Shovel Knight Dig

[Sonictrainer]

 

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When Drill Knight and his dastardly digging crew blast apart Shovel Knight’s peaceful campsite and steal his loot, he grabs his trusty Shovel Blade and starts tunnelling after them! Meet new friends and foes, visit strange lands, and outfit yourself in your quest to keep the entire land from collapsing underfoot! Jump, slash, and dig your way down an ever-changing chasm of mystery in Shovel Knight Dig, an all-new Shovel Knight adventure!

Features

• An all-new presentation featuring a new Shovel Knight story! When Drill Knight and his dastardly digging crew blast apart Shovel Knight’s peaceful campsite and steal his loot, he grabs his trusty Shovel Blade and starts tunneling after them!
• The first Shovel Knight adventure in glorious high color pixel graphics and sound. Fluid animation, scaling, rotation, and parallax create the most convincing Shovel Knight world yet!
• Every adventure is different! Shovel Knight Dig levels have been meticulously crafted, then stitched together using proprietary generation techniques for infinite replayability.
• Jump, slash, and dig your way in an all-new direction – down! Rely on your trusty Shovel Drop, then dig through huge swaths of dirt with all-new Speed Shovel mechanics.
• Grow in power and wealth as you descend into the depths of the earth. Emerge with untold riches to outfit Shovel Knight further, unlocking permanent items and upgrades to your Shoveling equipment.
• New Knights, new characters, and new enemies abound, but fear not! Shovel Knight Dig features Shovel Knight’s signature storytelling, humor, and maybe even some familiar faces…
• Another pulse-pounding soundtrack in a new style by astonishing virtuoso Jake Kaufman!
• The first collaboration between Yacht Club Games and Nitrome, pixel masters!

Here's some information on new characters

 

https://yachtclubgames.com/shovel-knight-dig-press-kit/

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Oh shit, is this a proper sequel?

[Solly]

Honestly psyched for this. It seems more like a spin-off than a sequel but it looks like a lot of fun and I've got full confidence in just about anything Yacht Club has their name on. Love the spritework too.

Music is also amazing, but that's hardly a surprise with Jake Kaufman composing. 

[MetalSkulkBane]

Obviously I'm hyped, but aren't we still waiting for "king of cards" campaign" with King Knight?

Also on nitpicking site, I don't like what they did with Shovel Knight's horns. Makes him look fat.

So did we moved from "NES" to "SNES" graphics? Will next game be in blocky 3D of N64? I'm kinda intrigued by this vision.

[Sonictrainer]

58 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Oh shit, is this a proper sequel?

It's more of a Spin-Off than a proper sequel

33 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Obviously I'm hyped, but aren't we still waiting for "king of cards" campaign" with King Knight?

The last updates for Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, which includes the King Knight Campaign & the fighting mode: Showdown, will be releasing in December

 

[TheOcelot]

Shovel Knight is such a good game and it's nice to see the developers still supporting it with the dlc content as well as the Dig spin-off. Can't wait!

[blueblur98]

procedurally generated shovel knight? sounds intriguing.

[Salamander]

Oh wow, Nitrome, that takes me back.  I used to play their Flash games all the time.  This may not be a sequel, but the care it's getting makes it feel like a sequel; I hope it lives up to first impressions!

[Sonictrainer]

A new character was revealed during the Yacht Club Presents today

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What’s up Diggities! Development on Shovel Knight Dig is going well, with new enemies, objects, and areas being developed and polished every day! We’ve been iterating on the upgrades and items that will affect your gameplay each run, as well as fleshing out the story and characters you’ll meet on this new adventure.

In that spirit, we’d like to present to you another member of the Hexcavators – Hive Knight!

This bug-loving spelunker is never to be found without his loyal Beeto partner at his side. With the power of their teamwork, as well as some specially-modified armor, Hive Knight has the capability to fly and battle just like an insect! Hive Knight is sure to ‘bug’ Shovel Knight when the blue burrower dares set foot in their Entomological enclave.

 

[Salamander]

It's a shame the game isn't set to come out until next year, but after the King Of Cards delay I'm comfortable with the notion of YCG making things chunkier than they originally planned.  I wonder if Dig is set to have any returning characters (besides Shovel Knight)?  Mole Knight seems a good fit for the Hexcavators, and there's some indication the game might touch on the background of the Enchantress.  (Perhaps also the Source of Evil mentioned in Phantom Striker's Showdown ending?)

[Salamander]

Getting on for three years since Dig's announcement, and over two years since I said it "isn't set to come out until next year" but hey, I wanted to talk about a Shovel Knight game which was announced later but has managed to release earlier: Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon.

Not a game I expected to like, frankly not a game I expected to even get; but I thought I'd give it a fair shot.  It's a weird take on a falling blocks puzzler combined with a top-down dungeon crawler: Your character can move about the screen freely, blocks fall down past them, and you clear them through contact damage, striking them until their HP runs out with damage propagating through a chain.  Most "blocks" are actually enemies, and attacking them causes you to take contact damage (excepting a fatal blow), so you'll also have to heal via falling potions (and other methods).  Dying resets you to the top of the screen and adds a few more layers of blocks - or, if you're playing in anything less than unlimited stock mode, may have the same effect as the room filling up, which is game over.  Beat a stage and you progress to the next, with new enemies and gimmicks; there are bosses, which have your freedom of movement; and there are bonus items in chests which give you temporary buffs, or hidden relics which you can buy, or new characters to unlock.  Lose, and you start over from the beginning - but you carry over your accumulated wealth, which you can use to buy shortcuts, costumes, or, more importantly, new relics which can then appear in the dungeon proper.

