Shovel Knight is perhaps one of the best examples
of a retro indie game, as it intentionally tries to emulate the spirit of 2D NES platformers
from back in the day. While the game has garnered a lot of success
during its almost seven year dev cycle, the company went through quite a lot of internal
struggles to provide players with a ton of free updates that were essentially completely
new games in their own right. One of those problems was money, despite the
incredibly successful Kickstarter that unlocked every single stretch goal. Before taking a closer look at Shovel Knightās
development, letās first talk about the people behind the game and how they formed
Yacht Club Games. The original members of the indie studio all
previously worked at another independent studio called WayForward, who you might know from
games like the Shantae series, Contra 4, A Boy And His Blow, DuckTales Remastered and
a lot of other licensed games. Itās a rather large company that works on
multiple projects at the same time and every project is assigned to a different set of
developers. The team that worked on Double Dragon Neon,
which was released in 2012, became close friends during its development and they all felt like
they had perfect chemistry together. Therefore, the developers wanted to explore
what other kinds of games they could create next. Unfortunately, WayForward told them it wasnāt
possible to keep their team together and that they would have to split up for future projects. However, the developers had so much faith
in their synergy as a team that they decided to leave WayForward and start their own company. Before there was ever the idea for Shovel
Knight, the team knew they wanted to make something that adopted a simpler style of
gameplay, much like the classic NES games from the eighties. āShovel Knight was always conceived of as
an 8-bit game. Even before there was a shovel, we knew that
we wanted to make a game that allowed the gameplay to naturally grow, born out of a
few core mechanics. Harkening back to a time when that was how
all games were made was an obvious choice. Additionally, that meant that we could create
more content faster; when an enemy or object only has a few frames, iteration turn around
time is greatly reduced. This allowed us to focus on what matters most:
the gameplay and experience of the player.ā In January 2013, the team was brainstorming
about what kind of mechanics to implement in their 8-bit game, which at this point didnāt
feature the Shovel Knight protagonist yet. They brought up the down-thrust from Zelda
II, one of their personal favorites. The devs started to imagine hitting enemies
from above and how you would then also dig through blocks on the ground. Perhaps you could even flip enemies over to
hit their underbellies. That type of motion didnāt quite fit with
a sword wielding knight though and eventually one of the developers jokingly suggested letting
the knight wield a shovel instead. āI guess if he's a shovel guy then he's
like Plummet Knight or maybe he's Shovel Knight, the Shoveling Knight.ā And just like that, Shovel Knight was born. The team quickly got to work in director Sean
Velascoās cramped apartment and started preparing for a Kickstarter campaign. They divided their time between building a
strong proof of concept that included a demo, as well as preparing everything for the Kickstarter
itself. About two months later Yacht Club Games had
built enough assets and launched their Kickstarter on March 17th, 2013. Their minimum funding goal was set to 75,000
dollars, although the team knew they would have to compromise their vision if they didnāt
hit any stretch goals. It almost seemed like that was going to be
the case, because halfway through the Kickstarter they managed to raise 50,000 dollars. The team started getting nervous, especially
since they were still hard at work finishing the demo that needed to be playable at that
yearās PAX. It was a very stressful time for the studio
to say the least. āIt's very taxing on a team, especially
as small as ours, to put everything on Kickstarter. To put it all on the line. It's very hard to find time to work on a game
at all when you're doing Kickstarter. Even just the campaign and the stuff you have
to do afterwards, like the physical rewards.ā The PAX gaming convention was slated to start
nine days after they launched the Kickstarter so time was running out. Fortunately, the studio was able to finish
the demo just in time for the big event, providing the opportunity for people to try out Shovel
Knight at their booth. People were extremely positive about the NES
inspired platformer and not just regular visitors, but also the press. The likes of Destructoid and Kotaku started
writing articles about the game and its Kickstarter, generating valuable marketing when the indie
studio needed it most. On top of that, other developers that had
done successful Kickstarters before, played the demo at PAX and gave some good advice. By far the most valuable advice was to distribute
their demo to big YouTubers. Right after they came back from PAX, the studio
started sending out demos to popular YouTubers like Game Grumps and those videos combined
accumulated millions and millions of views. Almost overnight, the Kickstarter became a
