Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon has been announced with its first trailer. The developers at Yacht Club Games, overseers of the Shovel Knight franchise, have teamed up with the developers at Vine to make this intriguing new game a reality.
It’s apparently “a Roguelite Puzzle game hybrid”, with the team at Yacht Club Games explaining that this new project “mashes up everything we love about falling block puzzle games, with a dungeon-crawling twist!” Much like Shovel Knight Dig, this represents an unexpected new direction.
The official website for Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon even goes so far as to describe it as “an action-packed puzzle adventure mashup like none other!” Players will join forces with a “mysterious guide” called Puzzle Knight in the game to take part in both puzzle experiences and dungeon-crawling action. The game is described as having a new story, and it will factor in “bosses both familiar and new.”
Wondering what this unexpected combination of things will actually look like? The best way of wrapping your head around this interesting new direction for Shovel Knight is to take a look at the game’s first trailer…
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That art design is cutesy and the gameplay looks nicely varied, so it’s easy to imagine Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon finding an audience if Yacht Club Games and Vine can deliver on the promise of this trailer.
There are still a lot of question marks here, though. Despite pushing out a lot of marketing materials, Yacht Club Games has not announced the Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon release date. And we don’t know what platforms the game will come out on, either.
The use of the word ‘pocket’ in the game’s title makes us think that Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon is designed for handheld play, which could put us in the realm of the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. However, online scuttlebutt seems to suggest that PS4, Xbox One, and PC could also be options here. And what about the next-gen consoles – the PS5 and the Xbox Series X? At the moment, we simply don’t know which of these will house Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon.
Wherever we end up playing it, the fact that Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon exists is cause for excitement and celebration. More than five years have passed since the original Shovel Knight launched in June 2014, and it’s great to see this brand living on. Here’s hoping this new guise is a good one.