It's finally out, and it's great. Like a love letter to the best NES games, Shovel Knight blends elements from Duck Tales, Castlevania, SMB3, Zelda II, and Mega Man with a plentiful helping of modern conveniences like tight controls, checkpoints, and risk/reward systems. Pile on a superb Jake Kaufman soundtrack and crazy characters like Croaker and the Troupple King and you can't go wrong. I played through the first several stages, and I'm loving it, especially the clever level design with hidden treasure everywhere. I'm playing on Wii U, but it's also available for 3DS and PC. Sorry if this reads a bit like an advertisement, but I've been pumped for this game since I originally played it over a year ago at PAX East 2013, and I'm thrilled that it lived up to its potential.

Yea, kickstarted this and plowed through to beat it once so far.  It is pretty much everything I was hoping it would be.  Only thing to note is it is disappointing that physical rewards have not been finished/shipped and that the stretch goal features are not all implemented.

Yeah, this is all my friend at work was talking about today. He was telling me I'd probably dig the soundtrack.

What physical rewards are you waiting for? I have to say, I thought the fact that they had offered dirt... literally dirt, for $100+ a bit insane. Yet, 73 people paid $100 to get dirt. One man's dirt truly is another man's treasure. Either that or the emperors do not realize they're naked.

Just want to say I didn't plan on making that pun...

I'd have claimed it anyway, it was a good one.

Made a thread for the OST:
http://soundtrackcentral.com/forums/vie … hp?id=7569

I pledged at $60 to get a physical copy of the soundtrack.  So, it's also a bit of a slap in the face that an album plus an arranged album is up on virt's bandcamp before backers wanting the cd are waiting for who knows how long.

There was a physical copy of the soundtrack as a Kickstarter reward?  Whaaaaaaaaaaat!?  ARGH I'm so upset I missed that!!!

It's a lot easier to release a digital version of CD than a physical one. And making a soundtrack available as soon as the [game/movie/whatever] first comes out makes the most sense, so there's no reason for them to wait to put it up outside of this so-called slap in the face.
At least they didn't promise it would be a digital only release of an album then release it on CD later like what happened to something I bought...

Well if there's a delay in shipping the physical CD, the digital version should at least be made available to backers as soon as or before it goes to wide release.

But if I'm not mistaken the Bandcamp release is pay-what-you-like (ie potentially free) in which case it's a moot point.

I can agree with that. Does your physical CD come with the arranged album as well? If not, yeah, definitely a slap. By the way, the arranged album is great!

http://virt.bandcamp.com/album/strike-t … t-arranged

I would doubt it, but who knows. I'm not actually upset or anything, and Jake can release his music whenever and however he wishes (and presumably backers would probably want to DL for free).  I'm just annoyed that it doesn't seem any work into the physical rewards has been done yet, and it would have been nice to get a physical copy around the same time as it was being released to the public.  They should just remove goal dates altogether since people almost never hit them =\

105 deaths later, I finished up the 3DS version, clocking in at a lean but muscular 6 hours and 30 minutes.  Loved EVERY second of it.  For me, the game's biggest takeaway is how much it already exudes "instant classic."  There are very few retro titles that I can still pick up and genuinely enjoy without fail (Contra, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, and Mega Man 4 come readily to mind), so it's extraordinarily high praise that Shovel Knight is afforded a place in such an elite club.  I can see me replaying this for several years to come.

I finished the game on Wii U and went back to get all the music notes. Took me 10.5 hours to do everything. Loved it, and highly recommend it.

Report that death count, mister. :)

Haha, I was waiting for that. I think I had 152 deaths the first time I beat it and around 174 or something like that the second time when I had all of the music notes.

Are you going to do New Game Plus?

Already completed it! I didn't find it particularly difficult, save for..... the battle royale boss rush at the end. I try to avoid using the Phase Locket and Ichors as much as possible, but I spammed the shit outta them here. ;)

I'm now looking forward to trying out those cheat codes from that absurdly huge list. A lot of them seem overpowered to the point of breaking the game's challenge, but a few look like they could be fun to mess around with, such as.....  the faster attack speed, and being able to pogo off any surface.

