Yacht Club Games presents: Shovel Knight

Release date of King of Cards, Showdown, and the amiibo revealed as April 9 of next year. Also a physical version of Treasure Trove.

You can get Showdown as a standalone purchase, so you don't have to buy anything twice.

Neat. I haven't played Specter of Torment yet, so I don't mind waiting until April.

Showdown gameplay.

I hope your shovels arent rusted, because its time to Steel They Dhovels once more!!!

While the original game was always made to be a tribute to Old-School 8-Bit 2D-Platformers, I'm glad that this game's allowing the franchise to grow a bit beyond that label. This looks really unique and cool! And I love Drill Knight's design. I wonder if this game'll have a Genderswap Mode? =P

Also, "Dhovels" sounds like it'd work as a name for a Shovel Knight character.

Oh it doesn't seem like thats all. There was another trailer for shovel knight showdown!

EDIT: Looks like i missed yet another trailer. Were finally getting King of Cards!

Edited by CountofBleck on Aug 28th 2019 at 6:00:51 AM

In addition to all that they mentioned some amiibo stuff for the upcoming 3-pack, and there's some other changes coming to Treasure Trove as a whole too (like adding a shortcut command to Plague of Shadows that lets you preload different potion combinations, adding they/them pronouns to the Body Swap mode, and adding some... waaaaaaay too off-the-rails cheat codes.)

"waaaaaaay too off-the-rails cheat codes."

Such as?

King of Card is coming in December btw.

I just want to know when the amiibo pack releases. I preordered it ages ago.

This is all reminding me that I never finished Plague Knight's story mode way back when... and though I own the Treasure Trove, I never played Specter Knight's mode.

God, I'm behind...

Words can't really do it justice but if I had to single one out to give an idea of the kind of batshit it's getting up to, one of the cheat codes is the entire screen sans UI constantly rotating clockwise

Not technically a videogame, but I figured you folks might be interested. One of my favorite Board Game companies(who recently published a fairly well received Street Fighter card game) makes a game called Exceed. It's basically a card game simulating a fighting game. And, well...the newest season of characters just got announced.

https://www.level99games.com/blog/2019/8/22/exceed-season-4-announcement-shovel-knight

Of note is that Shield Knight/Shovel Knight is a duo-character, since Shovel Knight was already released a while back as a standalone Guest Character.

Reading the site, it looks like Plague Knight's gonna be there, as well!

Indeed! There's a bit of information on some of the characters' playstyles on the game-design podcast the company does. Of note from what I can recall off-hand:

• Shovel and Shield Knight
  • You are playing as Shovel Knight, but Shield Knight is moved around by some of your moves. A lot of your play revolves around positioning both characters into advantageous spaces. For example, you take less damage if Shield Knight is between you and your opponent, and you have moves like Shield Boomerang that come from Shield Knight instead of Shovel Knight(you "main" fighter, the one that takes damage), or Shield Bounce, which allows you to move farther if Shield Knight and Shovel Knight are on the same space.
• Propeller Knight
  • They played with the fact that he's a fencer type character. He has a lot of small movement capabilities(specifically, he moves one space in any direction before every attack) enabling him to stay in range, and his moves have a Marth-style "tipper" effect. Eg., "range 3-4, if opponent is at range 4, deal extra damage."
• Tinker Knight
  • He starts out as the weakest character. Least health, and all of his Boosts(the bottom half of a card, played separately from attacks for bonus effects like movement or extra damage on a later attack) are prohibitively expensive. Partway through the fight, you can climb into his tank, and he regains a bunch of health, and as a new passive, he can trigger the boosts on his attacks when he plays them as an attack, something no other character in the three seasons this game has been out can do.
    • Pro: You start dealing out punishing amounts of damage and area control. Con: You're now 3 spaces wide so it's almost impossible to miss with an attack aimed at you.
• Enchantress
  • She has...basically infinite hand advantage. At the end of her turn, if her hand is empty, she draws six cards. She doesn't hit as hard as most characters, but this allows her to play fast and loose with "discard a card to gain an advantage" type cards.
• King Knight
  • They tried to replicate his reliance on money by giving him a mechanic where he has four "royal decree" cards. They are devastatingly powerful when used right(we're talking, chunk a third of your life gauge on a solid hit), and are immune to the usual counters of discarding cards due to not being in your hand. But they're all one time use, and you only have the four of them, no refills. He kind of becomes a game of picking the right time to launch them, or if you're fighting against him, trying to bait him into using them at inopportune times.
• Spectre Knight
  • Plays as a spacing/rushdown type character. Can Seal(place facedown, no longer in your hand nor discard pile...kind of like Exile in other games) his own cards to add the ability to advance towards the enemy before every attack, making it hard to escape him, but lowering his overall hand size. In return, he has a few specific cards that allow him to unseal those cards and attack with them to surprise the opponent with cards that were not in play a turn before...but that removes the constant advancing.

Here's a look at some Palette Swaps for characters in Shovel Knight Showdown;

Shovel Knight: King of Cards, Showdown, and Treasure Trove physical edition launch December 10

King of Cards is now out. I've made my way through the Plains and beat the Black Knight in a game of Joustus (among other opponents). The controls for the regular levels weren't too hard to get the hang of, but I still haven't quite gotten the hang of Joustus. It took me several tries to beat the Black Knight.

It takes a lot of getting used to

I ended up cheating a lot.

Of the Joustus leaders Black Knight's the one with the second hardest skill to work around imo, him being thrown at you so early doesn't help much in regards to learning the game.

Took me until the second world for Joustus to start clicking, though that's also after taking the time to beat everyone else along the way.

Here's an interview with Yacht Club Games courtesy of GameXplain;

‘Yacht Club Games Presents’ video presentation set for February 26

The video presentation was basically an unbranded Direct lol. Those scene transitions. I approve!

Video had Cyber Shadow, a Shovel Knight retrospective, some Showdown updates, and a new puzzle RPG thing that looks like Puzzle Fighter. They also announced they have two new games in development.

Is Shovel Knight Showdown worth a purchase? It's only $10, but given I have a Switch Lite I can't imagine I'll get much use out of the local multiplayer. How is it as a single-player experience?

I'd say if you'd be getting it just for single player it's not worth the purchase, the game's strength definitely lies in being a party game and the arcade mode is rife with the usual CPU odd-stacking shenanigans you'd expect from a fighting game's single player offerings.