4.8 KiB
| title | date | score | game_release_year | howlongtobeat_id | howlongtobeat_hrs | game_name | game_developer | game_genre | tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon | 2024-04-02 | 2 | 2021 | 75458 | 4.3 | Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon | Yacht Club Games, LLC | Puzzler |
|
For some reason, I always think of this game as Pocket Knight: Shovel Dungeon. The Pocket Dungeon subtitle doesn't seem to stick well to the Shovel Knight mainline title? The title of the game doesn't entirely give away what it's about: okay, our trusty blue Shovel Knight, but this time in pocket size? No? Puzzles, you say? Why not Puzzle Dungeon then?
Anyway. In Pocket Puzzle---ah, dang it!---you're shoveling away chains of titular Shovel Knight enemies in a 2D Tetris-like grid where new (enemy) blocks vertically spawn in, just like in many of these puzzlers. What then is it that makes Knight Puzzle (cough) unique, compared to the endless of Yoshi's Cookie clones? Besides the fact that it's coated in a charming layer of shoveliness, and you're inside the grid this time, shoveling around clearing house? I'm afraid I'll have to drop the term roguelike here, which, for me, is also the biggest pain point of the game. I fell for it yet again.
It's not you Pocket Knight, it's me: Yacht Club Games' sales breakdown a couple of months post-release showed the same interesting phenomena: when inspecting steam playtime stats, the vast majority of players are bucketed per playtime 0-1h and 1-2h. After three hours, the bar chart almost flatlines. They explain:
What stands out most to us here is the large discrepancy between median and average playtime here. It gives the impression that people who play it fall deeply in love, but some players are bouncing off it pretty quickly. That is actually in line with a lot of our playtests. We found if players clicked with the game (typically giving it 30 mins to an hour of playtime), they would be hooked and play for dozens of hours.
Indeed, if it clicked---but for most, it doesn't seem to, and that includes me as well. It's not just the less forgivable roguelike elements, as with any classic Tetris-like, you start at level 1 and have to redo the whole thing once that fatal block drops. It's just that the gameplay loop feels very bland after a while, despite the very high production level Shovel Knight sauce.
There's ample options to tweak the game to your liking, such as making it a turn-based tactics puzzler instead of the more frantic time-based one it is by default. I thankfully made great use of that setting, but it can take the game well into the "too easy" mode, so trying to balance it yourself is not that obvious.
There are plenty of secrets to discover and/or unlock by making bigger chains, collecting gems, and managing to visit a shop during runs provided you've got the key. The items you can buy have a slight chance to appear in chests during your next run, like a spear that has longer reach and pierces targets or a bomb that temporarily freezes units in a bigger square. All items have limited uses though, so "bump" into enemies wisely, as before you know it, the thing you really needed is suddenly gone.
During your adventure, you'll meet other knights trapped in the "puzzle box", wanting to get out just as much as you do. After defeating them, they'll join your cause. In the campsite in-between runs you can switch protagonist, color, settings, read up on obscure tips, and so forth. When you're all set, it's back to the grinding zone.
As you move and attack enemies in the grid, they'll retaliate: some are electrified, some warp away once hit, some raise their shield, and some just hit hard and kill you if you don't pay attention. Again, you can select whether or not the run is over (the default mode) or you respawn like another falling block (the rookie Jefklak-mode). Then there's a meter that you're supposed to keep track of to keep on forming and breaking big chains to rack in bonus gems/points, not unlike Crypt of the Necrodancer, which I completely ignored.
Like the Eurogamer review says: once it clicks, it really clicks. I would like to add: if it doesn't, it really doesn't. The local-only versus mode seems cool, but at this point, I'd rather just play Columns, Tetris, or even just Puyo Puyo in Sonic's verus mode.
Perhaps try it at a friend's place before you buy?