huge success and started hitting stretch goals in quick succession. On the last day of the Kickstarter, Yacht
Club was able to raise over 300,000 dollars, with almost 15,000 people backing the project. One of the studioās programmers, David DāAngelo,
contributes some of the success of the Kickstarter to nostalgia and the lack of a new Mega Man
game at the time. āEveryone was saying, āThere will never
be a Mega Man game again. Iām so sad.ā And then here we come storming in with this
game that feels much like a Mega Man experience.ā He further said that nostalgia works well
on Kickstarter because itās something people can immediately understand. āThey still make Mario and Rayman, but thereās
nothing new there. The idea of seeing a new IP where the character
is the name of the game was a cool thing to see. Being able to draw on the feelings people
had when they were eight years old worked for the Kickstarter.ā The developers couldnāt believe what had
happened, although reality started to sink in quickly. All the positive reception was very uplifting
to the team, but now they not only had to develop the base game, but also many extra
modes on top like new game +, a challenge mode, a gender swap mode, a 4 player battle
mode, three additional playable characters and so on. Their original promise of a release in September
2013 was looking almost impossible to keep. Now that the studio had a lot more money to
work with and a lot more content to implement as a result, they postponed the release date
to early 2014. The team received a lot of emails asking why
it was going to take so long since the Kickstarter gave the impression that Shovel Knight was
already far into development, but the director Sean explained most of the game just didnāt
exist yet and that the Kickstarter trailer and the PAX demo was literally everything
the team had developed up until that point. Once the funds from Kickstarter came through
around May 2013, the developers decided to leave behind Seanās apartment for a real
office space to properly continue development. The next couple of months, the studio mostly
focused on finishing the base game and decided to worry about the stretch goal DLC later. As mentioned before, the devs took inspiration
from Zelda II, starting with the down-thrust. Additionally, Shovel Knight's world has a
village very similar to Zelda II, where random passersby will chat up Shovel Knight. The team wanted their characters to just be
as goofy and fun as the ones you'd find in the land of Hyrule. Fun fact: all the NPC characters looked like
default horse person sprites while the studio was figuring out what the gameplay function
of each NPC was. Another strong inspiration was Mega Man and
this is evidenced by the room-based themed stages and their bosses, as well as the title
of the game being the name of the protagonist. The heavy use of items in the game is directly
inspired by Castlevania, because the developers thought it was interesting how Castlevania
doesnāt force you to use the items, but they still play a major part in how you can
tackle each scenario and enemy in the game. They wanted to replicate that feeling in Shovel
Knight and extend it even further by making the items useful in many ways, whether it
be for platforming, enemies, or bosses. The team has also stated that the world map
was inspired by both Mario 3 and UN Squadron. āMario 3 remains in our minds when we recall
what it's like to traverse a large NES world filled with surprises, while UN Squadron has
more of a tiered map approach. That allows the player a choice in where they
want to go while still escalating the challenge; without throwing the player into a completely
flat stage structure.ā Some people speculated that the down-thrust
might have also been inspired by the DuckTales game, but the team has gone on record saying
it was mostly just inspired by Zelda II. However, they did mention that the feeling
of discovering hidden treasure in Shovel Knight was certainly inspired by DuckTales. Mother 3 was also looked at for inspiration,
specifically for the story. The team wanted to emotionally engage the
player in some way like Mother 3 does. This led to the idea that Shovel Knight had
to bury his wife at the end of the game with his shovel, but this was ultimately changed
for a less melancholic ending. Interestingly enough, Shield Knight wasn't
much of a character at the start of development and only existed to motivate Shovel Knight. She was apparently even nicknamed Princess
McGuffin for a while. Thereās also some Dark Souls in Shovel Knight,
because the developers wanted to come up with a mechanic that places an important emphasis
on player death, just like Dark Souls did. This led to the implementation of the checkpoint
system, something that went through many changes to balance the difficulty. It first started as invisible checkpoints,
much like the Mega Man games. However, they wanted to make it more physical
and they also didnāt want to have too many checkpoints since that would make the game
too easy. Instead of turning down the amount of checkpoints
though, the team instead decided to give players the choice of spending money to activate the
checkpoint, adding even more value to the currency system in the game while also providing
