Introduction

Shovel Knight is a 2D side-scrolling platformer developed by Yacht Club Games, released on June 26 2014 for PC and for almost every console on the market slowly over the course of the following year. It is now playable on PC, Nintendo 3DS, WiiU, Mac OSX, Linux, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox One, and Amazon Fire TV(???). It follows the quest of the chivalrous Shovel Knight, on his quest to retake the land from the nefarious Order of No Quarter. Along the way he gets mad treasure, learns magical spells, and tries valiantly to rescue his beloved, Shield Knight. The gameplay is a mixture of Duck Tales and Castlevania, truly harkening back to classic side-scrolling games on the NES. It even remains faithful to the NES color palette, somehow!



Well, the first reason I did this was to inaugurate the re-opening of the Casual Let's Play thread, of which I am currently the OP. However, I wanted to do the game appropriate justice, so I went probably a little bit above what one might qualify as casual; which is why you can view it here, now, on the LP Archive! Originally this LP had no OP to go with it, so I drew this one up specifically for its archival later on.

But anyway, the more important reason is because Shovel Knight is a great game! It's very easy to talk over while providing a pretty fair amount of challenge to keep the game interesting. Its dedication to retaining the mechanics, visuals, and even sound of old-school video games is fascinating and I have a lot of respect for the developers for trying not to break those rules wherever possible. They did a great job. I think Shovel Knight is an example of how an indie game can really shine with the limitations that independent hobbyist developers are usually given and sets a standard of quality that few have been able to meet since; and so, that's why I wanted to do a let's play of it, because something like this deserves to be seen.