Shovel Knight is a love letter to platforming's 8-bit glory days in the unconvincing-yet-appealing guise of an actual NES game.
Retro art styles for indie games are a dime a dozen at this point. Many of them look like they're running on the NES that exists only in the memories of 30-year-olds who haven't actually seen a NES game since the release of the SNES, and Shovel Knight is chief among them. That's ultimately for the better. Shovel Knight never lets a little thing like authenticity get in the way of vibrantly colourful environments and well-animated sprites. Games like this are why the Vita's OLED screen exists.
Much more authentic is the game's soundtrack, consisting entirely of chiptunes that would feel right at home in a Mega Man game. (In fact, a couple of the tracks were contributed by Manami Matsumae, who composed the soundtrack for the very first Mega Man.) It's suitably catchy, though it may grate on you after a while, depending on your individual tolerance for high-pitched beeps and bloops.
Staff review by Rhody Tobin (April 24, 2015)
Rhody likes to press the keys on his keyboard. Sometimes the resulting letters form strings of words that kind of make sense when you think about them for a moment. Most times they're just random gibberish that should be ignored. Ball-peen wobble glurk. |
More Reviews by Rhody Tobin [+]
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