more player agency. That iteration of the system was a problem
for inexperienced players however, since there was no guarantee that every player would be
able to collect enough money to activate the checkpoints in the first place. Yacht Club didnāt want the platformer to
be too easy, but also not too difficult so that more people could enjoy playing it. The developers wanted to find a way to satisfy
both experienced and inexperienced players. So, one day, they had the idea of giving players
the option to eliminate the checkpoint in return for some extra gems, adding a risk/reward
system to the checkpoint mechanic. The team wanted to stick to the NES aesthetics
and therefore potential limitations, as close as possible. It almost had to look like it would be possible
to play Shovel Knight on an actual NES console and this meant sticking to the limited 54
colors the NES was capable of producing for example. However, in some cases, they did decide to
break out of those limitations when they couldnāt find a compelling reason to keep them in the
game or if they would hamstring the gameplay experience. An example of this is sprite flickering, which
occurred when the NES tried to display more than 8 sprites per horizontal line. āThis effect is nostalgic for some, but
we felt it was detrimental, so we nixed it. However, we did make gameplay design decisions
based on the idea of sprite flickering: we tried to avoid cluttering the screen with
onscreen objects, and limited things like particle effects. Being aware of the rules in this case led
to the game feeling clear and simple; one of the hallmarks of a great NES game.ā The team also extended the viewable screen
space to a 16:9 resolution in order to eliminate the black bars on a widescreen. However, David explained they didnāt change
the resolution in terms of making Shovel Knight a pixel-dense HD game. They kept the same vertical and tile size
dimensions and the extra horizontal space was used to optimize the level design for
puzzles, more objects and to give the player more breathing room. Shovel Knight also has lots of background
parallax scrolling and for those that donāt know, parallax scrolling is the ability to
shift different layers or parts of the screen at different rates, giving 2D layers the appearance
of 3D movement. That effect was only possible on the NES with
lots of trickery and was much more common on the SNES. Early on with Shovel Knight, the studio decided
to amp up the parallax scrolling, creating an average of 5-6 layers of backgrounds to
scroll by. They were able to more easily implement this
effect with their own custom C++ engine that supports 3D and uses DirectX on PC and OpenGL
on Mac and Linux. As mentioned earlier, the developers wanted
to stick to the NES color palette as much as possible, meaning they only had access
to 54 colors in total. In the end, they only added a few extra colors
and mostly stuck to the original color palette, giving Shovel Knight a very distinctive look. Sprites on the NES were limited to 4 colors,
or 3 colors + transparency, but games like the Mega Man series used a trick that involved
splitting up sprites into two separate ones. This allowed sprites to have 4 to 5 colors
in addition to transparency and therefore the team decided to treat Shovel Knight sprites
like Mega Man. Getting that balance right was a tricky process,
according to David. A character with too many colors would stick
out like a sore thumb so they had to work back and forth with detail levels and colors
until they found a combo that looked great. The studio used a pixel art tool called Pro
Motion to create all the sprites and animations and for their level editor they used a free
tool called Tiled. Another example of how the devs broke the
NES limitations is implementing a more advanced camera shake effect. The NES was only able to execute a camera
shake on a single axis, because of the consoleās difficulties doing diagonal scrolling. Shovel Knight obviously didnāt have this
problem so the team was able to create a better looking camera shake effect. The soundtrack was created by composer Jake
Kaufman and in order to simulate the audio of the NES he used a free tool called Famitracker. The tool is able to export music in NES machine
code, which is capable of running on an actual NES or Famicom console, with all of its limitations
and hardware quirks. Afterwards he finalized the sounds using mastering
tools like EQ and compression to give it some extra punch on todays' sound equipment, but
avoided using reverb effects or stereo mixing, which would destroy the raw character of the
sounds. Any echoes or special effects are programmed
note-by-note, the way they were on the NES. David and the rest of the team were very pleased
with the final look and feel of Shovel Knight and how it retained that classic NES style. āWhen you add up all the changes, it seems
like there is a vast gulf between Shovel Knight and the technology of the NES. However, we feel that the core of the aesthetics
of the 8-bit era has been respected, and perhaps even enhanced! Shovel Knight was a dream project, allowing
us to explore a style of game that's rarely seen today. It was fascinating to try and problem-solve
