Can you dig it?

8-bit styled games have been making a comeback recently; game developers who grew up with the NES want to pay homage to their favorite games they loved as a kid. If you saw the first episode of our new podcast, you’ll see that Yacht Club Games are one of these types of game developers.

With more and more 8-bit games making a comeback, you are bound to run into some garbage. You’re also going to run into some true gems, and Shovel Knight is one of the true gems in this case.

You play as the brave Shovel Knight, and you are off to defeat the Enchantress and save your friend. You’ll run into many enemies, all part of “The Order of No Quarter” all out to get you. The story isn’t that important in the outlook of this game, because the gameplay is just really good.



Before that, lets start with the graphics/music. The graphics are on the higher quality end of pixel art games, and the music is fantastic; Yacht Club Games outdid themselves with an amazing soundtrack that fits the game and is upbeat, perfect for an action game like Shovel Knight. I put it towards the top of my list of 8-bit/8-bit styled game soundtracks; it’s really that good.

To sum up the gameplay, it’s half platforming and half fighting enemies. The gameplay kind of feels like a classic NES action game; you’ll run into many enemies, and a boss is at the end. The bosses show up like Mega Man bosses; it’s hard to explain what that means in words, but I think any classic Mega Man fan knows what I mean.

The platforming half is actually not as hard as the gameplay videos make it out to be. I thought it would be near impossible, but honestly the main frustration is when you hit an airborne enemy and the fallback will knock you off of the platform. (Pro tip: play with the control pad, not the circle pad)



It’s hard to fit all the power-ups into a decent length review, so I’ll keep it short. There are relics that let you use certain abilities such as a fireball you can shoot at enemies, or activating temporary invincibility. These power-ups take up magic to use them, and if you don’t have enough magic available you can’t use it.

You can collect a power called “ichors” that give you different abilities, such as restoring all of your health and magic, or attracting treasure to Shovel Knight for a limited amount of time.

Speaking of treasure, I have my first thing to complain about. Treasure is important to keep, and not lose. Yes, you can lose treasure, and you can lose a lot of it if you’re not careful. If you die in any way, you will lose up to three bags of gold. Combined it’s usually worth from a quarter to half of your gold before you died. However you can retrieve these bags that appear where you died. That is if you don’t die again before you get there.

That brings me to my next point: Shovel Knight can be really hard at times, just like the 8-bit games that coined the term “Nintendo hard” but it’s not entirely brutal to the point where it’s impossible. If you come to grips with the fact that you’ll probably die at least once per level, you won’t feel that Shovel Knight is unfair. Luckily there are multiple checkpoints throughout the level, so you don’t have to worry too much about it.



The problem with losing treasure is that you need to acquire treasure to get these power ups, and the power up I most focused on was increasing Shovel Knight’s life meter. You will lose more health later in the game, so it is necessary to improve your health meter as the game progresses. If you lose too much treasure you might not have enough to buy a new power up that you may desperately need.

Shovel Knight is difficult; and it should be, after all it represents the 8-bit era, and those games were as hard or harder than Shovel Knight. You’ll have a blast with this 8-bit game, and unless you only like easy games, pick this fine indie game up today.

Score: 9.1/10
★★★★★★★★★☆

Main Pros: Great music, graphics, and gameplay

Main Cons: Difficulty may halt you from getting much needed power-ups

[disclaimer: I have not tried the streetpass features yet, which is why I didn’t mention them in the review]