In the secret fountain level, I fell in love with water. I didn’t notice it at first. I just dig down, level the bad guys with my shovel, and enjoy the regular fun of a 2D platformer. But then I started getting hit by fish. Quite a lot of fish. The fish in the fish cannon, scarlet and rays, fit me right in. I realize that fish move on the surface – they can move anywhere in the current. I realized I could break the blocks and direct the water where I wanted. Maybe I can do more than just change the fish’s course? What happens if I direct water to that promising waterwheel?
Shovel Knight Dig is a brand new version of the Shovel Knight series of platformers inspired by duck tales. Like Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon, it’s a little story. Pocket Dungeon turns the game’s action-heavy core into a block puzzler. Dig initially looked like a cross between Mr. Driller and Downwell. You dig in soil and rocks, collect gems, fight bad guys and travel through themed worlds. Classic Driller/Downwell stuff. The problem is, neither game is alike,
That’s because while Dig is a shovel knight game and a yacht club game, it’s also a Nitrome game – it’s a true co-op. Here, some history is inevitable. Nitrome was an English-language micro-studio founded in the early 2000s, and I first got my hands on the team stuff during the Flash/Internet gaming boom in the ensuing years. Nitrome is not to be missed: it offers the game with the look of pixel art hard candy – lots of pinks, mustards and purples. More importantly, its games are marked by wild inventions and polishes.
The classic Nitrome game takes a simple idea – say, if you can move the screen instead of the character, then it does everything you’d expect from that idea and a lot of things you wouldn’t. Nitrome tested the possibilities until an idea had been completely wringed out before moving on. Surprisingly, the level of quality is the only thing these games really share: they’re all great, and they’re all different.
(And jeeps, there’s a lot of them. If you’ve seen the timeline of Shakespeare’s play and marveled at how he knocked out Measure for Measure and Othello in the same year, and just fixing the dishwasher was a hard thing to do, check it out at Check out the list of Nitrome games on the studio’s Wikipedia page. It’s all very humbling.)
Anyway! With the involvement of Nitrome, Shovel Knight Dig becomes very special. It takes the heart of the Shovel Knight game – you can bounce on your shovel like Scrooge McDuck used to bounce on his cane – and Knight’s expanded lineup, and then the general tone of luxe retro fun, though it always feels Like a yacht club, it’s launching something that usually feels like a classic Nitrome in a form I haven’t seen before.
This is because Shovel Knight Dig’s procedures are very careful. Each time you enter the adventure, the level theme is the same, the level order is the same, and the branch selection is the same, but what you encounter in the level changes. It’s both procedural – a surprise! – and carefully curated, which means you get randomly shuffled set pieces. So the secret fountain always has water, but it doesn’t always have waterwheels. Maybe you’ll dig a minefield. There might be a huge chewing snake hidden under the ground. Maybe something blurry will drift by and it will make you small. Maybe small allows you to explore new territory.
All the themed areas offer different things – I like the industrial lava area, I like the grim one that follows – but they all break down into a series of layers where you can choose between where to go next. These options are sometimes locked, which means you have to find the key. Also, if you collect three gears in each level, you can unlock a special chest that can replenish your health or give you a treat.
Treats come in the form of relics and accessories – items that give you new abilities, like a boomerang axe or fireball, or sharp horns that let you dig upwards. There are also new moves to learn, new armor, tons of stuff, which means you can change your playstyle as you travel through a world that’s also changing. On the surface, you can pay to unlock new items, which you may then find below, and pay to unlock fast travel to certain areas. Fast travel is handled in a shovel rider fashion, I won’t spoil it. The center is also full of secrets: I’ve discovered some, and I’m sure there are more. Oh yes, and it’s set at a crossroads, so every time you come back someone walks over to chat. And a beautiful owl.
I mean: this game is made of stuff. That’s what makes it really great. On top of that, Shovel Knight Dig wants to keep pissing you off – not in a bad way – and you miss as much as you see on each run. Because you’re moving down — across the globe, and also jumping between platforms — you might encounter something you can’t get back to. A golden cog, of course, but also a promising side passage, a new enemy, a nail sticking out of the wall that hints at a secret, a challenge room, a shop with something you can’t afford in mo Something, a springboard, and its location seems promising. The thrill of building a game around opportunity cost is a bold move, especially when your thoughts aren’t: I’ll check next time, but: I’ll check when the game thinks it’s procedurally teeing up again.
However, as the opportunity cost suggests, you often miss something by choosing: you chose this path, so you can’t go the other way now, or you chose a gear, which means that new energy boosts will wait. It’s this combination of generosity and imagination that Nitrome has been serving for nearly two decades.
So it’s always nice to see a new Shovel Knight game, but digging is a little more special. If you love yacht clubs but you don’t know Nitrome yet, you will fall in love again. Together these teams create something that absolutely shines. listen! Endless invention, a lot of desire, color, fun feeling from a little bit. Unlimited imagination and generosity.
