At long last the King of Cards and Showdown
expansions are here, marking the triumphant finale in the Shovel Knight saga, and they
are easily the biggest and silliest adventures yet. But now after experiencing 4 full campaigns,
a multiplayer party mode and a robust card game, I can’t help but reflect on how the
series has evolved and improved over the last 5 years. So today on Good Game Design, Yacht Club Games
themselves will join us to share their creative insights and discuss how Shovel Knight went
from a loving homage to the classics to an empire that stands all on its own. Let’s talk about it. I had the pleasure of sitting down with designer
Alec Faulkner and director Sean Valesco to chat about all things King of Cards, and it
seemed like a major driving force behind this final DLC pack was making sure it was going
to stand out. (“The idea of a card game was a really,
really old idea, and we thought ‘by the time we get around to a 4th Shovel Knight
campaign, we would need to put something new and cool and like really wacky, and different
and goofy in there to spice things up.’”) Luckily, King Knight’s pompous personality
made it easy to draw out the funnier side of the Shovel Knight universe - he acts like
a whiny teenager to his mom, cries to regain health, and is oblivious to anyone’s problems
but his own. And this was all inspired by his original
design. (“Well, in the very beginning, King Knight,
he’s like the fake king of a gilded castle. He’s not even actually a king, he’s just
a knight that calls himself ‘King’. So everything about him is like, already fake.”) But also on a mechanical level, this journey
feels unique and fresh. King Knight’s moveset is perhaps the most
limited out of any other - you can only do a shoulder bash which is followed by a spin
attack if he hits something, and he can’t bash again unless he bounces off another object
first. So while you can string together a combination
of attacks, its a far cry from the freeflowing parkour in Specter of Torment. But because of increasing the number of stages
and making them much shorter than previous entries, they were able to go balls to the
wall crazy in terms of incorporating new ideas into the level design. (“Every level needs to have totally new
ideas that shouldn’t overstay their welcome. And if we have 3 times as many levels, that
means they’re going to be 3 times as focused on one thing. Plus we already had 3 games worth of stuff,
so it was easier to divy up the different spots, and be like ‘hey this is always
a fresh new thing, this is a new combination that hasn’t been seen in a previous game.’”) Collectibles make a return in the form of
merit badges, but they also added secrets exits to some levels which means there’s
more reason than ever to explore. There’s also tons of special abilities,
upgrades and easter eggs to make you smile. The final product is possibly my favorite
Shovel Knight iteration yet and feels like a completely different experience than what
we’ve seen before. But to get to that level of versatility you
need to make sure the player is equipped to handle what lies ahead - and Yacht Club has
always been an expert at teaching without telling thanks to their heavy inspiration
from games of old. The Plains, the introductory level in each
campaign, concisely shows you everything you need to know to succeed, and there’s a precise
reason as to why it feels so polished. (“As far as Plains goes, we always make
those last, just so we know exactly what the game is when we make that stage, because it
needs to kinda tell you everything about the game. And I feel like one of the biggest strengths
of the early levels is that it shows you the types of gameplay & setups you’re going
to be doing for the entire game, but in a really broad sense.”) Alec and Sean explained that often they’ll
start with the conclusion of where they want to end up and work backward to fill in the
blanks, and this leads to a more cohesive progression through the game. Because they became experts at how King Knight
controls as they continued to work on the project, it was important to look at the stages
through “baby eyes” as they called them - how would an inexperienced player react
to what we’re throwing at them? Now obviously that’s easier said than done,
and reaching the level of quality it has now took countless reincarnations to see what
works and what doesn’t. On top of this, the vision of each DLC changed
drastically over the course of Shovel Knight’s lifetime, so they had to be sure not to limit
themselves when it came to what would be the most fun as a player. (“Shovel Knight, we were just establishing
what would work with a kind of ‘melee Mega Man’. It just sort of got made from what we thought
would be cool for an NES game. Further on, Plague Knight was just supposed
to be like a Richter Mode for Shovel Knight, something where you could jump through the
levels as a different character that was a little bit more interesting to control. But then that got more crazier, and we put
in more story and other gameplay stuff and we were like ‘okay this is really feeling
like its own game. And then with Specter Knight, everything got
even more crazier. At that point we were thinking about it as
just a sequel. Then for King Knight, he will be like the
Plague Knight...of Specter Knight (laughs). And so King Knight would go through the same
levels as Specter, and we would make it all work and everything. But like halfway through Specter Knight, it’s
like ‘let’s not worry about what King Knight’s going to do in this level, it’s
holding us back.’ It was like ‘what’s King Knight going
to do on the grind rails? He’ll get in like, a little buggy and go
across,’ that was the idea. Eventually, it’s like, let’s not even
worry about how we could make it faster, it was focused on how we could make Specter of
Torment as cool as it could be.”) Being flexible with where each story and gameplay
style would end up led to a more fulfilling overall package, and the result is a master
class in using the same assets in such distinct ways that you never feel like you’re treading
old ground. Plus, all the new content and backstories
you discover along the way give more depth and meaning to the original campaign - Sean
compared this cyclical nature to how Star Wars Episodes 1-3 tied up loose ends as it
