Delivering yet another fresh twist on Shovel Knight's peerlessly smooth faux-retro brilliance, King of Cards is a challenging, funny, beautiful game that serves not only as the final chapter in the saga but also as proof of how far its creators have come.
In the six-and-a-half years since the Kickstarter for the ground-breaking original Shovel Knight closed, Yacht Club Games has not only fulfilled every single promise but done so with increasing confidence and complexity. In particular, the pledge of "three playable boss knights" has become a series of protracted standalone adventures with all-new stories and gameplay elements — which purchasers of the original game have received for free — and King Knight's is the biggest, deepest and most impressive yet.
King of Cards is the origin story of everyone's favourite decadent dandy, as the pretender to the throne with an army of rat subjects sets out to become the undisputed master of Joustus; a competitive card game which is sweeping the land.
Much of the original Shovel Knight design and aesthetic carries over — including the incredible pixel art, wonderful Jake Kaufman soundtrack and quirky humour — but apart from card-themed shenanigans this game is crammed with new areas, bosses and secrets to savour.
The series' fourth playable knight brings with him a fourth totally different gameplay style, with King Knight's shoulder tackles and flying pirouette combining offence and platforming in an exhilarating but complex system, and the game really throws you in the deep end.
You need to have a decent grasp of how to move King Knight before you can finish the second level, and the game's final stages demand absolute mastery. Yet while it does get tough, it never stoops to the kind of cheap tricks many actual retro games employed to keep you down. You can always plainly see what you need to achieve, and it's all doable with a little practice. And best of all, it feels great.
King Knight’s floaty movement and goofy dialogue set him apart from other knights.
Individual levels are briefer than before, but much more numerous, and overall there's an element of problem-solving and secret-finding here that wasn't present in earlier platform-focused instalments. There are hidden collectible medals to find in each one, many powerups allow you to get creative with your exploratory traversal, and some levels have hidden exits that reveal extra courses, Super Mario World style. Non-standard stages like shops and Joustus dens even include honest-to-goodness adventure game puzzles to solve.
Then there's the card game itself; a very simple premise that soon reveals an incredible amount of strategy potential. You start off with a deck of basic monsters but collect more powerful cards and character-themed uniques as you go, and in battle you and your opponent take turns placing cards on a board to claim gems. Cards can all be pushed and push others in certain ways depending on the symbols they bear, meaning careful analysis of your own and your opponents hand — as well as a lot of forethought — is essential.
King of Cards reuses a lot of music and backgrounds from past episodes, but the new art and tunes in Joustus make up for it.
These are two very different game styles, so if you happen to not like the card game you may be frustrated at how central it is to affording King Knight's various useful and silly upgrades. Personally I loved the creative diversity of the boards, the adorable pixel portraits of the cards and the baroque-inspired music of the Joustus dens, and found it easy enough to buy or cheat my way through if I really had to, so I loved the interplay.
Between platforming, card playing and boss battling you'll get to enjoy a very funny prequel story filled with goofy dialogue and new takes on returning characters. King Knight's petulance, boorish attitude and total disinterest in heroics make his dealings with the large roster of nobler characters hilarious, and as ever the writing, animation and sound is top notch.
Levels are filled with treasure, enemies old and new and, occassionally, secrets.
Though the quest isn't as conclusive as the original campaign (now re-titled Shovel of Hope), and doesn't pack the surprising emotional weight of 2017's Spectre of Torment, as a game it offers by far the slickest and most consistent package. It took me around 15 hours to finish the game and all its regular and secret levels, and not a moment of that time felt wasted. Even the ancillary secrets I pursued — including a hidden and bizarre fairy world and the truly astounding culmination of the Joustus-specific campaign — were rewarding, and I'm confident that if I go back to mop up the few remaining cards and collectibles, or jump into the harder new game plus or challenge room modes, it will be more of the same.
With the addition of King of Cards and the also-new competitive battler Showdown, Shovel Knight continues to be one of the finest and best value indie packages around, and this is a lovingly crafted end to the saga. In fact one of the very few downsides of note is the realisation that, though the team has definitely earned a break, this may be our final journey in this delightful world for quite some time.
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