Symphonic and I talk and play a lot of games all the time and well I made this thread because most of the games we play are on steam... We wrote this review a couple of days ago but as there is no way to actively post it as a proper review I thought it would be best to not let the effort go to waste and for us to just post it here.... I hope you enjoy..

Shovel Knight is an 8-bit-inspired platformer… no wait, don’t go. This is actually one that is worthy of your attention.

While 8-bit platformers have seen a rise recently and more often than not only been sub-par, Shovel Knight stands out from the crowd as not simply being a nostalgia-inducing game attempting to recapture that era but instead is a good game in its own right. It certainly does get those nostalgia vibes tingling, but even if you weren’t a part of that era of gaming it easily stands on its own two feet (and occasionally a shovel to lean on).

You play as the titular Shovel Knight, a blue-clad individual who deals death and destruction via a garden implement in his quest to find out what happened to his partner Shield Knight when she disappeared on their last adventure. During this quest you fight a variety of knights called the Order of No Quarter who are under the command of the Enchantress, and in the finale scale her tower to find out what happened to Shield Knight.

There are also lots of shovel-based puns. And they are all amazing.
When it comes to game play it’s very standard faire: jump, attack and a duck tales-like pogo bounce that uses the shovel if you need to get additional height, or feel like smacking enemies in the head with a slab of metal.

The one thing I can’t get across in this review is how unashamedly fun it is to play. I didn’t expect it considering the few reviews and let’s plays I’d seen beforehand. Watching it you think that it’s just another 8-bit platformer, albeit very well put together, but when you get into it the combination of play style, music and tight controls make Shovel Knight absolutely sublime to play.

It is exemplar of what platformers are meant to be. Following on from kings like Super meat Boy, it has all the aspects to make it a classic: tight controls, memorable stages, unforgettable music mostly created by Vert (aka Jake Kaufman) and is long enough for you to enjoy each play through without it being a chore.

While Shovel Knight is very similar to most other platformers (jumping, insta-death pits and spikes, enemies to whack) it doesn't use a lives system. Instead when you die three money bags pop out of your body that you have to collect without dying to regain the gold you just lost, which becomes increasingly tricky if you died at the end of a long-running precision platforming section.

But we haven’t mentioned gold yet. There are certain blocks you can dig through with the main characters shovel, as well as piles of dirt to gain gems that gives you money. Even enemies when defeated give money, and bonus stages also offer you massive monetary gains.

Gold acts as both currency and also lives system Dark Souls-esque in its simplicity, but mostly by the time you get proficient at Shovel Knight the money becomes worthless so dying loses its sting, but this precious resource is used to both buy health and mana upgrades as well as the games artifacts.

These artifacts come in all shapes and sizes: a wand that throws fireballs, an amulet that makes you invulnerable for a few seconds to a horn that damages every enemy on the screen. Each use of these items takes up a certain amount of mana depending upon which item you use. All of them can be held at the same time - no inventory limited system here - but some definitely don’t seem to have the same bang-for-the-buck as others. For example, an amulet that stops an instant-death spike floor from, well, becoming instant-death, is one third of the mana usage of a horn that clears the screen of enemies, and in this game the enemies aren’t really that threatening.

Each level normally has its own conceit as well, either some sort of level transformation - such as lightning being the only illumination you get of a level which happens every five or six seconds - to fans, elevators and underwater levels. And no, the underwater level is not actually that bad.

It’s not a long game; in fact there’s an achievement for completing it in an hour and thirty minutes. A normal run would likely take three to four hours for a new player, depending, and the game also has multitudes of collectibles and challenges to attempt to keep you coming back for more. There’s a new game+ mode that reduces the amount of checkpoints you have available while keeping HP, magic and artifacts, but honestly by this point not many of the levels should really be challenging enough that the reduced checkpoints cause any hassle. If you don’t die much it’s almost the same as running through the normal game.

There is honestly very little to say is a shortcoming in Shovel Knight. It could be longer, but I would say that only because I want more of it, and the graphic style adds to the charm of it more than anything else. It’s not overly tricky but the real challenge comes from attempting to get all the achievements, which includes the aforementioned speed run, as well as completing the game without dying once, both quite hard in their own right.

There is some DLC coming out that adds more story and characters to play, but I am not certain how far along that is at the moment of writing. But when it does appear it’ll add even more value to an already easily-recommended game
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In conclusion, may your shovel be strong and your aim true.

Graphics: 8 (Beautiful, but it’s 8-bit graphics, not really anything stellar.)
Music: 10 (I listen to this OST and its remixes even now.)
Story: 6 (It’s a decent little story but  nothing you haven’t seen before.)
Game play: 9 (It really is amazing)
Overall: 9