They all have their movement patterns to learn, but rather than just shooting a red flashing body part three times each encounter always has a more complex puzzle element. The range and variety of enemies is impressive for any game, retro or otherwise, and there are some particularly good Mega Man-inspired boss battles. Although given how many of these extra items there are it is a shame that the game doesn’t require their specific use a bit more often. With all the gems you dig up you can upgrade your shovel with new abilities, and there’s also a large variety of additional items and weapons – from the essential fireball spell to an actual sword and a cloak of invisibility. Standard horizontal attacks have a recoil that varies depending on your opponent, but it can also be used to punt skulls at enemies or kick crustaceans’ shells into the wall to uncover a secret area.
The downwards attack, for example, can be used to pogo off of enemies’ heads like DuckTales or to jump on bubbles as they slowly float up the screen. Clearly those sort of obstacles come up a lot in his line of work, and he decided a shovel was more useful than a sword. Why he’s got a shovel in particular is never really made clear, but in the game it’s not only used to whack enemies with but also to dig up piles of gems and destroy barriers. It’s a story of a knight… with a shovel, who battles bad guys and is in search of the long lost Shield Knight. Whatever else you say about Shovel Knight it can’t be accused of false advertising.
Shovel Knight though helps to reclaim that initial thrill, not just because it’s amusing to see a modern game that looks so old-fashioned but because there are some things that only really work with the enforced limitations of old technology. In fact it’s become such a cliche of the indie scene, to have them make their games look like an old 8-bit title, that all the novelty has long since worn away. There have been a lot of faux NES games over the years, some of them from established publishers (like Capcom’s Mega Man 9 and 10) but most of them from indie developers.
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