't live through - I would be surprised if there are a lot of young people on the team. The art director is probably mid 30s or early 40s.

My only complaint is that it's way too easy, and that powerups being entirely optional is kind of underwhelming. The secrets are fun to find, but they lead to gold that leads to you being able to buy shit you don't need earlier to make an easy game even easier. It's also basically impossible to fail, dying has very little penalty (none, really) and there are too many checkpoints per level.

Other than that though, it's an impressive game that had me smiling the whole time. Can't say the same at all for 99.9% of the rest of the 'retro' shit that gets released, which is just plain incompetent. Not to mention the godawful Flash inspired drivel that was all the rage a few years ago.

 

[Siveon]

Not to mention the godawful Flash inspired drivel that was all the rage a few years ago.

I assume you're referring to Super Meat Boy? I don't remember others playing much like Flash games.

 

[Great Deceiver]

The final version of Super Meat Boy was pretty good, I was referring to 2deep4u pap like Braid.

 

[Cadmus]

I agree with the thread title, faux-retro platformers should be wiped off the Earth.

 

[Rivmusique]

Playing this again recently because of the Spectre Knight release. Finished my half done NG+ from release and then did Spectre and Plague campaigns and all the challenges.

The challenges for all were quite fun, made me use items and abilities in ways I never had to in the main game. Plague's campaign was very similar to Shovel's, but his abilities were different enough for it to be worth a run if it's been awhile since playing the original. Spectre's levels felt hugely different, with only a few screens of some levels being the same as Shovel's, as well as Spectre playing differently. His NG+ was more interesting. It gives you a single resource bar that constantly depletes, getting hit will take a huge chunk out and using items also drops it a little. I'd probably say I enjoyed Spectre more than Shovel, even.

Looking forward to the next campaign, King Knight, and to see what YCG does next.

 

[pakoito]

Did the Plague campign change in a meaningful way in NG+?

 

[Rivmusique]

I didn't play it, but http://shovelknight.wikia.com/wiki/New_Game_Plus doesn't have a separate bullet for it like it does for Spectre, so it's probably the same as Shovel.

 

[Ivan]

This is the 4th entry in the Shovel Knight project, this time featuring King Knight. Overall I found this to be a more shallow experience than the previous entries. The levels felt much more bite-sized than the other campaigns. Not sure if memory is failing me here, but I breezed through most levels. The difficulty only ramps up later on which is a shame considering this is the sendoff campaign. There are some unique bosses in store which are nice, and some tweaked mechanics to make King Knight unique, but it's nohwhere near as unique as Specter or Plague. I wasn't a fan of the new card minigame they introduce either. I found it kind of jarring in a gameplay sense. Thankfully that's optional. I'm really looking forward to Yacht Club's next original project. At last they can let this series come to a close and develop something brand new again.

 

[Valky]

Finished the second group of areas in King of Cards.

Shovel of Hope: Standard playthrough, worth it for the original shovel knight.
Plague of Shadows: The playstyle of plague knight is a lot more floaty and quick than shovel knight, and there are like 2 new bosses, but other than that the playthrough is the exact same as shovel knight, so this feels like the weakest one by far.
Spectre of Torment: The playthrough had a different story and some differences in stages and bosses, on top of spectre knight having a different playstyle somewhere between shovel knight and plague knight. My playtime is 4.8~ hours, so this is probably the shortest campaign of them all, albeit fun.
King of Cards: The playthrough is entirely new. Every level is new, there are more levels, there are new enemies, new bosses, new story, king knight has a different playstyle than the other knights, and there is a rather involved joustus minigame which can make the playthrough additionally unique. (I personally enjoy it a lot, also I want to collect all the cards. There is a surprising amount of depth to it mechanics wise as it progresses, although I'm starting to feel power creep from getting all of the best kinds of cards for my deck.) One significant note to have in mind is that while there are more levels in this playthrough than the other ones, the lengths of the levels are all shorter than the other playthroughs. E.G. I have not found a single level with more than 2 checkpoints so far, while there were almost always 4 or more in other playthroughs IIRC. My playthrough at this point is 10 hours and I'm either 2/3 or 3/5 finished with the game. Joustus is a decent chunk of the value to be had so if you hate it then this campaign will just be ok. But if you like it then as a full package this will probably be the biggest campaign yet, YCG really knocked it out of the park this time.

