Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

KickStarter Shovel Knight - for PC Wii-U and 3DS - Released

sbb

Learned
Joined
Jun 21, 2014
Messages
541
bad horns
 

Farage

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Feb 17, 2014
Messages
596

That was really, really well said.
I get a little uncomfortable on how people need to criticize everything on the game industry these days, but this one is for a good reason, since the amount of retro platformers out there is just way too high.
 

Phage

Arcane
Manlet
Joined
Jan 10, 2010
Messages
4,696
this game was so fucking good wtf are you fucking faggots serious? of course i'm not even remotely surprised that the fucking codex would have almost zero real discussion about this actual god-tier game while you circlejerk over shit like banner shit saga fucking deplorable FUCK
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
And it still doesn't allow them to make a low tier middle class revenue. $15 games on Steam sales instead of $50 boxes games are totally the future of game development studios!
FYI, half of that $50 price tag goes to the retail store. Then the console maker and the publisher take a cut.

-Team of 6 people
-Kickstarter funds of $300,000
-Steam cut of 30%
-180,000 sales at $15 each
-1 year of living like a gypsie

$500,000 before expenses per person for a well-executed Ducktails re-skin. (Plus the long tail via various steam sales for the next couple of years.)

Not a bad payday if you pick the right game to ape. Wouldn't be surprised if their next project uses SNES Aladdin for inspiration.
 

Phage

Arcane
Manlet
Joined
Jan 10, 2010
Messages
4,696
FYI, half of that $50 price tag goes to the retail store. Then the console maker and the publisher take a cut.

-Team of 6 people
-Kickstarter funds of $300,000
-Steam cut of 30%
-180,000 sales at $15 each
-1 year of living like a gypsie

$500,000 before expenses per person for a well-executed Ducktails re-skin. (Plus the long tail via various steam sales for the next couple of years.)

Not a bad payday if you pick the right game to ape. Wouldn't be surprised if their next project uses SNES Aladdin for inspiration.


Not quite that high since you need to subtract a large percentage from the kickstarter - something that people don't seem to grasp. Let's say you have 300k, now subtract 5% for Kickstarter's cut, then another 5% from card processing fees. Now subtract another arbitrary percentage from declined payments (when you have thousands of backers, you WILL get a significant portion with declined cards) After all this, subtract the costs for physical backer rewards.

Regardless, sure, the team likely made some moderate bank. Good. the game was fucking fantastic, and if you think it was a ducktails re-skin, then I highly doubt you played it. It borrows more heavily from Mega Man overall. Regardless, the true triumph of this game is that it is significantly better than all of the NES titles it drew inspiration from. I'd much rather have the Shovel Knight guys making a few hundred K for years of work than the vast majority of devs that randomly strike it rich.
 
Last edited:

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
Not quite that high since you need to subtract a large percentage from the kickstarter - something that people don't seem to grasp. Let's say you have 300k, now subtract 5% for Kickstarter's cut, then another 5% from card processing fees. Now subtract another arbitrary percentage from declined payments (when you have thousands of backers, you WILL get a significant portion with declined cards) After all this, subtract the costs for physical backer rewards.

Regardless, sure, the team likely made some moderate bank. Good. the game was fucking fantastic, and if you think it was a ducktails re-skin, then I highly doubt you played it. It borrows more heavily from Mega Man overall. Regardless, the true triumph of this game is that it is significantly better than all of the NES titles it drew inspiration from. I'd much rather have the Shovel Knight guys making a few hundred K for years of work than the vast majority of devs that randomly strike it rich.
You are correct that I haven't played the game. Early promos made me believe it was another one of those procedurally generated games so it flew under my radar.

What I said was not a dig at them. Ducktails was a great game and by all accounts they executed their version well. I'd be interested to hear why you think it is mechanically more like Megaman.

My interest is more in the financials of an indie game like this. They released on many platforms at once. I wonder if they could have had the same results with one or two fewer team members by targeting their initial release only on Steam instead of Steam + Wii + DS.
 

Phage

Arcane
Manlet
Joined
Jan 10, 2010
Messages
4,696
I'd be interested to hear why you think it is mechanically more like Megaman.

Honestly, you really should just give the game a whirl, it's fantastic. But, having said that - on the superficial level, the story is quite mega man esque (Defeat 8 themed bosses, knights as opposed to robots on themed stage, before reaching a final level, which features a boss rush with all the knights again) the stage layout is very mega man esque (hard to put into words). Each stage features a large mini-boss creature like in some mega man stages. The boss fights themselves play out very similarly to mega man bosses, just minus the elemental weaknesses - for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbKZjuUnsaw

There are a lot of other shoutouts to other NES titles, like wall turkey (castlevania), an over world reminiscent of SMB3 and whatnot, but overall it gives me a mega man vibe more than anything else.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
What is the difficulty on it like? From what I've seen it looks pretty tame, which makes me think I'd get bored fairly quickly.
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
Honestly, you really should just give the game a whirl, it's fantastic. But, having said that - on the superficial level, the story is quite mega man esque (Defeat 8 themed bosses, knights as opposed to robots on themed stage, before reaching a final level, which features a boss rush with all the knights again) the stage layout is very mega man esque (hard to put into words). Each stage features a large mini-boss creature like in some mega man stages. The boss fights themselves play out very similarly to mega man bosses, just minus the elemental weaknesses - for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbKZjuUnsaw

There are a lot of other shoutouts to other NES titles, like wall turkey (castlevania), an over world reminiscent of SMB3 and whatnot, but overall it gives me a mega man vibe more than anything else.
I will pick it up when I have a chance to play it.

Now, I fully admit I could be wrong about this, but the Megaman parallels seem rather superficial. It is understandable they played them up in the kickstarter given the Mighty No. 9 success and the relative obscurity of Ducktails.

When I look at the moment-to-moment gameplay in the videos I see collecting gems, pogo jumping, melee attacks, and digging for treasure. The essense of a Megaman game is not the 8 stages, it is gaining the weapon of a defeated boss to use in defeating the next boss. If the secondary weapons in shovel knight work that way, the videos didn't do a good job of showing it.
 

Phage

Arcane
Manlet
Joined
Jan 10, 2010
Messages
4,696
What is the difficulty on it like? From what I've seen it looks pretty tame, which makes me think I'd get bored fairly quickly.

Depends on a few factors. Compared to, say, Mega Man 2, it isn't that hard. I'd akin it to MMX in terms of difficulty. Having said that, you can manually destroy checkpoints to receive bonus gold, which of course will make the game significantly harder. I personally didn't have too much trouble save for a few spots towards the end, but I have seen numerous people on the steam forums and /v/ complaining that the game is too hard. Take from that whatever you will.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom