- Excellent sprite work and music
- Camera goes very low sometimes so very easy to get hit by random enemies from above but overall fairly easy
- Only took me 2:30 to beat the game so would not recommend unless you plan to 100% it
- Automatically pogoing when you jump messed with my muscle memory for about an hour
- The frame rate on Switch at times is genuinely abysmal. The final boss is so bad about this that I almost died to attacks teleporting on screen.
- Riddled with bugs though this has apparently been updated. Multiple softlock reports in a roguelite coming from tons of people is just hilarious. Experienced some of them while getting the true ending and some of the feats which soured my opinion on the game quite a bit. Should not have been released like this in any way.
- Some of the true end requirements are very annoying. The one where you have to get the bomb to the door in time feels impossible in the Grub Pit.
- A lot of the unlockable accessories and relics are really mediocre to bad. Ends up polluting the item pool rather than having more variety for runs.
- The story is simple as it’s a roguelite but I would have liked more cutscenes of the Hexcavators interacting with each other. At the very least it would be nice if they all talked with Drill Knight before their fights. Felt like they wanted to emphasize the group being a team compared to the Order but ended up failing. Also, to be incredibly pedantic, Tinker and Mole for some reason willingly work together despite Showdown making it seem like they barely know each other when they meet inside the mirror. There’s also a KoC NPC who references Joustus despite it not existing yet.

gostei, mas não consegui deixar de sentir que o level design podia ter algumas concessões pro jogador. principalmente quando vc fica carregando chaves e ovos por anos sem ter nenhuma sala em que eles são úteis. além de outros problemas. mas jogar é gostoso, e é bem capaz que eu tente pegar o final bom com um guia, pq só seguindo o jogo mesmo é meio impossível até entender quando o jogo termina. eu matei o chefão final 3 vezes pra chegar num "the end", mas nada me comunicou pq eu tive que matar ele 3 vezes diferentes, ou o que tinha de diferente na última vez que matei ele. enfim. jogo de maluco.

Roguelikes, after a decade of genre popularity increasing exponentially since the beginning of the 2010s with Isaac, Spelunky HD, and their ilk iterating and reiterating on various formulas of games previous thought to be necessarily designed within curves of play pacing and encounter editing, are no longer in the position of being possibly considered a fad genre. Other game genres, obviously less broad in their label (because really, roguelikes are linked by a mechanical binary state similarity rather than a generic coalition of traits, rather being decided as ‘roguelike’ depending on their lean in proc gen vs static design) with more intermingled and necessary signifiers of their family, that rose and fell alongside the roguelike have been evaluated with historical lenses that themselves are being re-evaluated; the roguelike, in comparison, still feels, despite being a genre that has had tentpole articles representing its type for more than 2 decades, as though it is in a stage of cultural gestation. Despite the deluge of titles released, academic inquiries published, and players hermited, the genre remains relatively untapped and under populated with all-time greats in both its game catalogue and its methodological concerns towards strong art statements. For me, one of the concerns foremost in obviousness of what is missing in both representation of greatness and methodology, is the equitable branching from tutorializing to incrementing game state. In practice, this would look like the point or area in which the game decidedly stops presenting new mechanics or contexts for its mechanics and instead begins to mete out the rewards of using those mechanics for the sake of expression, largely because systems mastery is the only metric of intrinsic progress within the actual play of most roguelikes. Spelunky is probably the only truly good example of this paid out in roguelikes, and this is likely due to its being, comparatively, extraordinarily spartan in its systems breadth yet hugely plungeable in depth (as well as Derek Yu being a genius, but who counts that these days). Even massive, indisputably influential and masterful examples of the genre, such as Slay the Spire or Isaac, fail to adequately demarcate where the player can expect the knowledge of mechanics to be funnelled into intra-systemic rewards or progress. It is not unusual to see reviews for any given roguelike stating something along the lines of, ‘it was too hard and after bashing my head against the wall, I gave up because I didn’t/couldn't do what I was asked and the game didn’t give me what I needed to progress’. Sometimes this is true and sometimes it isn’t but what matters is: if it feels like it’s true, it doesn’t matter if it’s true. The game can’t expect you to watch it change around you when it won’t help you change alongside it.

In Shovel Knight Dig, during my ~10 hours with it, I had several different moments of pause with each mechanic wherein I asked, “when should this become fun?” The answer, unfortunately dually because the production of the game is quite lovely external to its being interactive and because Yacht Club are a studio whose reliability with platforming and encounter design is remarkable regardless of what scale and budget you compare them to, was for me, never. This may be due to the fact that the digging, jumping, slashing, visiting town, catching items and upgrades, exploring, etc. are all poorly implemented and misaligned with each other (which is mostly true in the latter, and mostly conjecture in the former), but it is my read that the game was abandoned to the gulf between tutorializing and incrementing too early in development and is now stuck in a limbo of systems alienness without means of evolving it mechanically, evaluating it strategically, or intrinsically deriving any pleasure singularly from its presented actions. The town is woefully under equipped to make the meta progress worth caring about and the dungeons are gratuitous in their inability to conceptualise an excitement of play possibility that would feed into any town growth, if that was even a remote possibility. The upgrade variety ranges from necessary to useless, much like this year’s Dome Keeper, and because the entirety of Dig’s meaningful play occurs in the dungeon, it is almost unavoidable that you will find yourself 25 minutes into nearly every run realising that is doomed to failure, and that getting to that failure was horribly unfun (not that fun really factors into it: basically the highest state of euphoria in the game is diverting). The writing is fluff in a way that does not charm with the same care of anything in Treasure Trove; the ecology of the world doesn’t allow for characters in the way a curated play experience does (there is a reason why many roguelike players refer to high level play in their chosen games as ‘an exciting excel sheet’). If there is any overarching reason to the world and what Shovel Knight is doing in this stage of his saga, the game doesn’t allow the player to care nor does it care enough to expatriate itself to the rigours of play made by roguelikes as iterative story generators.

It hurts to see the first real commercial product from Yacht Club since they released Shovel Knight fail to this degree, especially since each campaign added for free onto that original game would be a GOTY contender in its own right had it been paid product, but Dig is not only bad, it’s obviously bad in a way that will be usable as case study for the genre.

please do not play this game on mobile, or at least if you do, use a controller.

this game was a lot of fun, i'm a bit burnt out on roguelikes and this game has most of the standard features and trappings of one, but the style really make up for it. nitrome absolutely knows how to make a game look great and we all know shovel knight music is amazing. the controls are solid, i originally started with touch controls on my phone and it was pretty frustrating... i eventually connected my dualsense controller and instantly had a much better time. i wouldn't say the controls in general feel standout amazing but they feel good and responsive with a controller. the areas are pretty varied and have some fun/interesting gimmicks. the celeste style dash blocks were a standout. the bosses all felt solid too! some interesting gimmicks and some cool new characters (and twists on returning ones) and each one felt good. the relics were okay but none were standout fun, but they were all pretty useful.

my biggest problem is the roguelike style, some rooms get reused and it can feel a bit tiring if you're stuck in a specific level. i will say the game is so short and is good about letting you teleport back to locations if you beat them so it isn't too frustrating and not as bad as some other roguelikes IMO.

i had a good time playing this game, i'd like to pick it up on PC or switch at some point! it's not near the heights of the real shovel knight game but it's probably my favorite shovel knight spin off!

I love Shovel Knight, but I'm really not into rougelikes as much as I used to be. That being said, Shovel Knight Dig feels like something in the middle between good and terrible.

It definitely has that Shovel Knight charm, but the gameplay loop is dull, especially when you can spend hours not progressing, barely having enough money for a new set of armor or an upgrade. And there's nothing more frustrating than losing a key from a hit that gives you a lot more knockback than you're expecting, enough to throw you deeper down the pit. Or that "You're taking too long" Drill that Drill Knight deploys when the game decides you've had enough time exploring a specific area for secrets and gems. That can fuck right off.

And one more disjointed thought, why wasn't this a co-op game? In Shovel of Hope you get a hint of the chemistry that Shovel Knight and Shield Knight have as a duo. And while you see that in the dialogue here, i feel like a co-op roguelike, or even a co-op mode could've fully explored the chemistry they have in combat together, but no. Every time she shows up she just suggests that they split up and she's off again. Shield Knight may as well not have shown up until the ending.

And as someone who really enjoyed Shovel Knight's trip through 6 games and countless cameos, and hearing that Yacht Club Games is gonna be retiring Shovel Knight; as far as a last hurrah is concerned: this feels more like a whimper than a cheer.

Shovel Knight and Roguelites are two of my favorite things, and the combination of the two of them sounded like a match made in heaven. So you can imagine my disappointment when Shovel Knight Dig kind of sucked.

Shovel Knight Dig, at its core, has the potential to be a great game. The minute-to-minute gameplay is actually pretty fun. The issues that ruin the game are progression and platform.

I played this on mobile so I think that tainted my experience by a good amount because the touch controls are absolute garbage. Precision plus touch controls is a miserable combination. I tried this on iPhone and iPad and neither were good.

