Ahhh late! Late again. Sorry, so sorry. I was just so busy playing shovel knight that the Monday deadline became a distant memory. Shovel knight is a modern game that is altogether SNESlike. It sports a rather fetching restricted colour palette, a chip-tune audio track and some bloody good retro gameplay to boot. I found myself rather fond of the game for the most part. It has a lovely sense of humour and genuine character that is rare in the modern shit maelstrom of games on steam.
The game requires you to play through well designed platforming levels, using your shovel and wits to down-attack your way to the evil .. castle. I don’t remember its name. Does it matter? Leave me alone I’m tired!
I found the controls really quite excellent and the different unlockable spells really make you feel like you’re making choices and playing the game your own way. Levels introduce new mechanics frequently enough to prevent the game from becoming stale and boss encounters are enjoyable and unique (if sometimes a little bit clichéd).
The check-pointing in some levels needs work. I found a lot of checkpoints were placed in such a way that I had to do a fair bit of faffing before I could get to the bit of the level I was failing on. It’s something Super Meat Boy got right and I was surprised that I hit shitty checkpoints quite so frequently. I also found that the punishment for death (losing money) is overly severe. You can reclaim your money Dark-Souls-style by picking it up from where you died but dying several times in a row means that it’s lost for-fucking–ever… goddamn I’ve lost so much money in this game. It’s really an odd choice for a death mechanic and one which doesn’t really fit. It’s a modern concept shoe-horned into a retro game. I don’t understand the reasoning for punishing players in this way instead of just… letting the money accumulate endlessly, it’s not like money is a finite resource, you can easily just replay levels and accrue what you need with minimal grinding. The floating bags of money are a distraction and the loss of money is adding insult to injury, particularly in later more tricky levels.
It feels like the game is much too short and more emphasis is placed on increasing player punishment with the hopes of pleasing completionists (and masochists). Personally, I would have preferred a greater RPG focus, and more places to go, things to see and ways to spend the money. Most of the map encounters are merely a one-off duel, and I’m sure they could do more with the inter-level dream sequences.
I feel as though I’m digging into the game to much here, it really is quite fun to play and people who don’t nitpick and tear games apart will easily be able to ignore these gripes and embrace the warm blanket of nostalgia that the game wraps around you.
If you liked platforming in the late 80s and early 90s, I’d definitely dig deep into your pockets and give this game a go.
Games Whinge 