Of course you did! I haven't decided if I'll go back and do that or not since there's so many other things I need to play, but I'll probably fire it up again once some of those Stretch Goal bonus modes get released. As for the cheat codes, the sheer amount is just nutty, and almost unmanageable.

Physical copies are a comin'

https://games.yahoo.com/news/shovel-kni … 02871.html

"The box version of the game will include everything Yacht Club Games has released so far, including the original campaign, Plague of Shadows update — which is expected to hit digital platforms before the physical release —and Challenge mode."

Cool. Already played it on PC, but wouldn't mind getting the game again on consoles if it's physical.

Wake me up when they sell the soundtrack as a CD, which the website has indicated they're eventually going to do but HAS NEVER MATERIALIZED.

I'm confused... I thought the soundtrack was on CD, but that it was one of the rewards from supporting the game on kickstarter? Am I mistaken on that one?

However, I would definitely buy a copy of the soundtrack as my friend would love to have that... however I guess he'll have to settle for the Starcraft OST I just shelled out for.

He better be happy! That's one awesome gift to give

It definitely exists as a kickstarter reward, and I think a few sold on ebay when it first came out, but nothing shows as recent.  Glad I pledged for it

They sold the physical soundtrack at PAX Prime last year, but I don't know if it's available elsewhere or not.

I don't doubt them selling them at PAX, but Pally is right. I've personally never seen it for sale on eBay, it can't be overly common. Either that or people are really holding onto those suckers.

I'm embarrassed to admit I never bought it, but glad I waited. Physical copy > digital copy everytime.

And yes, I'll happily fork over $15-$20 for a physical soundtrack release. It's one of my "high-quality problem" albums, where there's just too many good tracks to pick from.

Yeah, they sold the extras at one of the PAX cons, but they're really hard to track down.  I've seen two, ever, on ebay - one of them was a really high price set for buy it now and nobody ever bought it (it ran out of time twice and then didn't get relisted).  The other I should've just ponied up more money for but got outbid at the last minute for something low-ish like $30, as I recall.  I search every couple days but one hasn't been listed in ages. 

Yacht Club Games' website still says "Hopefully, we will be selling these amazing albums on CDs soon…but for now, it’s digital only." but I'm starting to lose hope.

i haven't played the game yet. physical PS4 version will be mine asap. it's a promise!

Apparently, the Xbox physical version has been shoveled (did you see my clever use of words there?

https://games.yahoo.com/news/shovel-kni … 18956.html

Considering it's the XBox version I'm not really surprised given some of Microsoft's dumb-ass polices.

So, after getting so excited about this game, I finally played the PS4 version only to be totally disappointed. Maybe I was expecting more? Maybe the nostalgia is gone? This game has received raving reviews, yet I did not enjoy it. I also made it quite far into the game thinking "well, maybe it gets better?" but for me it never did. First thing I did was replay the first level over and over until I acquired all the power-ups I could (did anyone else do that?) then I just used the invincibility power-up and beat all the bosses with it (did anyone else do that too?) Not trying to pick a fight with anyone, that's fine if you loved the game to pieces, I just don't think it approaches on the greatness that were the original NES Mega Man games in any way. Well, I'm hoping Mighty No 9 gets it right, at least for me

It's a great platforming game, although it's probably more enjoyable if you don't over-grind and invici-cheese your way through all the tough parts.  After you beat it the first time, you can play a different story mode as Plague Knight.

No. I probably would've disliked it as much as you did if I'd subjected myself to tedious grinding for a long time to start the game and then took away any sense of difficulty curve from the rest of it.  Playing through normally I rather enjoyed it (though I found the early stages to be far more annoying and gimmick-y than the later stages that were more focused on just being good at platforming).

It took very little time to level up, so it certainly wasn't tedious. Clearly that was an intentional part of the game, being able to replay levels to level up. I didn't find the later stages to be particularly fun either. Maybe I'm just not into instant death by spikes/pits anymore which I find more frustrating than fun.