Shovel Knight



Shovel Knight is a sweeping classic action adventure game with awesome gameplay, memorable characters, and an 8-bit retro aesthetic created by Yacht Club Games. You play as the eponymous Shovel Knight, a small knight with a huge quest. Shovel Knight has come to The Valley with two goals: to defeat the evil Enchantress and her Order of No Quarter, and save his lost beloved and adventuring partner, Shield Knight. He wields a ShovelBlade; a multipurpose weapon whose techniques have now been lost to the ages. Always honest and helpful, Shovel Knight is a shining example of the code of Shovelry: Slash Mercilessly and Dig Tirelessly!

Starting life as a humble indie game developed for PC and Nintendo consoles (Wii U and 3DS at the time), Shovel Knight's crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter proved to be such a smashing success that it grew into a true juggernaut of a title that can rub shoulders with the big boys in the mainstream gaming world. Three DLC campaigns would be added as years passed, each starring a member of the Order of No Quarters. First came Plague of Shadows, a campaign that runs parallel to Shovel Knight's adventure where you play as Plague Knight as he betrays his fellow Knights in a mad bid to create the most powerful potion in history.

While that campaign was basically a reskin of the first game but with different gameplay and a unique story, the campaigns that followed would carve out more of a distinct identity for themselves. Specter of Torment and King of Cards feel like entirely different games with unique levels and bosses tailored to the gameplay of Specter Knight and King Knight respectively, with both campaigns being prequels detailing how both Knights fell in with the Enchantress to begin with while shedding new light on their simplistic personalities. And topping off the game's updates is the game's Battle Mode, a Super Smash Bros. clone that allows you to play as many of the game's significant characters in an intense, quirky four-player platform fighter!


 * Affably Evil: Propeller Knight is a suave, classy fellow who's unfailingly polite towards just about everyone despite being a murderous sky pirate.
 * All the Worlds Are a Stage: The Tower of Fate, not in terms of appearance but in terms of gimmicks, since just about every stage gimmick makes a return here.
 * Ambiguously Human: In a world where humans and Funny Animals coexist in harmony, there's no telling if most of the Knights are actually human or not. Shield, Polar, and Specter are all explicitly human, and King Knight is most likely one given that his mother's a human woman. But the jury's out on all the others, even Shovel Knight!.
 * Ax Crazy: Plague Knight isn't exactly a beacon of sanity, given his nonstop giggling, love of explosions, and tendency to abuse and terrorize his minions. With that being said, Plague of Shadows shows that he isn't without his Hidden Depths.
 * Big Bad: The Enchantress, who serves as the ultimate threat of all four campaigns.
 * Bonus Boss: Quite a few of these are present. Occasionally, wandering travelers will pop up on the map, and if you cross paths with them you can get into a boss fight with one of three backer characters: Reize Seatlan, The Baz, or the Phantom Striker. There's also a fourth backer character named Mr. Hat, but he's in the Armor Outpost instead of wandering the land. The Hall of Champions also has a gigantic ghost haunting the place, and if you're playing on a Playstation or XBOX console? You get one of two crossover bosses: XBOX players get the Battletoads, but Playstation players? They get Kratos. Yes, THAT Kratos!
 * Boss Rush: As a nod to the Mega Man series, you fight all 8 of the game's main bosses back-to-back.
 * Classic Video Game "Screw You"s: It wouldn't be a proper send-up of classic gaming without these.
 * Auto-Scrolling Levels of the horizontal and vertical variety appear now and then.
 * Bottomless Pits.
 * Knockback, in conjunction with said Bottomless Pits. One purchasable suit of armor cancels out Knockback, but also causes you to move as though on ice. Speaking of ice...
 * Polar Knight's stage is a Slippy-Slidey Ice World.
 * Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belts are littered throughout Tinker Knight's stage, and make a brief reappearance in the Tower of Fate.
 * Spikes of Doom: Stationary spikes will instantly kill you with a prick, be they on the floors, walls, or ceiling. This can be an infuriating source of Fridge Logic, as Shovel Knight can weather far deadlier-looking attacks and obstacles and suffer at most two pips of damage.
 * Cute Witch: Female Plague Knight, courtesy of the game's Gender Flip mode. Mona,, is also a real cutie who doubles as a Hot Witch.
 * Dem Bones: Skeletons serve as prominent enemies in Specter Knight's stage, with Specter Knight being a skeleton himself.
 * Evil Counterpart: Black Knight to Shovel Knight. He looks like a meaner, edgier version of the latter, and has both a nasty disposition and a signature Evil Laugh.
 * Polar Knight also counts, due to being a shovel-wielding knight with a horned helmet of his own.
 * Funny Animal: Many can be seen among the game's townsfolk. You've got deer, peacocks, horses, chickens, and even the odd fishman here and there.
 * Green Hill Zone: The Plains of Passage, a pleasant grassland full of easy platforming challenges and rather weak enemies. It's where Shovel and Plague Knight's campaigns begin, though both Specter and King Knight get their own takes on this trope as well.
 * Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: For the most part, the biggest source of stress in a 'no-deaths recorded' run are the levels proper, as instant-death Bottomless Pits and Spikes of Doom can set you back by as much as 15 minutes of play. Meanwhile, most bosses lack instant-death attacks, and can be beaten with brute force and Ichors. The exceptions to this are Polar Knight (who can turn the floor into Spikes of Doom), Propeller Knight (whose arena features bottomless pits), and The Enchantress (whose fighting style revolves around breaking the ground of her arena so she can dunk you into a bottomless pit).
 * The Hero: Shovel Knight. It's in the title!
 * Horny Vikings: Polar Knight and his lackeys, who are scruffy-chinned barbarians who wear horned helmets and make their home in the frozen north.
 * Idiot Hero: Reize, who looks and acts the part of a stereotypical shonen hero, complete with rushing headfirst into bad situations without stopping to think.
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons: Dragon enemies make the odd appearance here and there, as expected for a game set in a medieval setting.
 * Jerkass: Black Knight is a cantankerous dickhead with a nasty attitude, especially towards Plague Knight. Near the climax of Plague of Shadows, he purely For the Evulz.
 * Plague of Shadows shows that Shovel Knight himself is a lot meaner than he lets on. Considering that this is only a semi-canon version of the story told through Plague Knight's perspective, though, Unreliable Narrator could certainly be in effect.
 * Mercy Invincibility: Taking damage even grants you temporary immunity to all damage, including the instant-death spikes.
 * Mole Men: Mole Knight, maybe. His armor gives off the impression of being a humanoid mole and allows him to burrow like one. The fact that he lives in a world populated by humans and Funny Animals certainly makes it possible.
 * Narcissist: King Knight, a vain and obnoxious Jerkass who cares for nothing other than himself. His only motivation for being a king is to make everyone bow down to him,.
 * Retraux: Unlike most modern games in the 8-bit style, which use the simple art style to cover up a lack of artistic talent, Shovel Knight's design is centered around the limitations of the consoles of the era.
 * Sprites are grid-locked to maintain the illusion of low-resolution gameplay.
 * Music and ambient sound was composed on the NES in order to maintain audio authenticity.
 * The fade-ins and fade-outs of the intro sequence are done via palette swaps, rather than simply adjusting the transparency.
 * Shovel Strike: This is, naturally, Shovel Knight's main method of attack. The same goes with Black Knight and Polar Knight, his brothers in Shovelry.
 * Shovelware: Actually, quite the opposite.
 * Villain Protagonist: Plague Knight, Specter Knight, and King Knight, who are the stars of their own DLC campaigns.