Shovel Knight

So I binged on the Game Time Show, Bro this weekend (great stuff guys!) and it really got me motivated to start polishing off some game titles that are already precariously close to being finished. (Yet, for whatever reason, I'm setting myself up to abandon them.) First on the list: Shovel Knight.

Recommended to me by B-Town over the holidays when I was struggling to find something to entertain myself while crashing at my parents’ house, this is a fresh take at an old school, 16-bit platformer. Simple controls, simple story, shit-tons of fun. The premise is there's an evil Enchantress threatening to takeover or destroy your world; a world full of knights and apparent human-like animals... 

...like a horse wearing a dress!

You are Shovel Knight (a knight who fights with a shovel) and on the pursuit to stop the Enchantress who has captured your love, Shield Knight (a girl-knight who fights with her shield… shocker!). While en route to save Shield Knight, you must fight the Enchantress’ Order of No Quarter – basically a bunch of knights determined to stop Shovel Knight at all costs.

The gameplay is great. Fluid controls that basically just depend on jumping hazards and swiping your shovel like a sword. You also become heavily dependent on using your shovel as a pogo-stick (a la that NES Scrooge McDuck game) where you can consecutively keep bouncing on enemies which is sometimes necessary to navigate various obstacles or pitfalls. You also can’t expect to wield a shovel without digging up the occasional dirt pile for jewels. Solid gameplay!

The art direction and sound design are well developed as well. The game has a really nice look with its polished, colorful 16-bit graphics that are utilized to give some fantastic atmospheric vibes. Not to mention a great range of themes and designs that keep things fresh and interesting as you progress through the different levels. Maybe you’re running through arctic terrain or seen as a silhouette atop a castle’s rooftop in a lightning storm or floating around in the obligatory underwater level (at least you don’t have to worry about your character drowning like in those damn Sonic games). And the music is classy as fuck. Check it out:

As I read some of the reviews for this indie-success of a game, a lot of people praise it for its story design. I’m not quite sure I agree with this praise. While it’s certainly not a bad story, it’s nothing I would write home about. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but all I got from it was a simple tale of your love being captured by some evil force and you have to go a save her. There is a bit of attention paid to the two towns you can visit, talking with the townsfolk while possibly exposing some hidden secrets. Still, while it’s nothing bad, it’s also nothing great, novel, or new.

What this game is, is an old-school platformer, perfected. Borrowing gameplay and layouts from some iconic classics like a map layout like Super Mario 3 or an item list resembling a Zelda game, it really pulls together many aspects I loved in gaming as child and assembled them together under one roof. 

Unfortunately, like most platforms, the game requires diligence in replaying levels several times (or more) in order to successfully conquer its obstacles. And this is where I fail as a gamer. My patience runs thin as I die again and again trying to beat some boss or dodge some tricky spike pits. Where the game almost had me was the second to last level. After playing through the whole game and beating every knight (each a boss to their own level), you stumble onto the Order of No Quarter having a nice potluck dinner together and then must defeat them all in one go. Needless to say, I died… a lot. Pretty much to the point where I figured this game was just not going to be beaten. Then, GTSB came and saved me. Miraculously, I found the motivation to revisit the level this past weekend and beat it on my first try. Go figure?

So, this post is less about a game and more about the bros that saved my gaming experience. Thank you Game Time Show, Bros! You are clearly gods among men… er, children.