![]() ![]() ![]() Maybe fuzzy things will float by that will make you tiny. Maybe there will be huge chomping snakes hidden in the earth. And maybe you'll dig through a minefield. ![]() So Secret Fountain always has the water, but it doesn't always have the water wheels. It's both procedural - a surprise! - and heavily curated, which means you get randomly shuffled set-pieces. Each time you drop down into the adventure, the level themes are the same, the level order is the same, and the branching choices are kind of the same, but the stuff you encounter within the levels changes. This is because Shovel Knight Dig is carefully procedural. It takes the core of the Shovel Knight game - the fact that you can bounce on your shovel as Scrooge McDuck once bounced on his cane - and the extended cast of knights, and then general tone of luxurious retro fun, and while it always feels like Yacht Club, it spins out something that often feels like classic Nitrome too, in a form that I hadn't seen before. Controllers can also be remapped.Īnyway! With Nitrome involved, Shovel Knight Dig becomes something extremely special. It's all pretty humbling.)Īccessibility options are decent, including extra health, damage, and the ability to change the game speed. If you've ever looked at the timeline of Shakespeare's plays and marveled how he could knock out Measure for Measure and Othello in the same year when it's a struggle to just get the dishwasher fixed, do take a look at this list of Nitrome games on the studio's Wikipedia page. Astonishingly, the quality level was the only thing these games really shared beyond that: they were all great, and they were all different. Nitrome sounded out possibilities and didn't move on until an idea was absolutely wrung dry. The classic Nitrome game took a simple idea - what if you could move the screen around rather than the character, say - and then it did everything you would expect with that idea and dozens of things you wouldn't. Watch on YouTube Here's a trailer for Shovel Knight Dig. More importantly its games were marked by wild invention and polish. Nitrome was hard to miss: it delivered games that had a pixelart hard candy exterior - lots of hot pinks and mustards and purples. Nitrome is an English micro-studio founded in the early 2000s, and I first encountered the team's stuff during the Flash/web-game boom in the years that followed. And here a little history is unavoidable. 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 collaboration. Thing is, it doesn't feel like either game, You dig down through soil and rock, collecting gems, fighting baddies, travelling through themed worlds. Dig initially seems like a blend of Mr Driller and Downwell. Pocket Dungeon turned the action-heavy core of the games into a block puzzler. Like Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon, it's sort of a sidestory. Shovel Knight Dig is a fresh spin on the Shovel Knight series of Duck Tales-inspired platformers. Availability: Out on PC, Switch and Apple Arcade on the 23rd of September.Maybe I could do more than just reroute the fish? What would happen if I steered the water over to that promising waterwheel? And I realised that I could break blocks and channel the water where I wanted it to go. ![]() I realised that the fish moved across the water - they could travel wherever it flowed. Fish from the fish cannon, scarlet and slappy and properly doing me in. I was just digging downwards, flattening baddies with my shovel, enjoying the regular knockabout fun of a 2D platformer. In the Secret Fountain levels, I fell in love with the water. Compact and terrifying, this score-attack shooter feels like it's come from the future. ![]()
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