I've said this in other Roguelite reviews but I think progression makes or breaks a good roguelite. And the progression in Shovel Knight Dig sucks. The only thing you keep between runs are gems that you can spend on single-use items to help you in your next run or a new armor set.

All-in-all, it's a shame that this game kind of sucks to play because the gameplay itself had great potential.

+ Fun Downwell meets Shovel Knight gameplay.
+ More fantastic Shovel Knight music

- Miserable touch controls
- Bad sense of progression
- I'd rather just replay Shovel Knight

I hate saying this one disappointed me a bit. Maybe it isn't the game's fault because Rouge-likes are hit or miss for me, but I gave it a go anyway because Shovel Knight's one of my favorite games ever, why wouldn't I? Well, it ends up feeling a little tiresome after a while because of how often you're at the mercy of what the games gives you to build with. I can get a good run where I get a lot of Max HP sometimes, and thus have less difficulty surviving, but some runs it just doesn't give me any Max HP upgrades and I end up too fragile to reliably survive the lower parts of the dungeon.

Shovel Knight's hard level design works because fairly generous checkpointing allows you to learn the level design, and dying doesn't hurt so bad. Dying here feels awful because I'm trying to learn the mechanics of the water level's elements, only to get killed and not see the water level again for another half-hour because you start from the very beginning of the game, thus learning the level design becomes a chore. This came to a head when I got to the final level, reached a part that looked like a dead-end, couldn't find out how to progress, and then the drilling machine killed me. What did I do wrong? I'm not gonna find out until I play literally the entire game over again! It wants the Shovel Knight difficulty but still wants the perma-death of a Rogue-like.

Speaking of the drilling machine, I can't help but be shocked you can't turn that off in the options. Pocket Dungeon had such versatile customizable difficulty right down to removing its time limit entirely if you wanted. Why can't I do the same with Dig? The game would certainly kill me a lot less if I was allowed to take my time more.

The procedurally generated level design also rides the fine line of being sort of mish-mash, but also having whole segments that you start easily recognizing more and more. Especially in the first level, Mushroom Mines. Shovel Knight got it so right because every bit of the level design felt intentional and well thought-out, where here it's feeling a little more scattered because segments don't organically lead into one-another as well.

In the end it's still as solid as any Shovel Knight game, but this feels like a notable step down from everything else under the name. At least the pixel-art is gorgeous and the music is a banger, as usual.

As a new rogue-lite approach to Shovel Knight, Dig introduces a lot of cool changes accompanied by some subtle tweaks, which I think ends up making a pretty awesome spin-off.

The emphasis on vertical scrolling and a more intricate digging mechanic, lead to consistently great platforming and hidden secrets, even when parts of the level design are randomized. The core gameplay with Shovel Knight feels just as good as before, possibly even better at times.

Dig is a lot more difficult compared to the original game, definitely to facilitate aspects of replayability and upgrading, but it's still important to mention how much more densely packed the enemies are and how much faster the game's pace is. Throughout runs, the temporary buffs you receive are not created equally, but they can generally give you an edge in a run.

The gripes I have with Dig come down to the short length, as well as the balance of some bosses and randomization. This game is ultimately not very long, though it can be replayable due to its difficulty and eventual planned DLC. What items you get, mid-game stages, and level layouts are, of course, random like in a roguelike. Some aspects of balance between upgrades and choices felt off to me personally. My experience starting at the last area via warp and beating the final boss, felt much easier compared to my previous attempt getting up there with similar upgrades.

Even though an actual successful run through this game from start to finish can be only about 30 IGT minutes, I believe Yacht Club and Nitrome did an excellent job making this game really challenging to master and just as enduring to replay.

Shovel Knight Dig is a fun little roguelite that fans of the original will probably get a kick out of. In terms of gameplay, it's probably closest to Downwell with little hints of Flinthook mixed in. The difficulty curve is kinda wack and the zoomed-in camera can be the cause of a few cheap deaths, but overall, it's Shovel Knight goodness stuffed into a neat roguelite package. However, it does run VERY short for its price point; I was able to finish a run in about 6 hours, only a few more to get the true ending, and beyond that there's not much else to do. I'm not a "$$$ = hours played" type of guy, but it makes it hard to fully recommend Shovel Knight Dig. Fun game, but expect to be done with it in under 10 hours unless you go for all the achievements or something.

Policy

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Shovel Knight Dig is a tactile spectacle roguelite with a tedious 'lose more' design.

As you would expect from a Yacht Club title, the visual polish outshines the gameplay polish. I mean that in 2 ways: firstly the hands on feeling of play, jumping, the haptic feedback from a dig, and way your character glides in the air all feel nice. This is accompanied with a great color design and visual spectacle that gives each environment you dig through its own personality and style.

