December 6, 2014December 6, 2014

Shovel Knight Digs into PS4, PS3, PS Vita in 2015

Hey Shovelers and Shovelettes! We’re Yacht Club Games: a new game studio dedicated to creating fun and challenging gameplay! We aspire to both tug at your heartstrings, and delight you with levity and charm. We’re very proud to announce that our debut title, Shovel Knight, will be tunneling its way to PS4, PS3, and PS Vita next year! We hope everyone will enjoy the game!

Shovel Knight is a sweeping classic action adventure game with awesome gameplay, memorable characters, and an 8-bit retro aesthetic. It’s a hot mashup of new and old that may remind you of Mega Man, Castlevania, or Dark Souls! You play as the eponymous Shovel Knight, a small knight with a huge quest. Shovel Knight has two goals: to defeat the evil Enchantress and save his lost beloved. He wields a Shovel Blade: a multipurpose weapon whose techniques have now been lost to the ages. Always honest and helpful, Shovel Knight is a shining example of the code of Shovelry: Slash Mercilessly and Dig Tirelessly!

But, between Shovel Knight and his beloved stands a cadre of villainous knights. These terrible foes, known as The Order of No Quarter, have been dispatched to prevent Shovel Knight from reaching the Enchantress, and will pursue their mission at any cost.

If you love games with perfect platforming, beautiful art, infectious music, crazy bosses, and real heart… Shovel Knight is for you! Even if you’ve never played a pixel platformer before, Shovel Knight is a great place to start!

We are extremely happy that Shovel Knight can soon embark on his adventure on PS4, PS3, and PS Vita! Shovel Knight’s lovingly pixelated animations and scenery look especially gorgeous on the PS Vita’s phenomenal screen, and the tight action platforming controls like a dream on PS4 and PS3! We look forward to breaking new ground on special platform specific content: back touch implementation, Twitch TV integration, cross-save, and more! It’s our goal for Shovel Knight to feel right at home on your system of choice, so let us know what you think would make for a really neat new feature!

Speaking of surprising new additions… this is a big one! We’re very excited and honored to announce that we’ve been working with Sony Santa Monica to feature Kratos from God of War in Shovel Knight! Who better to induct our beshoveled hero than Sony’s own finest? We’ve had a ton of fun trying to authentically capture the raw, awesome energy of a God of War battle in 8-bit form. What brings Kratos to the land of Shovel Knight?! We’ll leave that up to you to figure out, but for now, we’ll let you pore over this teaser GIF for clues…

That’s all we’ve got for today. If you happen to be at the PlayStation Experience in Las Vegas, then don’t hesitate to stop on by, say hello, and give Shovel Knight a try! We’ll also be keeping an eye on the comments below, so feel free to hit us up with your questions, concerns and more, and we’ll do our best to answer! Thanks so much!

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36 Comments

6 Author Replies

Sonicfan11589
December 6, 2014 at 11:10 am PST

EXCELLENT game. Glad i funded this via kickstarter.
- David D'Angelo
  December 6, 2014 at 11:50 am PST
  
  Glad we could make this happen! Thanks for believing in Shovel Knight since the very beginning!
KazeEternal
December 6, 2014 at 11:13 am PST

Crossbuy? Glad I waited on getting this.
CheCorchete
December 6, 2014 at 11:14 am PST

Cross buy please!
djsaiyan
December 6, 2014 at 11:15 am PST

I already bought Shovel Knight, but you better believe I’ll buy it again.

Cross-buy would be ideal, but not necessarily required.
matt11707
December 6, 2014 at 11:17 am PST

nice,Kratos bring the one of the bosses in shovel knight nice im sold.
Dragonsmana
December 6, 2014 at 11:21 am PST

Kratos just convinced me to rebuy this lol. Can’t wait!
dkarlowicz10
December 6, 2014 at 11:26 am PST

Is this supposed to be super hard? I am very interested, but hope it has a normal or easy difficulty for gamers like me.
- David D'Angelo
  December 6, 2014 at 11:54 am PST
  
  Shovel Knight only has a single difficulty mode. While we certainly wanted the game to be “challenging”, we wanted to do so without making it frustratingly so! If you find and leverage certain items in the game it can make your adventure that much easier. Your mileage may vary though. Do you have a favorite platforming series?
plaztiksyke
December 6, 2014 at 12:55 pm PST

backed this on Kickstarter, and was so pleased when the option was added to play as a female character.

now that it’s coming to all my PlayStation devices, I’m just totally psyched and glad I backed the team.

now we just need to get a port of A Boy and His Blob to PS3/4/VIta :) that game and Zak&Wiki were my two favorite Wii games, and I’m bummed most PlayStation gamers won’t get to experience the joy they brought to me and my friends.
Kishnabe
December 6, 2014 at 1:06 pm PST

Been waiting since release on Eshop for this…..seeing Projared and Completionist rave about it.

