Shovel Knight

Why has no one yet made a topic for this yet?


Well, this is another awesome Indie Game that used Kickstarter in it's development, and has finally been released. It's about a Knight who uses a Shovel as his weapon and tool, going on a quest to save his partner, The Shield Knight, from an Enchantress and her many Evil Knights. It's got that sort of Old-School Megaman Vibe to it, but with some sort of exploration Legend of Zelda-style platformer added in, and it's quite challenging too.

Anyone else here like Shovel Knight? I think that it's okay, though I liked Freedom Planet better. What's your opinion on it?

Megaman (mechanics/theme) + Castlevania (some combat mechanics) + SMB2 (over world map) + Duck Tales (pogo mechanics).

Unquestionably one of - if not THE best modern "retro" style games around, sporting tight controls and splendid pseudo 8-bit sprite work and music. Unfortunately the gameplay is not as tight as it needs to be with difficulty highly uneven throughout the game: HP becomes completely trivialized as health pickups are abundant and certain skills essentially becomes jailfree card to most bad situations. Despite that, the game tries its darn hardest to instant kill you later on (resulting in everything HP related completely pointless), rendering it essentially Dark Soul-esque and requires (often forcing) you to stop, wait and think whilst punishing any attempt to brute force or blind speed run (which may be some people's cup of tea, but not mine as I prefer fast and fluid progression). Oh and the bosses are probably the easiest part of the game compared to its endless death traps that are its stages later on.

For its arguably minor downfalls, the game is still helluva fun and offers a memorable experience, again, its retro sprite work is absolutely second to none (actual GOOD retro spritework rather than the typical lazy block of fucking mess you see in most typical "retro-style" games), and its OSTs ( listenable here: http://virt.bandcamp.com/album/shovel-knight-original-soundtrack , two personal highlights would be "Strike The Earth!" and "La Danse Macabre") are absolutely rocking and contain some contributions from even the original composer of Megaman.

Armored Entity wrote:

but with some sort of exploration Legend of Zelda-style platformer added in

???

I thought it was Legend Of Zelda like in the way that collecting treasure is rather important, and how many times, what looks like just background scenery is actually something you can blow open to access a secret area or something.

I do agree that it is very fun, though tough, especially near the end, and I love the music. I kinda wish someone would make a more "Modern-Sounding" remix of some of the tracks, but they are still good in their retro-sound nonetheless.


My favorite stages (both the stage and bosses part) were Propeller Knight's, Plague Knight's, and Tinker Knight's stages.

There is an official arranged album, but it's rather mediocre for the most part.

http://virt.bandcamp.com/album/strike-the-earth-shovel-knight-arranged

Yes, I could see that, especially since it forgets a bunch of the tracks.

Oh well, I guess I can hope that OCremix or some people on Newgrounds or someone else remixes the others.