So that's the gameplay loop; it's an arcade-like, run-based experience, gameplay-heavy and story-light (but it is there).  It's also - even playing with unlimited stocks, which frankly is how you should definitely play unless you are a complete expert and they probably shouldn't even give you the choice - hard.  Yacht Club Games have acknowledged that this is a game which people bounce off and really require a good half-an-hour to an hour to play with before it starts to click.  Certainly that was my experience - but it's also true that this is a game which starts off stacked against you.  When you first start, you don't have the good relics available, you don't have a choice of characters, you don't know about the various enemy behaviours and which of them deal more contact damage.  It's really a bit of a climb before you know enough, and have unlocked enough, for the game to become more consistently survivable.

I'm glad I took a chance on this title.  Early on, when I felt I was appalling at it, I figured maybe I'd play until I got to the true end and had unlocked and given all the characters a spin.  Some time later, and... I've beaten the game with every character and have every feat (the apparently bugged one aside).  Yep, I got hooked; and there are apparently DLC packs coming, too.  Fun times.  I only hope I enjoy Dig as much when that finally emerges!

[Sonictrainer]

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Shovel Knight Dig will be coming to Nintendo Switch, Apple Arcade, and Steam on September 23rd, 2022. 

When Drill Knight and his dastardly digging crew blast apart Shovel Knight’s peaceful campsite and steal his loot, he grabs his trusty Shovel Blade and starts tunneling after them! But as he and Shield Knight soon discover, this adventure goes much deeper than a simple heist…

Meet new friends and foes, visit strange lands, and outfit yourself in your quest to keep the entire land from collapsing underfoot! Jump, slash, and dig your way down an ever-changing chasm of mystery in Shovel Knight Dig, an all-new Shovel Knight adventure!

We also have 2 returning characters.

Spoiler

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Tinker Knight

• Pros: Gregarious Demeanor, Hard Worker
• Cons: Rough Hands, Works Long Hours, Always Out to Prove Himself

Every heist needs a big brain behind the brawn, and the diminutive Tinker Knight signed on as engineer for the job! The little schemer joined the Hexcavators because they had interesting and difficult problems to solve - he doesn’t seem to mind that they’re crooks! Tinker Knight has made his lair in the Smeltworks, where he has found great potential researching submersible magma tech…

Spoiler

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Mole Knight

• Pros: Great eyesight, shrewd, high endurance
• Cons: Obsessive personality, gets damp in armor

After becoming captivated by Drill Knight’s tunneling prowess, Mole Knight joined the Hexcavators not in search of treasure, but for the thrill of the dig! As a burrowing specialist, Mole Knight is prepared for any situation, even excavating the thoroughly-waterlogged ruins of the Secret Fountain. Nimbly cutting both through waves and sand with relative ease, Mole Knight can burrow and backstroke with the best of them thanks to his aquadynamic armor! 

 

 

[Salamander]

And about time!  It'll be over three years since the announcement.  The game certainly looks chunky enough...  I'm interested to see what it'll be like to actually play.  (Also what a weird trailer.)

I figured we'd see the odd returning character among the Hexcavators, and imagined that Mole Knight would be a shoo-in if so - although I didn't foresee his Water-type regional form.  Tinker Knight, too?  I can see it.

Will I be playing on September 23rd?  I'm sure I'll be playing it sometime, although not anytime soon, I think; I'm taking time away from my Switch to try and clear some of my 3DS backlog (which comprises, count 'em, six Atlus RPGs).  With that said, it's often a good idea to give indie games a few months to fix outstanding bugs anyway.  I'm definitely looking forward to finally getting to this game when the time is right.

[MetKey]

This is sure one of the worst trailers I've ever seen in my life, wow!

That being said, Im glad to finally see this game coming out. I've been a fan of Nitrome's games and artsyle for a good while and I was really interested in what they could do for a Shovel Knight game.

[Sonictrainer]

Holy Moly, this game does not play around.

Trying to get through an entire run without dying?

At least you can buy Checkpoints. How far has everyone gotten?

[Salamander]

I won't be getting to it for a while - and even then, I think I'll probably be playing it as a kind of run-a-day thing, similar to Pocket Dungeon - but I'm really looking forward to it.  I have a lot of faith in YCG and Nitrome.

[Solly]

15 hours ago, Sonictrainer said:

Holy Moly, this game does not play around.

Trying to get through an entire run without dying?

At least you can buy Checkpoints. How far has everyone gotten?

I got the normal ending a couple of times now, but there’s apparently more than one, and the steps for the true ending are very elaborate and sound difficult. 
 

anyway, this game is really good. Sprite work is amazing, and it builds on the core SK gameplay very well. The rogue lite aspect leaves a little to be desired, but I’m enjoying my time with it.

And yes- it is very difficult! Regular Treasure Trove was very retro in its approach to challenge but this is on another level. It kinda reminds me of Spelunky in the sense that there’s little meta progression, but also because my deaths usually make me feel stupid.