Indie game show and tell: Shovel Knight

by | Nov 16, 2019 | Cool Games & Art

Shovel Knight is an 2d platformer by Yacht Club Games. After a very successful Kickstarter the game was released on 2014 for all platforms. The game is Mega man like where you complete levels and each with unique bosses and collecting power up. Shovel Knight uses 8-bit pixel art to give a retro feeling. Even though the game has a retro graphical style, the game feels fresh and unique. The main mechanic of Shovel Knight have you jump and uses your shovel to bounce on enemies and other stuffs. Each stage is unique and difficult to some degree the bosses is definitely the highlight. There are 8 knights/bosses, a stage before the final boss and the final boss itself. The bosses is difficult initial but with enough practices, they can be defeated without taking damage. An unique mechanic to this game is that you can destroy the checkpoints in each stages. By destroying these checkpoints you essentially make the game more difficult for yourself. If you destroy all of them in a single stage you have to redo the entire stage when you die. I heard of this game for while and I decided to watch a let’s play of it. The let’s play convinced me to get it on my 3DS. By the time I got the game there were 2 DLC already released for free. Each DLC is a full on campaign, essentially you get 3 games for the price of one. Each DLC features one of the bosses as the main protagonist. Each knight plays differently and have different mechanic to make the game feel fresh. I later found out that the DLC was decided by the fans. Yacht Club Game held a voting poll for which 3 bosses to be the playable for the DLC. This fan interaction is one of the reason as to why I love indie games. Another reason that I love indie game it’s its music. Shovel Knight has a high energy and jumpy 8-bit soundtrack. The main composer of Shovel Knight is Jake Kaufman who is also responsible for the soundtrack of another famous indie game: Shantae. 2 music in the game was composed by the composer of Mega man: Manami Matsumi. I have completed the base game with along with both DLC and their new game plus, as well as some challenge mode. Shovel Knight is definitely one of my best game of all time.