led into A New Hope, but he also hopes that Treasure Trove is much better than the Lucas
prequels. With all that creativity floating around I
just had to ask if there was anything lost on the cutting room floor that they really
wished could have made it into the final game, and their answer was certainly farfetched. (“There was one big thing we had to cut,
it was King Knight going to the moon. There would be like, a moon village and moon
card games and moon people. And there’d be like, jumpy gravity. If that was in there, this game would not
have come out in 2020. Yeah, we couldn’t...we just couldn’t.”) As cool as that would’ve been to see, there
is a ton of new additions to King of Cards, from fresh locals to epic boss fights and
clever cameos, but I’d be remiss not to mention Joustus, the surprisingly in-depth
card game that the DLC is themed around. You can play against many different opponents
in Joustus houses, and while it is head-scratchingly difficult, it also is strangely addicting. The goal is to cover a majority of gems with
your cards, but you have to slide them on top to claim possession, and once the board
is full whoever has the most wins. Eventually the boards get bigger or introduce
new mechanics to keep you on your toes - house leaders even have special moves to give them
an edge. The victor gets to claim a card from the other
player’s deck, so be prepared to lose some of your favorites as you proceed - but don’t
worry you can buy them back for a small fee. The good news is there are lots of options
to help you succeed, and the even better news is that it’s completely optional if you’re
not interested in playing. (“They can buy cheater cards from Chester,
they could go fight people on the airship and try to grind out some cool cards that
way. There are a lot of options for how you play
the card game and I’m really glad we added it, because when I played through the game
that’s what adds the most spice for me, like when I had to play through it a million
times. You can approach the card game in a lot of
different ways, or you can like skip it entirely!”) The fact that they added all this detail into
a side-game that some people may not even touch is so over-the-top I’d expect nothing
less from King Knight himself. Way to go above and beyond guys, seriously. And finally, there’s Shovel Knight Showdown,
which on the surface seems like a fun concept of throwing all of the various bosses in an
arena and letting them go head to head, but after playing for just a short while you realize
all the time and energy that was poured into this mode to make sure it wasn’t a simple
afterthought. They essentially had to build the same level
of complexity as the main knights but for all of the characters in the game. (“We had a basic roster a very long time
ago, and so during our downtime it was like, ‘hey we gotta animate...Mole Knight didn’t
have a run cycle, Propeller Knight didn’t have a run cycle. We couldn’t reuse any art, that’s what
I keep thinking about. It would just be these boss characters and
you can control them, but like everything had to be totally different. Propeller Knight is a really arial person,
we should get that in there, then figure out how to balance it after that. Polar Knight is huge! So let’s put him in there and then try to
work around that. He’s gotta be that big! We’re used to working within a constraint,
I guess.”) The beauty of Showdown capping off everything
Treasure Trove has to offer is that you’re able to get a tiny taste of what each knight’s
campaign could look like. The 3 DLC packs were selected by kickstarter
backers long before the game’s initial release, so I, like many others, wish we could’ve
seen something more for our favorite Order of No Quarter members - but now, you can! Story mode has little vignettes and specific
rivals for each and every character to experience, so there’s loads more to unpack here than
just duking it out with friends. Not to mention the numerous unlockable goodies
that Alec described as a way to encourage players to stick around and become more efficient
with the gameplay, since that’s when Showdown becomes the most fun. I could see fighting game fans getting immersed
in this mode for a long time to come. At the end of the day, King of Cards is so
much more than just another way to play through Shovel Knight - it’s the perfect swan song
to commemorate everything the franchise has accomplished since 2014. And that was exactly the design philosophy
from the very start. (“I think a lot of the idea behind it has
been to celebrate everything ‘Shovel Knight’ one last time. All the ideas, ‘oh wouldn’t it be funny
if this was in there? We gotta put this in Shovel Knight sometime,
we gotta do that!’ We mashed all that stuff into King Knight. This could be our goodbye...it’s a big confetti
filled grand celebration in its game design and the actual thematics of the game.”) This last hoorah solidifies the end of an
era, but also highlights why indie devs are changing the gaming landscape one title at
a time. If you’ve never played Shovel Knight, there’s
no better time to pick it up and I can’t recommend the experience enough. If you’re interested in my full interview
with Sean and Alec, you can follow the link to my 2nd channel in the description below. I closed out our talk by asking what’s next
for Yacht Club Games, and if you were hoping for a Shovel Knight 64, you may be a little
disappointed at their response. (“I think we’re done with Shovel Knight
stuff for right now. I think everyone is done making a big giant
game. And we like all kinds of games, and all types
of genres. We need a palette cleanser.”) Personally, I feel like we’ve already been
blessed with enough of the spade-wielding hero for now and I’m excited for whatever
it is these brilliant developers cook up next. Besides, we still have Shovel Knight Dig and
Cyber Shadow to look forward to in the meantime. Thanks for watching another episode of Good
Game Design, I’ll see you next time, stay frosty my friends! Today’s Patreon shoutout goes to Retromation
because what in tarnation, he gave a big donation! If you want to help support the channel and
gain access to all kinds of frosty rewards you can chip in at patreon.com/snomangaming! Buh-bye!