Unfortunately, my issue with previous Yacht titles, most notably the original Shovel Knight, carryover here. For one the immediate screen you see coming down feels more like a timed puzzle than a test of skill and response. This is because they made the smart decision to not punish you with randomly being hurt when free falling through the air. However, that renders the challenge a lot more about if you've seen the layout before. This becomes especially irritating during the boss fights, because all 3 that I got to felt quite a lot like 'puzzle fights' themselves. Once you know the movesets you're almost guaranteed not to take more than 2 chunks of health if you are playing smart. The issue is that you usually have to die at least once to be able to capably read all those moves. This feels terrible especially when you're coming into a boss fight with no health, you know you're going to lose but you're probably not going to really see what the boss does either, its a miserable feeling and the main factor for why I stopped playing, I thought to myself what are the odds that I show up here with more health anytime soon and realized it was slim. In Crypt of the Necrodancer you could practice against any enemy and boss in the game, I really think that addition here would've added a lot.

The main way to heal in the game is through picking up cogs, which requires you to be methodical and focus on your surroundings with a bit more detail, the risk reward is almost always in favor of picking up cogs, although while free falling into enemies is rare, free falling past cogs isnt.

This sucks, because as I mentioned in the clickbait sentence, game has a 'lose more' strategy to its design, if you pick up all three cogs you get to chose between a free pickup which can roll your character stronger with time, or full health. But its only so sustainable to the points of the game and floors you already witness. If you miss 1 cog instead you just get a small heal. If you're low on health, going for cogs actively is almost entirely out of the question. In a way this 'win more by skill' design may seem inviting, but it reveals one reason why more Volatile RNG mechanisms like in BoI are so sweet. Rolling a great build in a game like that is good not just because it rewards players that dont deserve it with an easy mode but because it gives the player more leeway to actually learn attack patterns.

Meanwhile, the only upgrades outside the game come from the overworld shops, but those end up being the same agitating slow timegrind for good items/stat buffs that you would experience in Gungeon or Hades which just teases you further into saying 'you wont even have a chance until you clear all these shops'. It's a grind for grind's sake, and this is enhanced by Shovel Knight's inexplicable wanton desire to dig. There's no real fixed motivation for the player character besides him getting his bad back. While this insatiable greed plays into his character specifically I feel like picking a more interesting and motivated character like plague knight or hell just a merchant from the game proper as the protagonist would have added more motivation to playing.

If it sounds like I'm being unfair so far I wouldn't blame you. But here's the catch: Even as a puzzle action roguelite with the assumption of base endurance and environment analysis it struggles for a few reasons. For one, you have no control over the camera, where free falling isn't an issue, sometimes your camera will go low and not allow you to see whats above you which becomes a pain when the randomly generated floating enemies lurk and hit you over the head. On top of this, the sustainability of your run is almost entirely decided by the shops, which can vary, but the main one I found useful was the health shops. By comparison the rest have upgrades that can be anything from distracting to actively detrimental. But the worst issue is the way carrying items works, you can carry an item behind you but you drop it as you get hit. Usually all it takes is one or 2 hits and you're not going to get that item back, but usually I end up going 2 floors at least before I have a chance to even use them. The 'lose more' design philosophy shows its fangs here to, you might be able to get a relic key all the way to a relic floor, but its unlikely but if you do its game changing in terms of sustainability to get further. The reason I call this 'lose more' instead of win more is because at least in my play you can only sustain maybe a floor or so further, you cant get a 'broken' build or anything like that. Therefore if you play from behind even a little you're almost definitely out of luck, and while the length of a run is only as long as 30 minutes, the verticality ends up being a lot more cognitavely intensive than the fixed screen information models in Isaac or Monolith.

Shovel Knight Dig is that type of game that you know you'll be able to beat in a few hours if you have a base level of persistence and a dash of good luck, but it's designed in such a way where it will take at least a few hours, there's no lucky rolls here and therefore no way to know unless you go and watch others play. I would hazard to say the game is more for Shovel Knight superfans but the fixed megaman type level design and horizontal camera of that game might not carry over to the experience of this. You have to really love Shovel Knight's moveset and unfortunately I just dont.

I think my experience with the more simplistic and twitch based response of Downwell, a very similar game about going downwards plays a lot better for me personally, and I imagine that reality plays into my jadedness here a lot. There's no timed ghost mechanics or overworld market in that game, and so that simplicity is its strength. And while you cant control the camera, there's a lot more vertical clearance to see above and enemies float towards you slowly enough for you to respond. So if you're interested in this I would recommend giving a shot first.

