Shovel Knight Dig – Review. Digging more
It seems like it was only yesterday when we first played the adventures of the Shovel Knight, but it’s been 8 years since Yacht Club Games first released Shovel Knight. This title became an instant classic, and since then we’ve seen the Shovel Knight starring in a lot of indie games as cameos. But now, the original studio, in collaboration with Nitrome has released a new main game by the title Shovel Knight Dig, a new take on a new adventure of the knight with the shovel. The gameplay is completely different, so can this game top the original?
Digging where no one has dug before
Once again we are faced with an action and platform adventure that changes the fixed and pre-established level design of the original game for a series of phases that are randomly generated in each game. As it’s common in these games, once you die you lose it all, all the upgrades, objects, everything, and that means that you are forced to start from zero. We will keep just some of the money we’ve earned every time we die, and this is useful to purchase some upgrades, items, new roads, and get around basically.
Even though the superficial gameplay isn’t much different from the hundreds of roguelike indie games we’ve seen, the unique elements of the original Shovel Knight are still here. Dig combines roguelike with Shovel Knight in a pretty smooth way, so anyone that’s played the original game will be immediately able to pick up the controller and understand how the game works.
But even though they managed to keep all the elements we love from the original Shovel Knight, that doesn’t stop Dig from innovating. The procedurally generated levels always have something to surprise you, and to be progressing in the game you’ll need to keep digging down. But remember, once you go down you can’t go up again, that’s not how digging works after all so it makes a lot of sense. Be sure to pick up everything from the screen you’re on before you progress to the next one. Oh but don’t take too long in doing so, for a giant drill will come and get you if you stay too long on a level.
The art and the visuals in Shovel Knight Dig are the best we’ve seen n the franchise. Somehow they kept the original iconic style and added more colorful pixel art. Not to mention the sound department and the soundtrack of the game, retain the hype and beauty that are iconic of the series.
Review: 8.3/10
Shovel Knight Dig is a fun and addictive roguelike. It’s well designed and has excellent gameplay, beautiful visuals, and sound. It all points to make this game nearly a perfect game of the roguelike genre, but it doesn’t go too far in that direction, quite literally. The game is incredibly short, even though its levels are procedurally generated, the mission and goal remain the same. And it is pretty short, you can beat your first run of the game in just about 5 hours. This is something pretty unusual for a roguelike game, as they tend to be some of the games with the longest playtimes and replay value. The short game experience will take some points off of the gameplay score.
- Graphics: 8.5
- Gameplay: 8
- Sound: 8.5
