Analysis of Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon

Yacht Club Games, LLC is an American independent video game growth workshop as well as publisher started in 2011 by previous Forward Technologies director Sean Velasco. The business revealed their very first title, Shovel Knight, on March 14, 2013, as well as released it on June 26, 2014, after an effective Kickstarter project. In 2016, the business announced that it would begin releasing games from various other companies, and that their very first released game would be Azure Striker Gun volt: Demonstrator Pack, a collection containing Azure Striker Gun volt as well as Azure Striker Gun volt 2. The second will certainly be Cyber Darkness, a game created by Mechanical Head Studios.

Shovel Knight Puzzles: Pocket Dungeon have a playable core as solid as flexible.

The puzzle games based on chain gems-enemies-candies seem to enjoy a bad fame among certain sectors of players who hate anything that approaches the casual concept. But beyond the fact that many classics can be denied this, in recent years we have had great examples of the variety of mechanics that fit around a concept so basic alone in appearance, from Puzzle Quest to Grindstone. The new Yacht Club Games title in collaboration with Vine (CAVER KINGS) is another good sample of it.

Basic information

Developer: Yacht Club Games, Vine Editor: Yacht Club Games Platforms: PS4, Switch, PC Proven version: PC Availability: 12/13/2021

Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon introduces the gentleman (next to a dozen allies and enemies) in a miniaturized universe hidden inside a mysterious artifact. Puzzle Knight finds him lost, so he teaches the curious rules of this world. He now only remains to take a trip through this pocket dungeon looking for an exit.

Talking about the mechanics of the game requires going through a couple of referents, but perhaps the most immediate to explain how Shovel Knight actions in Pocket Dungeon work would be compared to Crypt of the Necrodancencer's rhythm mode. Every time we move in the grid we are running a turn, which translates into an attack if the movement makes us collide with an enemy. Although creative cores, cores and potions fall from the top of the screen, its speed is greatly reduced if we stay still, in order to plan our actions to a certain extent.

One of the main elements with which we have to play is the damage, because with each attack we realize we will receive one back. If we attacked a solitary enemy, we are receiving a point of damage to make a blow to the enemy, but if we attacked an enemy chained to another four, we received a point to make four blows. The key to overcoming these dungeons is, therefore, in making large chains with which to free space suffering from the least possible damage. As in Grindstone, it is a task that is easier to say than to do, and that has to do enough with the planning of the consequences of each movement.

Each enemy has a single rule or pattern, which can alter its behavior, its amount of damage or movement of it, among other features. Learning to play this Knight Shovel goes by assimilating the unique mechanics to overcome each type of enemy and the way they interact with each other; They pursue you when there is little life, gain strength when you join others of your species, become intangible until you attack another enemy... even if we master the basic system, the game knows how to introduce elements that force us to change the tactics On the march, such as a varied squad of final bosses.

It is longer to explain what to play, obviously. In fact, all these rules soon becomes something about what you do not have to think or reflect. The base of the game is embedded in our brain, and we can immediately play at a ridiculous speed, which for an external viewer may seem unintelligible but in which we do not lose control almost never. The experience of playing Pocket Dungeon reminds that Tetris Effect that gave name to the game of Betsy Mizuguchi; Reached some point we move more than instinct as by reason.

This way of posing the gameplay brings a counterpart: it is easy to lose control of action due to the number of variables to consider. In this sense it is positive that two variants have been introduced: a purer roguelike mode, in which a death is enough to finish the run, and another with infinite lives that punishes the total loss of health by filling the enemy screen. It is not a blank pass, but this mode allows you to recover from a bad movement in a game that punishes each error with hardness.

The main mode is adventure, which introduces a touch rogue lite to the puzzles. We must overcome a series of levels trying to raise the combos meter, with which to obtain gems that, in turn, serve to obtain relics (add passive skills). The gems that are left over when dying can be reinvested in a series of systems that introduce a touch rogue lite in the form of a store with unlockable, which adds new objects to the pool of the items if we spend the remaining gems of each Run. It serves more to generate a feeling of advance in the first compasses that something else, since although objects are useful in the last levels, the selection is left relatively soon by little we are good for us to play. The gems can also be used to unlock shortcuts to the different worlds in Spunky's style; As in the classic roguelike, it is only a good idea if we are going to use them as a practice of the parts that are worse. Otherwise, it is complicated that we will see the authentic final; We have to meet a series of prerequisites that invite us to start from zero the game.

This Lite part of the rogue lite is the one that works the whole, precisely because of the little strength it has. Neither the store nor the shortcuts give a lot of game, and with time we almost forgot their presence. It seems that the campaign does not dare to take the jump completely to roguelike, although the daily shows that the purest approach to gender has every sense and feel great to the game. It is not really a point that gets too long on the whole, but I do think it is short in some of its ambitions.

Furthermore, it is much more interesting the complexity introduced by the various playable characters that we are unlocked in adventure mode after those meetings, with unique dynamic and dynamic rules. Some have passive skills (plague Knight poison the enemies, generating one of damage in the next shift), other active (mole knight excavates to exchange their position) and balance is adjusted with maximum health beat for the most powerful Knights. It is very fun to check how the Specter Knight forces us to change the chip because he cures with attacks and potions harm him.

Having several characters with unique mechanics gives you more life to the game, but above all it helps to demonstrate the value of your gameplay. Pocket Dungeon is a great game of puzzles because it knows how to read in their referent ideas with which to build a core as solid as flexible. It is so simple that you can play instinctively, but so complex that you do not lose occasion to give you small turns.

Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon collects elements of several popular titles of the genre to put together a family game but with own dynamics, and their mechanics are deployed little by little until a proposal where tactics and speed go hand in hand. The similarities with other puzzles help us to understand their skeleton, but their differences are enough to open enough to give a unique entity to an agile system at the same time challenging.