Shovel Knight: King Of Cards
3DS, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Vita, Wii U, Xbox One
If its stages are broken up into smaller chunks than Shovel Knight’s, this otherwise seems a shade harder
Developer/publisher
Yacht Club Games
Format 3DS, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch (tested), Vita, Wii U, Xbox One
Release Out now
This coming April, it will have been seven years since Shovel Knight’s Kickstarter campaign began – yet only now is it time for Yacht Club Games to bring it to an end. Surely not in the developer’s wildest dreams could it have conceived what its unpretentious retro platformer would become in that time. Shovel Knight has grown into a full-blown franchise, with spinoffs, cross-game cameos and even its own Amiibo line. Dispassionately speaking, King Of Cards is the belated fulfilment of a stretch goal – Playable Boss Knight 3, as the campaign put it – and yet it arrives feeling like the closing chapter in an epic saga.
It’s an ending, then, but also a beginning. Its story takes place before the events of Shovel Knight, with everyone addicted to a card game called Joustus. The hubristic King Knight decides he wants to be crowned King Of Cards, and so sets out to defeat three Joustus Judges – though it soon becomes evident there are outside forces behind this seemingly modest quest. As before, the writing is economical and witty, giving you a smattering of narrative context to add extra impetus. Aboard your airship, you can choose to engage in dialogue with a growing cast of NPC allies, which gives the world extra flavour without bogging down anyone who’d rather cut to the chase.
As with the three previous campaigns, this is a platformer built around unorthodox traversal. King Knight has a lateral dash which, when his sceptre connects with walls or enemies, launches him into a spin jump. This naturally propels him to higher ground, but let him fall and you can also use it to damage enemies, bouncing repeatedly on them until they release a shower of gems and top-ups for the vigour gauge that powers your special weapons. These range from an explosive rat to a hammer that produces hearts for every successful blow it lands – a useful fallback when you’re low on health in the latter stages of a boss fight.
On paper, it’s a less alluring ability to build a game around than that of Plague and Sceptre Knight. But Shovel Knight wouldn’t have got this far without its maker being good at what it does. Over the five years since the original launched, Yacht Club has got really good. Rarely do you simply jump from one platform to another – not least because landing on enemies without a spin will knock you backwards, invariably into a pit or a bed of spikes. Something as straightforward as leaping towards a platform, knowing that isn’t enough to get you onto it, adds extra tension alone. Hitting enemies mid-flight is essential to crossing the wider gaps – yet they’re almost never stationary, and several actively make a beeline for you. Occasionally, your spin becomes more of a hindrance than a help, as you burrow through a pile of dirt, or reduce cracked rock to pixel-dust, causing an anxious gasp as you realise there’s nothing more beneath you. Your dash may recharge after every bounce, but is that enough to get you to safety?
It’s exhilarating, sometimes exhausting stuff, tempered only slightly by the fact you never have to trek too far to reach the spot at which you fell – and to retrieve the sacks of loot you drop upon death. Every stage offers a new challenge or mechanic, whether it’s electric platforms that shoot out sparks a second after you touch down, surfaces coated in a sticky substance that disables your jump, or elongated axolotls that act as both obstructions and moving platforms – Mario’s Caterpillar Blocks and Piranha Creepers rolled into one. And all the while there are floating, hovering, swooping, charging pests waiting to knock you off your perch. Some will make you swear every time you encounter them. Over time you’ll grow wise to their tricks, but when you’re mentally plotting six or seven moves in advance of a tricky platforming sequence, sometimes they’re the last thing you want to see.
If its stages are broken up into smaller chunks than Shovel Knight’s, this otherwise seems a shade harder, with Yacht Club making the not-unreasonable assumption that you’ll have played through the title character’s story first – even if this is a prequel. Perhaps that’s five years of diminishing reaction times talking, though by genre standards King Of Cards is still relatively forgiving. At the same time, it’s always pushing you to do better. Bonus medals sometimes lie off the critical path behind secret walls and such, but they’re mostly reserved for optional feats of athletic daring; teasing you to take that extra risk, even when you’ve died in the same spot three times and your swag is steadily shrinking.
As for Joustus, well, that’s a delight. It’s an outwardly simple card game played on small grids where your goal is to collect more gems than your opponent by pushing your cards onto them – and making sure they’re still there when the board is full. The margin of victory determines how many cards you steal from (or lose to) your opponent, gradually expanding your strategic options. Arrows along each side prevent cards from being pushed in that direction: a boon when you’re trying to block an opponent, not so much when you need to nudge them yourself. As such, stacking your deck with high-value cards isn’t always wise, though some have special abilities that let you circumvent the basic rules. And if none of this sounds particularly exciting, you can simply skip it and take an alternative route to your destination via the Mario-like world map.
It’s wonderfully refined, boasting a glut of ideas without ever feeling overstuffed. We could say much the same for King Of Cards as a whole: seven years has transformed Playable Boss Knight 3 into a terrific game in its own right. This certainly isn’t the end of Shovel Knight, but Yacht Club has wrapped up his first adventure with a royally entertaining send-off.