Hope this has a Plat….since it is hard.
aernth
December 6, 2014 at 2:14 pm PST

So pleased and grateful to hear this news. A day one sale here. Thank you!
Blacq_Soul
December 6, 2014 at 3:19 pm PST

I’m so god I held out a just a wee bit longer bc I want this for my vita
Elvick_
December 6, 2014 at 4:17 pm PST

Finally! Can’t wait to play on Vita.
crz17
December 6, 2014 at 4:39 pm PST

Cant wait to play this!!
RSevo09
December 6, 2014 at 4:48 pm PST

Been waiting for this on vita, can’t wait to dig in!
unlovedhomie
December 6, 2014 at 5:18 pm PST

shovel knight is the first game i have ever backed and im glad i did, this is my game of the year. congrats and i hope there will be a part 2 .
johnstalvern1
December 6, 2014 at 6:18 pm PST

Any reason (besides an obvious one) that you didn’t use Sir Dan from Medievil? I figured he would have been the go-to choice over Kratos (technically).
- David D'Angelo
  December 6, 2014 at 6:28 pm PST
  
  Haha, we did discuss Sir Fortesque a little early on! I agree he has a leg up when it comes to theme and setting and would blend right in to Specter Knight’s level. Overall, the team was a lot more excited to tinker with a Kratos moveset. Lot’s of abilities to pull from for phase changes, a big presence (lot’s of screen shakes!), and his chains allow for some cool mobility tricks!
xeno3d
December 6, 2014 at 8:47 pm PST

YES!!! So excited for this :)
KBABZ
December 6, 2014 at 8:48 pm PST

Awesome, this game looked pretty sweet! I was wondering though if there are any plans to introduce CrossBuy; CrossSave is great and all, but I only really plan to pick this up on Vita, and paying for the same game twice at full price isn’t all that appealing.
- David D'Angelo
  December 6, 2014 at 9:19 pm PST
  
  We don’t have any details like that pinned down quite yet, but your interest is very much noted. CrossSave is indeed a rather limited feature if you don’t happen to have it on both!
RD_21
December 6, 2014 at 8:59 pm PST

I know PR controls everything and you won’t be able to say the exact release date, but any chance you could tell us when we can expect more infos on the release date?
- David D'Angelo
  December 6, 2014 at 9:25 pm PST
  
  We’re a pretty small team here (half a dozen) so our PR restrictions thankfully remain pretty thin, haha. That said, we don’t have a release date to share mostly because we don’t yet have a clear view of what lies ahead! We might try a few fun new additions or something could take us a lot longer than we expect! I hope we’ll have more concrete news to share sometime within the next month or so.
GStylez1980
December 6, 2014 at 9:30 pm PST

How about that: IGN’s Colin Moriarty’s GOTY for 2014 makes it way over to the PS family! Couldn’t be more pumped to get this game on my Vita. Day one purchase for me. Man, Vita is having a banner day today!

Follow me on Twitter: @brg_esq
Friend me on PSN: GStylez1980
exjraordinary
December 7, 2014 at 9:35 am PST

Game looks great Im glad i waited and didnt get on 3ds. I love my Vita and love me some trophies, any info on a platinum?
Neil
December 7, 2014 at 11:23 am PST

Day 1. I yelled out in excitement when this was shown. Seriously, looking forward to this just as much as Uncharted 4.
RMeade87
December 7, 2014 at 3:23 pm PST

I wouldn’t buy this on the nintendk platform because of no crossbuy there. If there is no crossbuy on PSN i guess I still wont jump on board.
ishralene09
December 7, 2014 at 7:21 pm PST

Day 1. Again. For the 3rd time. This is awesome sauce. I’m glad I backed this project up. Thanks Yacht Club!

