That stinking Drill Knight dared to disturb his sleep, ravage his comfortable bivouac but, worse still … steal all his treasures! A shame that must be washed with blood, or rather with mud as the marrano has vanished into the depths of the earth, making it lose its traces.
There is no alternative, to be able to take revenge and above all to recover the stolen goods, it is necessary to restore the original use of the sparkling shovel that he fought many battles alongside his knight. The time has come to dig Blue Knight, dig like you’ve never done in your life.
Yacht Club Games brings back its most famous creature in the spotlight, which has earned the limelight with a single hardcore-platform made up of multiple campaigns and a couple of nice spin-offs. In “only” eight years of career, which also saw him host to other titles, Shovel Knight has amassed a large number of fans thanks to an incredibly immediate gameplay combined with a level of difficulty that is bastardly leveled to make us fall into the trap of “still one and I’ll stop “.
The same trap was used in Shovel Knight Dig, which takes part of the mechanics of the old titles to mix them with elements derived (also) from some titles of the past such as the dean Dig Dug or the more “young” Mr. Driller and Spelunky. The action no longer takes place with horizontal motion but vertically … but downwards.
This time you will have to learn to manage the protagonist’s precious shovel not only to beat enemies and jump but also to dig your way to the bottom following all possible directions. This primordial ability combined with jumping allows you to reach practically every corner of the levels, which are obviously full of pitfalls but also filled with great treasures, often located in the most inaccessible and better guarded areas.
The levels are composed of rooms connected to each other, increasingly complex in morphology. The possible roads are many but to complicate everything there is also a damned drill that follows our hero ready to asphalt him in case he takes too long in the descent. This means that you will be forced to decide quite quickly where and how to move, trying not to get too enticed by the desire to recover all the treasures and above all by eliminating obstacles as efficiently as possible.
More than in the previous Shovel Knight, the level design is at least as protagonist as the hero with the shimmering armor. Each level is no longer just a treadmill on which you will have to move to get from A to B, but a micro-world that will envelop you asking to be “open” and explored.
Everything is seasoned with the tasty roguelite sauce, with all the nuances that this brings, ie levels and contents generated randomly, permadeath and all the other small “invisible” adjustments that make it an often winning weapon. In a game like Shovel Knight Dig this formula falls like the proverbial cheese on macaroni, stimulating the player to give the best without punishing him excessively by taking everything away in case of error.
In fact, the coins and gems recovered will remain in your pockets even in the event of death and will be essential to advance the skills and equipment of the Blue Knight. The RPG elements of the game, in fact, allow once again to “upgrade” the standard equipment of the protagonist, making him acquire tasty powers useful to proceed faster, recover more treasures with less risk, kill more enemies at the same time. and so on.
If you want, part of the recovered loot can also be invested to start again from the place of the last departure, especially if this coincides with a point particularly distant or close to a battle with the bosses.
The control system has remained more or less the same but, given the change of direction of the gameplay, some small adjustments have been made to which you will have to get used to. The very first stages of the game will teach you the basics of both the techniques available to the Blue Knight and the gameplay that will see him as the protagonist. Once again everything is very simple to assimilate but being able to manage everything in the best way takes some time. It is a significantly greater layering than in the past that could also represent a glimpse into the future of the saga.
If you have only recently approached this franchise, Dig represents a fresh, fun and challenging landing point … although not particularly long-lived. To complete the efforts of the protagonist, about 5 hours on average are sufficient, in which, however, the deaths and restarts that depend very much on your ability with games of this type are not counted.
After four years of development, Shovel Knight Dig is finally available on PC (via Steam), Apple Arcade and Switch. Those used to the “old” adventures of the knight will find very interesting ideas also in this somewhat derivative release, which, if you think about it, finally provides a more concrete meaning to the particular weapon that has made this series iconic.
We credit Yacht Club Games for having so far taken care of its franchise with extreme wisdom and expertise, making it expand to new horizons but keeping intact what made it famous from the beginning: immediacy and fun.
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