Title: Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope
Original Release: June 26, 2014 (Multiple)
Finished Release: Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (Switch, 2017)
Earlier this year, I was one of the lucky few to acquire a Nintendo Switch on launch day. Hell, going by the press zeitgeist at the time, I was one of the lucky fewer to have absolutely no problems with either my switch or the controllers.
So, it's a brand new game system, and what's the most important decision you have to make? Well, that would be the first game to buy for it, of course. For me, like most people (I would assume), that first game was a no-brainer: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, of which I bought the collector's edition. It was a really good day.
But I wasn't quite satisfied. I wanted to play the Switch, but not always something as big as Zelda. Sometimes you want a snack. So when it came time to buy a second game (and because Pocket Rumble still hasn't actually come out), I snatched up Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove.
I had been interested in Shovel Knight since I discovered the Kickstarter campaign for it... about six months after it ended. What I saw honestly kind of blew me away. I know it's old news by this point, but indie game development has really become something worth keeping your eye on. And yes, I know indie studios had already been churning out great games for years by this point. But Shovel Knight was different.
Shovel Knight was one of the first (if not the first) indie games that caught my eye as being more than just a collection of great game mechanics. The team at Yacht Club Games were building a world. They were crafting a great game with a fun throwback art style and a unique story, but the greatest hook of all was the character of Shovel Knight himself.
Creating an iconic character is an extremely difficult proposition. Trust me, I've been trying for more than ten years to come up with one great character that I can truly count on. But, whether by accident or design, Yacht Club had created one. Shovel Knight is, in my mind, what Mario was in the '80s and '90s: a simple yet elegant character that could not only show what his game's genre could do, but could also rise beyond the game he's in and enter the mainstream, at least for gamers. And no, he wasn't the first indie game character to do this, but to me he was the first to really blow the door open.
And now indie devs are taking the characters (and stories) in their games just as seriously as the mechanics of the games themselves. And now we have great, dare I say iconic, characters all over the place: Owlboy, Hollow Knight, Slugcat, Flinthook, Cuphead, and wow they're all just two words shoved together. But y'know what? It's fine because I love them. Again, I'm not saying Shovel Knight caused all this, but it was the first game that showed me that it could be done.
Anyway, enough of that. So yeah, I had had my eye on Shovel Knight since its release, but had never managed to convince myself to go for it. But then I discovered the Treasure Trove collection on Switch. For those not in the know, Treasure Trove is as complete a Shovel Knight experience as you can get, with the base game and all current and future expansion content included. Today I'll be focusing on the base campaign, recently renamed Shovel of Hope, with the other games getting reviews of their own because, quite frankly, they deserve it. So how is it?
Well, let me get this out of the way immediately: if you have any interest in Shovel Knight and, preferably, access to a Nintendo Switch, go buy it right now. I mean it, you've read enough of my rambling. Seriously. But hey, if you want to read more, far be it from me to deny you.
So what exactly is Shovel Knight? Well, it's an 8-bit action platformer with light RPG mechanics and loads of secrets. Basically, imagine you fused Mega Man with the Ducktales NES game. And yes, I know that would give you the Darkwing Duck game for the same system, but imagine you used the Potara earrings instead of the fusion dance. You'd get Shovel Knight.
We'll start with the story. It's simple, maybe even basic... at first. There's a bit more depth than you might expect, though a lot of it admittedly only shows itself in the expansion content. Still, what's here is fun to see.
Shovel Knight and his (or her) partner (in more ways than one?) Shield Knight are treasure hunters, living exciting lives of high adventure. All this changes, however, when exploring the mysterious Tower of Fate goes awry. Shovel Knight barely escapes with his (or her) life, but Shield Knight isn't so lucky. The Tower is sealed, and Shovel Knight, wrought with grief, gives up his heroic lifestyle.
Time passes, and in due time, the land is overrun by the foul monsters serving the Enchantress (or Enchanter) and a group of knights (all with a particular theme) called The Order of No Quarter. With the land in jeopardy, and the Tower of Fate somehow involved, Shovel Knight has no choice but to once again take up his eponymous digging implement in the name of good.
Oh, and if you're wondering why my gender pronouns seem optional, it's because Yacht Club recently added a feature wherein you can choose the sex and gender of each and every principal character. That means Shovel Knight, Shield Knight, the Enchantress, and all of the Order of No Quarter. New opposite-sex designs were made for all of them, and the sex and gender options aren't even tied together. Outside of being a big step forward for inclusion in video games (which it is), it's also just a really cool bit of customization. I didn't actually use it in my game, since I wanted the experience as originally planned, but I'll never complain about options.
The presentation, both visually and aurally, are top-notch examples of what the game is trying to bring across. I know that pixel graphics are a big point of contention these days, with a lot of people thinking it's been done to death. I agree to a certain extent that the aesthetic might have become a bit too common, but Shovel Knight is an entirely different beast. Yacht Club didn't decide to use 8-bit graphics because it's popular. Instead, they set out to make an NES game, and that's exactly what they did. Pretty much the entirety of the presentation seems to have been approached with an eye for accuracy to what the NES would have been capable of.
Okay, so it's meticulously thought-out throwback, sure, but is it actually appealing? Well, I guess in the end it's going to come down to personal preference. For me personally, it's amazing. The color palette is bright and vibrant. There's tons of little attention to detail, and the characters are all extremely charming. There's not a single dud among the principal cast, and a lot of that is owed to the character sprites themselves. They're all so quirky and unique and memorable. And even a lot of the side characters stand out as being memorable in their own right.
Beyond that, the music and sound effects are spot-on. Nearly all the tunes are catchy, and I found myself humming along quite a bit. The sound effects are satisfying, sometimes silly, but just a real treat to listen to.
And after all that, we come to the gameplay. And let me tell you, I was not disappointed in the slightest. The controls are tight and responsive. Shovel Knight himself does what you tell him to do when you tell him to do it. It's amazing, too, since it's a relatively simple control scheme: run, jump, shovel, subweapon. It's pretty basic, and yet within that framework there's a surprising amount of complexity, especially when you add in all the different subweapons, which can sometimes dramatically change the way the game is played. I don't know how else to say it, it all just feels right.
So yes, the basic campaign for Shovel Knight, retroactively named Shovel of Hope, is a massive success. It hits every target it intends to and then some. It is a perfect example of what a throwback game should be. It pays homage to the games that came before it while simultaneously doing its own thing. And it does all of it extremely well, and, more often than not, even manages to surpass the classics it seeks to emulate.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - Various
Playing - Hollow Knight (2017)
Reading - Kamen Rider Spirits (2001)
Watching - Kamen Rider Drive (2014)
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