Shovel Knight Is a Full-On Franchise Now

Did Shovel Knight qualify as a franchise before? Sure, from a certain point of view. Developer Yacht Club Games has only released one title thus far, which they’ve remarkably been updating for over five years. Meanwhile, the titular character himself has cameoed in several games, including indie titles like The Road: Redemption, Blaster Master Zero, and the recent Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night as an armored standard enemy. He also appeared as an assist trophy in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It’s a remarkable amount of exposure for a character with only one game to his name.

I still subscribe to the classic definition, where a franchise is defined as a series with multiple installments, though the aforementioned guest character phenomenon questions whether that should remain tradition. But if Shovel Knight didn’t qualify as one before, it certainly does now. The developers held the “Yacht Club Games Presents” presentation just ahead of this weekend’s PAX West convention in Seattle to show some of their upcoming games directly to their audience. The PAX conventions have become the places to reveal and showcase indie games, since most AAA game publishers announce theirs at other conventions like E3 — though they don’t exactly ignore PAX.

The key announcement made on the stream was for Shovel Knight Dig, the first brand-new game in the series since the original in 2014. This installment has been in development for over a year, and remarkably didn’t leak beforehand, and is being jointly developed between Nitrome and Yacht Club. Nitrome is a British indie developer with several titles as part of their resume, but Switch puzzle platformer Bomb Chicken is their biggest game.

As the name implies, Dig will have a larger focus on digging and tunneling into the ground. The adventure begins when Drill Knight and his crew destroy Shovel Knight’s campsite and steal his loot, easy incentive for a pissed-off Shovel Knight to start digging after them. Though it’s not immediately clear from the details and reveal trailer, this is a roguelike in which the levels will be procedurally generated, meaning everyone’s adventure will be different. Digging will be the focus, but techniques from the original game like hopping on enemies and using basic shovel slashing attacks will return. It’s also no surprise that a focus of the adventure will be on collecting treasure and assorted loot, since the thievery of Shovel Knight’s collection kicked this quest off.

The graphics represent a noticeable upgrade from SK’s NES-ish sprites, leaning closer towards an SNES style. The sprites and assets for Shovel Knight himself, the enemies he’s fighting, and the foreground elements have brighter palettes compared to their counterparts from the last outing. This game isn’t quite the SNES-style sequel vocal fans have been wanting for a while, but the sprites present a nice preview.

I have my reservations about how rewarding the procedurally generated levels will be to explore compared to the levels from SNK and titles like it. Exploring levels with premade designs tends to be more rewarding compared to those created randomly. Hopefully it will still be fun and rewarding on its own potential merits despite that. There is, of course, no need for it to measure up or mimic the original SNK, considering it’s not a sequel.

Shovel Knight Dig has no release date, but may not take long to arrive considering it will be showcased at PAX West on Switch. Yacht Club didn’t confirm which other platforms they want to release it on, but it’s also coming to PlayStation 4 given this blog post.

Yacht Club is finally finishing up the remaining content for Shovel Knight with the Treasure Trove. One final big content updates will be the King of Cards campaign, which will star King Knight on his own quest. It looks like a repurposed version of the original quest on the surface, but the developers claim this will have more content than any SK-related quest before it. This would explain why it’s taking longer than expected.

The other big update involves Shovel Knight Showdown, an adventure/versus mode with single-player and multiplayer options where the SK characters will compete to collect the most gems. Mona, the alchemist from the Plague of Shadows campaign, will also be playable here.

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove will arrive in December physically and digitally, apparently for all platforms. It’s amazing how it took so long for Yacht Club to finally finish all the content for Shovel Knight, but that’s fine when most fans have enjoyed it.

Yacht Club Games is in for a good future, with the continued success of the Shovel Knight now-a-franchise, the inevitable sequel, semi-follow-up Shovel Knight Dig, and publishing initiatives like the Mechanical Head Studios-developed Cyber Shadow. This isn’t the usual kind of crowdfunding success, but it would be nice if something similar happened with many other companies.