Ancillary Thoughts on Streamer Entertainment

That's the bulk of what I have to say, but I want to take some time to reflect on the 'entertainment' industry that attaches to this stuff. I originally saw this game on a stream and it seemed fun and interesting but I'm slowly starting to realize that whats 'fun for streaming' and fun to personally play can vary quite a bit. I will almost certainly continue watching the guy who played this game and root for their victory but in that entertainment by vicarity mode of play, we as viewers are a lot better at suspending that critical mode or accepting that its just a part of the deal: This person is playing this so whether its fair or not doesnt matter. Which is enhanced by most streamers doing several runs in a row. I feel like while it would be simple to come to the conclusion this how naturally most people play, I think the audience feedback and pressure to continue the performative scene of play actually can create a distinction. Unless you're watching a really quiet streamer for the pure vicarity of their performative abilities like with Valorant or most FPS games, a large part of the entertainment is how one can speak over the gameplay. Downwell is not a streamer friendly game because of how twitch oriented and hyper specific the input response is, turning it slightly closer to the experience of a rhythm game where all of the focus is slotted in on the experience on screen. Whereas Shovel Knight Dig is a 'comfortable' streamer game because it fill time and gives you a waistband (although 'gimmick' games can be fine to but they have to usually be humorous like the recent Trombone Champ in order to cultivate a response that can ignore the 'disturbing' parts of a work). This is weird to think about because I've considered streaming for fun before and the idea that under different conditions I would judge the entirety of the game more positively as a performative product to utilize is a weird idea. I think this is ultimately one of the reasons I like Isaac so much, its one of those rare times where performative and personal entertainment don't antagonize each others perceptions. As a larger point though we should probably be mindful of how this trend has flooded the market and may cause a potential deception in what we see vs. what we play.


That all said the music fucks hard

A very fun and hectic Rouge-like with a Shovel Knight spin. Got alot of Downwell vibes from the premise and general goal of just, going down. It's got a boppin soundtrack from the guy who did the original games soundtrack. Beautiful pixel art due to the talted folks at Nitrome. Characters are very fun to watch and interact, especially the newcomers to the series. The only drawback to this game is it doesn't really feel too varied as a rougelike, even after unlocking all the items. But, if this game looks interesting to you and you're up for a new Rouge-like, get diggin!

There's a lot to be said for how good this game feels, and if/when I revisit it, that's clearly going to be the reason why. The handling, the music, the rapid pace at which it cycles from digging to platforming to fighting - it all comes together beautifully. It's just an extremely fun game on its baseline.

The obstacle Dig faces, though, is that players will have varying levels of patience for the roguelike structure. This is a hard game, and I don't think it necessarily has the run-level variety or the degree of player-control to keep everyone around. Most roguelikes have an aspect of build crafting, but in Dig, you only get to choose your upgrades when you're lucky enough to stumble into a shop (and if you've happened to stockpile enough gems to afford something). So it's hard to feel proud of a run when you don't have much agency at all over your "build." It adds to this growing fear that all you're doing is waiting for a god roll to be able to beat the game.

I do often wonder with roguelikes if the game would be better as a linear experience, and to Dig's credit, I am glad that it has that randomness built-in. I just wish it was a little bit more rewarding and a little less punishing.

As a big fan of Shovel Knight and of rogue-lites in general, I wanted to love this more than I did.

The main gameplay loop is fun but gets old quick. There isn't enough variety from run to run to keep me wanting to play more. It still has a ton of Shovel Knight charm. Art, level, and music design are all great.

Specific gripes: it's frustrating to lead a trail of eggs or keys through multiple levels without seeing a treasure chest or nest. When you do find a chest or nest, the rewards don't feel that impactful.

Overall, I enjoyed my 30hrs but I'm not sure there is much reason to complete this one aside from being a fan of the series.

This has been one of my most anticipated games ever since I became a Shovel Knight fan, so I had some high expectations.

The game nailed it on the usual aspects, like music, level design, and controls. The true ending questline is complicated and rewarding, an improvement over Pocket dungeon. I did have some issues though.

The number 1 problem in Dig is the small item pool. There are WAY too little perks, items and gear, which leads to runs feeling the same. You'll just end up equipping your favourites every time because the chance to get them is so high. It's even more frustrating when some items are wasted on just elemental resistance that only works against one or two enemies in the game.

I also wish it had a beastiary. This is the kind of game where you'd want a complete list of every enemy but it lacks it for some reason.

I also wished they had come up with a solid six new hexcavators instead of reusing Mole and Tinker from the first game. What is this, mega man and bass?

I still enjoyed the game, but I had to drop it far sooner than I'd have liked.