Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon - Review

What started out as just another Kickstarter, has quickly become an indie darling, Shovel Knight is a plucky little guy, with nothing but a suit of armour and a shovel. But does the idea of his platforming adventures, translate over to a puzzle game, one where digging up adventure is now placed second?

Pocket Dungeon offers up a few game modes for players to tackle, there is the standard multiplayer battler, a daily challenge mode and adventure mode, which is where you will likely spend a good chunk of your time. It is very important to note that while Pocket Dungeon is not a difficult game, it is still very challenging and your first few attempts at getting through the adventure mode will make you understand why. When you begin, you will have access to the titular Shovel Knight and while a solid adventuring option, as you progress through and discover boss fights, you will soon grow your stable of heroes that you can play as. The reason why that is important, is down to the fact that each has abilities that the others don’t and while that may seem like a no brainer, it does impact how the challenging some levels are, over others.

Each the stages takes place in familiar locations, the plains, clockwork tower and so on, with each having an assortment of enemies that will feel familiar to players of the main game. Where the puzzle comes in, is that in order to have the door to escape the room appear, you have to defeat a set number of enemies in combat, yes combat, the catch of course is that this is a puzzle game, so your attacks are based around how often you can bump into enemies. Each time you do, you will dish out damage, based on the level of your characters attack or if you have a special weapon equipped, but the enemies can also hurt you back. Some enemies will only deal one hit point worth of damage, but others will do more, but then there are those enemies that will power up the more of the same type that are nearby. The catch is that the game won’t tell you what enemy does what damage until either you attack them and if you are low on health, could lead to your demise, or you stop and inspect them, but stopping is not the best option.

Each action you take moves the game forward, think Tetris how the blocks are always falling down, the catch here is that if you stop moving, more enemies and obstacles keep appearing at the top of the screen. If you move around to clear them, everything moves faster, and while rushing around can be an option, it can also cause you to fail, because if the screen fills up, you can lose everything. There is a real balancing act needed here, you can’t stop completely, because the game doesn’t, but at the same time, you also can’t push forward, without something of a plan in place and finding that balance, while also learning how different enemies react, is where the challenge comes into place. This does not even consider the sub-game behind it, about finding shards of a key, but I won’t spoil that storyline here and of course, all this is just the adventure mode, you can always just ignore it and take on challengers or daily tasks if you want to keep things fresh.

The problems that the game has are more annoyances that actual issues, but they are still things to be aware of, the first is that there is almost no explanation to anything, outside of a basic tutorial, unless you go looking through the menus. While chaining enemies together to makes a fair amount of sense, it can be far to easy to find yourself trapped by a chain or group of enemies, that can quickly destroy you and if you are playing the game in stock mode, i.e. with fixed lives, you will die very easily. The other issue is that while it is a puzzle game, it players more like a rogue-like, meaning should you die, you need to restart from the beginning, which can be frustrating. The game does account for this, by letting you unlock a cannon that can blast you to stages that you have cleared but doing that will skip the easier stages and if you want the proper ending, you will want to avoid that.

As far as the games presentation, it is pure Shovel Knight, there are a few little cutscenes, which are wonderfully realised, complete with the old 8-bit animated look. Characters you know, like Shovel Knight, Shield Knight, King Knight and such all look great, but the new characters of Puzzle Knight, Prism Knight, Chester, Tipp and the rest, manage to slide in, as if they were always there. The games visuals are a match of the side scrolling adventure games, which is nice, but the big change comes in the game board. The screen is basically divided into thirds, one third is for your character, their health, item pick ups and power ups, the other side of the screen is for whichever block or enemy you have bumped into and then in the middle is the main board. The issue with the main board section is that sometimes the decorations around it can feel like they are encroaching on the play space, it doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does you will notice it.

The sound side of things are just pure delight, the game uses some of the main melodies from the original game, but twists them a little, to make them sound new and fresh. The sound effects are just what you would expect, they clean and suit and even when you venture into sub-puzzle realms, things still feel right.

Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon may not be the game many were hoping for, what with its rogue-like approach, but once you get your head around how it all works, you will find an absolutely charming puzzler. The game isn’t hard to pick up, but there is enough of a learning curve that you won’t feel like you have mastered it after an hour or six, but no matter how often you come back, the game will keep challenging you, which is wonderful. If you are someone like me and you enjoy a good puzzle game, this is one you should look into, as it balances challenge and replayability and is the first one to do so, in quite a while.

The Score

9.0

Review code provided by Yacht Club Games

The Pros

+Learning curve can be steep, but rewarding once you understand the game

+The adventure mode is great, but daily tasks help to break that up, if you want to

The Cons

-The adventure mode is a little on the short side, especially if you are not aware of the sub-game

-There are times when the main play space can feel smaller, due to the decorative borders being larger than normal