Shovel Knight Showdown
The Shovel Knight Treasure Trove is finally complete, and I am happy to be able to play the final acts. I had bought the game on the 3DS years ago, making good use of the dual screen functionality on items. Shovel Knight Showdown is another feature promised in the Kickstarter, but only available on current gen consoles like the Switch. I am giving this an impression / pseudo-review on Steam.
Shovel Justice!
To start, Shovel Knight Showdown doesn’t feel like a fan-game fighter spin-off, but something naturally developed by Yacht Club Gnames. The playable knights all feel very familiar; Shovel Knight has his pogo stomp, Plague throws chemical bombs, Specter makes a zipline dash. It’s fun to play the other knights too, like Propeller and Polar. And the music all feels amazing and authentic, as expected with Yacht Club Games.
I’ll admit that it’s kind of tricky trying to figure out each character’s skill and uses, and it seems each character has unique button commands for each attack. Shovel Knight, for example, only uses his Flare Rod among his Relics. Tinker Knight can summon the Mobile Gear, then jump off to move around his jetpack, and finally jump again if needed.
Shovel Knight Showdown revels in the chaos that you’d find in a similar brawl styled fighter like Super Smash Brothers or Power Stone. There are plenty of stages with hazards and pitfalls that could instantly kill you if you’re not careful.
Nighty Night, all you Knights.
There are many different modes to play. Collecting gems, making the most kills, even a call back to the original “break the targets” stage in the older Smash Bros. games. (The charm of the Percy Targets event ends with its homage, but I’ll get more onto that later.)
Shovel Knight Showdown plays very much like a watered-down Shovel Knight game. Each character has a set amount of life stock that goes down with each hit, and the physics doesn’t cause them to go farther when hit by a stronger attack. Killing your opponents might be a viable tactic in certain modes as it causes them to drop their gems. Losing all their lives means they can’t take part any further in the match and may result in an automatic win for the last one standing.
I think one of the neat features of this game is the counterattack. If you time it right as the opponent attacks you, you will push them back with no damage done to you. But the timing has to be just right, or else they’ll damage you as normal. Also, it’s only useful in getting enemies away as it doesn’t deal damage even on success. Perfect for getting them into a pitfall or lava trap, but that’s it.
There are about eight characters and eight stages. This fighter game starts off small in scope but like in older fighting games (before DLC and MTX were things), the more you play the more you unlock. You can either clear these conditions by playing story mode of certain characters or do party battles against the computer or friends.
I feel everything in Shovel Knight is incorporated here, not just the titular Knight heroes and villains. There is even a stage based off the small Shovel Knight campfire where he dreams of Shield Knight falling from the sky and has to catch her. The attention to detail is amazing.
Hitting a rock in a hard place
That said, there are some problems I have with Shovel Knight Showdown so far. The final boss really annoying; a giant mirror that will throw hazard after hazard while you try to collect gems before it does. Even losing one life before it’s game over will inconvenience you, as the mirror will take your dropped gem in the time it takes to revive. If you die even once during this fight, the mirror will get more and likely win the “fight”.
Percy Target is a mini-game like event in the middle of story mode. The premise is simple; earn a set amount of points before the time runs out. You see bundles of hay roll on a track as low as three or as many as a dozen. If you destroy all of them in a row, you get bonus points and time. Sounds simple, right?
It gets tricky in later parts of the stage, with parts of the floor disappearing and items giving more time. There are also special targets like rainbow hay that clears everything, a big hay stack with Percy himself on it, or green goo that bounces you back when you strike it The problem is that the stage becomes a platformer nightmare and if you slip and from your jump to higher ledges, you lose a life. You even get a time penalty for dying, which is bad enough since you have to wait at least five seconds to revive anyway.
I failed this event at least three times in a row in Shovel Knight’s story mode (medium difficulty), and I think I only succeeded one time due to sheer luck of how the stacks come in. They all move in random directions through grids with no indication if they will turn at an intersection or not. This can mean the difference between a well-timed Flare Rod shot hitting or missing.
Needs more polish
The good news is the difficulty definitely scales down with easy mode, like enemies with negative gems and lower point counter to reach in Percy’s minigame. I was able to beat the final boss too, but I was personally not happy it had a second form. It feels like a standard now in any video game, when the first form was challenging in its own right.
And don’t even get me started on how finicky the controls can be sometimes. I got stuck on a loop on the story character select when all I wanted to do was back out to the main menu screen. Instead I kept getting the okay or not to choose a character when all I wanted to do was get out.
There are some fun ideas to be sure in this game. The music is great, the gameplay’s familiar, and its fun to play in short bursts. Sadly, it’s very punishing and lacks any sort of tutorial or rules to play. Shovel Knight Showdown pretty much expects you to be a Shovel Knight fan to enjoy, which for better or worse impacts the whole game.