FOR SHOVELRY!
AbscissaAbscissa
December 8, 2014 at 5:08 am PST

THANK YOU for not overlooking PS3!! I’ve played the PC version breifly and it’s a fantastic game. Will definitely be buying this.
PhantomOranges
December 8, 2014 at 4:58 pm PST

Loved this game on my 3ds, I may consider getting it again.
MakaiOokami
December 8, 2014 at 7:26 pm PST

This is why I don’t have a Wii U.

Most of their best 3rd party games are coming to the PS4/3/Vita and many with Cross-buy and the Vita screen is so much nicer than the teensy 3DS screen, and share play, and video recording from the share button with youtube uploading and online streaming?

Way better in every way. You can play the games on a Vita miles away from you PS4, rather than just being within Widi range of your Wii U.
FurryCurry
December 8, 2014 at 9:22 pm PST

I hope you guys are still reading this.

1) Anyway I’m one of your backers and have already beaten it the first time around on PC (and using a DS4 no less haha) but I LOVE this game enough to buy it again for my PS4? Or my Vita? With that said please try your hardest to release this game as CrossBuy. It is a big deal to me and many others and one of the standout features with the PSN ecosystem.

2) Include the Arranged soundtrack and other remixes?

3) Try to retain as many features as possible from the PC release?

4) More quick treasures stages or even a mode dedicated to them!?
- David D'Angelo
  December 9, 2014 at 11:41 am PST
  
  We’re always here! Always watching!
  
  1) Thank you for backing! Really! — and for your suggestion! We’ll take a look at what we can do on the cross-buy situation. We just got Shovel Knight running. jumping, and digging around on all three platforms so there’s still lot’s to do!
  
  2) That’s not the first time we’ve heard the suggestion for the arranged OST to appear in-game! It would be a neat feature considering, and I would love to square off with the arranged Black Knight music! We’d have to see about bolstering the arranged album’s track number though– 48 songs is a sizable amount to match.
  
  3) All releases of Shovel Knight will be receiving the same updates and feature the same main-game content. Shouldn’t be any worries there.
  
  4) While Shovel Knight’s map is looking rather full-up, you might just be in luck! We’re in the design phase for “Challenge Mode”, a separate set of stages met to up the ante a little more. This might just give you your treasure stage fix.
HakureiViolist
December 8, 2014 at 10:13 pm PST

I bought Shovel Knight back when it first released on the 3DS eShop, and I always thought that it would feel right at home were it on the Vita. Will definitely be buying it again once it releases!
Bam4evr
December 9, 2014 at 9:39 pm PST

I always wanted to see Kratos in 8-Bit form so I’m glad to see this. Can’t wait to see the boss fight. I hope we see that real soon.
trestondilla
December 10, 2014 at 3:43 am PST

I feel like many game developers see trophies as an afterthought, but there’s a huge community of trophy hunters who really value them. Trophies really add to the experience for me. It extends the games lifespan and it can potentially lead to new ways for players to experience the game, ways that they might not have ever experienced it if they hadn’t been going for the trophy. There’s just something super rewarding about completing a games trophy list and getting that platinum trophy … as long the trophies aren’t INSANELY difficult or tedious. I’ve already beaten the game on my Wii U, but i would be more than happy to revisit the game for the platinum trophy. I hope you guys consider it and i hope you continue to make great games! Thanks for Shovel Knight and all of your hard work!
Armin_Arlert_104
December 10, 2014 at 5:16 pm PST

I can’t wait to get my hands on this game! Looks so fun and nostalgic. Plus, I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.
Remmy8199
December 10, 2014 at 10:58 pm PST

I don’t recommend games too often on this board, but if you haven’t had a chance to play this, then git it nao!!! The hype is definitely real for this one. Especially if you’re into old school type of games.
Remmy8199
December 10, 2014 at 11:09 pm PST

Also, how about some avatars for this game? Getting kinda tired of the one I have now.
Boss420FoSho
December 14, 2014 at 1:54 am PST

physical release on
Ps4 please!
BFarmer1980
December 30, 2014 at 1:35 pm PST

Awesome! I’ve wanted to play this since seeing Roahmmythril’s LP on Youtube, but was holding out hope for a PSN release. Glad to see the wait is going to pay off!