the technical issues of yesteryear while avoiding any pitfalls that would belie real modernity. We hope that by being true to the NES in more
than just superficial ways, we've built fanciful rock-solid fundamentals.ā While the game was scheduled to release early
2014, the team had to further delay it to June 2014. During those last few months of development,
Yacht Club was in some serious financial trouble. The Kickstarter campaign brought in much more
money than they ever thought possible, but when they ran the numbers on developing the
base game and the additional stretch goals, Shovel Knight needed a much bigger budget. The developers started cutting costs wherever
possible but the delays also meant they had to stretch their budget for a longer time
period, something they hadnāt foreseen. "We ended up operating for five months without
money or payments to the team here. It was a difficult period, where some of us
were awkwardly standing in front of cashiers having our credit cards declined, drawing
from any possible savings, and borrowing money from our friends and family.ā Luckily, once Shovel Knight was released on
June 26th, 2014, it became a huge success for the small studio. Reviewers and gamers around the world had
nothing but positive things to say about every aspect of the NES inspired game. Additionally, Shovel Knight even took home
the Best Independent Game award at The Game Awards show in 2014. Besides critical acclaim, the platformer also
exceeded the teamās sales expectations and after only a month, Shovel Knight had sold
around 180,000 copies. By september 2019 that number increased to
2.65 million copies sold on all available platforms. All this success meant the studio was able
to continue development on Shovel Knight without having to worry too much about their budget. The DLC featured three additional single player
campaigns and each campaign allowed the player to take control of one of the boss knights,
which drastically changed the gameplay compared to the original Shovel Knight experience. Each campaign was released as a free update,
among other free content that was part of the original Kickstarter stretch goals. The PS4 and Xbox versions even received exclusive
content, with the former featuring a boss fight with Kratos from God of War and the
latter a boss fight with the Battletoads. In 2017, the original campaign was renamed
to Shovel of Hope and this was partially done to communicate to players that the additional
DLC werenāt just character swaps, but rather completely new games with their own kind of
gameplay and levels. The title was later even changed from Shovel
Knight to Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove and this version included every piece of DLC. All previous owners of the original game were
able to upgrade to the Treasure Trove edition for free. For the sake of not making this video too
long, Iām not going to expand on the game design decisions of the DLC, but I do want
to touch on another difficult period in Yacht Club Gameās history, which took place during
the development of the DLC. Plague of Shadows, the first additional campaign
which was originally going to be nothing more than a character swap, had turned into something
that resembled more of a sequel than anything else. Of course, by doing this the team gave themselves
a lot of extra work and overtime and by the end of 2015, after the release of Plague of
Shadows, the team was burnt out. Unfortunately, the studio couldnāt take
much of a break since they still had some Kickstarter promises to keep. However, they did make a promise to themselves
to never get so close to the breaking point again and avoid periods of crunch in the future. So, in 2016 the studio made a plan to finish
the next two campaigns in a more efficient way and by now the team has also grown from
five to around a dozen developers. While Specter of Torment came out without
too much trouble, the third and final campaign King of Cards kept increasing in scope. To avoid burning out again, the decision was
made to delay the release of the King Knight campaign and this time they didnāt have
to worry about stretching their budget since it was now practically unlimited thanks to
sales of Shovel Knight. By December 2019, all the Kickstarter promises
were fulfilled and every backer and owner of the original Shovel Knight was able to
claim every piece of DLC for free. To say the developers were relieved after
that is putting it lightly. Looking back, the studio, despite the struggles,
feels very blessed to have been able to go on this development journey and create one
of the most beloved indie games in the past decade. āI feel lucky, just really lucky to have
been able to work on a game for six years. There have been real rough spots, but overall,
we got to do so much cool stuff. We got to fly to Japan and go to Nintendo
and talk to them. We got to have an Amiibo. We got to have Manami Matsumae make these
songs. We got to meet all our favorite game developers
and go to shows. The gameās been a success. Itās been amazing. Weāve been real lucky.ā
I love your videos my guy.
One of the developers did a text write-up about many of the same topics a month after release: Digging down to business: Shovel Knight Planning and Sales.