For knight playstyles;
Shovel Knight- Slowest, sturdiest
King Knight- Second slowest, almost as sturdy
Spectre Knight- Second fastest, second most floaty
Plague Knight- Fastest, most floaty

I didn't take into account the additional items you can carry that give extra abilities, there are tons all different between the four campaigns but they are fairly ignorable.

Campaigns;
King Knight- Most variety and I'm only at the second (of possibly 4 it looks like) map segments. Best campaign IMO.
Shovel Knight- Original campaign and the most standard feeling, safest design wise so second best IMO.
Spectre Knight- Next most different campaign in its own right.
Plague Knight- Mona NPC, 2 new bosses IIRC, and plague knights playstyle but levels are all the same so it feels like a copy of Shovel Knights campaign. Weakest IMO right after completing Shovel of Hope but you might enjoy it more than Shovel of Hope if you play this first.

I see there's also a battle mode trying to be shovel knights super smash bros clone, and it has a story mode, which I haven't tried, but you get to play as other knights in the game that didn't get their own campaign so there could be some fun stuff here.

As a full package, at the $15 I purchased it for back around 2014/2015, I kept getting these free campaigns drip fed over the years so it has been a solid and enjoyable experience. It's now $40 from all of the extra stuff added if you want to get the complete package, but the campaigns are also sold individually at $10 a piece. You'll get between 8 and 15 hours of solid gameplay that doesn't pad itself out per campaign. (Unless you play shovel knight and plague knight back to back which will get boring). Funny enough YCG isn't selling plague's standalone campaign on GOG, just the rest.

Difficulty can be tough at times and you can probably make it easier if you abuse the relic items that use your "mana" stat, but it is fairly average/easy for the most part. Looks like new game plus modes increase damage you take and impose additional gameplay restrictions/changes to you, so could be more challenging. There are challenge levels in the main menu you can play to test your mastery of each individual game feature like jumping, attacking, individual relics, etc that can be fun. The nostalgia grab aspect of the game is well earned unlike a lot of pixelshit, because they do it fairly faithfully for the most part while making a game that can stand on its own.
Decent game 6/10, slightly above average and worth playing but not a must play if you're not interested.

Spoiler

You can see someone with political motivations finally managed to put their degenerate touch on the game very slightly in this last update, KingKang Knight has a black mother in the campaign lel.

 

[Matador]

Overrated game. Not bad.

 

[Optimist]

Oh hey, it's got a thread.

I spent the end of 2019 playing a bit of Dominions, and putting a number of traveling hours into Shovel Knight games. After playing through the original two years ago, I rushed through the three add-ons in two weeks (I had to travel quite a lot) and the most surprising thing is that even though a bit of fatigue crept in at the end, I had lots of fun with these games. It might have something to do with me being brought up on NES platformers, but even if my amusement derived partially from nostalgia - I was amused anyways.

All the games are solid platformers in their own right, with precise controls, diverse movesets, purdy graphics and sound design that gets a bit old with the third or fourth campaign, but is still solid, Kaufmann quality.

Other than my overall opinion, it is hard to add anything to what Valky above said. If you want to play through all the games, and are not sure if you'll have enough time to go through all of them, I suggest doing the Shovel Knight OC, then King of Cards, them Spectre of Torment, ending with Plague. OC serves as a good introduction, King of Cards has great, bite-sized map construction (it was the only of the series which I tried to 100%), and the Joustous is a nice diversion (even if the games can be somewhat chaotic until the very end). Spectre is probably the shortest and the easiest of them all, which gives you a bit of a power trip, while Plague was a constant struggle for control, with occasional hail-Mary jumps and last-second recoveries.

 

[Valky]

I think I know this hentai plot.

Spoiler