That’s right Indie Game lovers, our day has come once again. The beloved, cyan-suited, side-scroller, Shovel Knight is taking big steps “into the REAL WORLD!!” as Yacht Club Games has put it. Earning over 100 awards (including tons of Game of the Year accolades) and more than 700,000 copies sold, our favorite spade-wielding hero will finally be coming to retail.
After Shovel Knight was successfully chosen to be distributed via Steam through the Greenlight initiative, it’s safe to say this might be one of Yacht Club Games’ biggest announcements to date. After all, it’s always interesting to see what affect the addition of physical copies (rather than just digital) has on the company and the game.
In the case of Shovel Knight, this is a bold and well-deserved leap for the franchise and clearly shows what’s possible with the support of a community and a little “good-ol-fashioned” video game luck. And, they’re certainly going about it the right way by hitting up all of the current-gen consoles.
Shovel Knight will be available on the Wii U, Playstation 4, Xbox One, and even the Nintendo 3DS! Keeping the love for the hand-held gamers, I love it. And for all you fellow PC gamers, Yacht Club has announced that the physical PC version will only be released in Europe, so I’m afraid all of our North American Shovel Knight shrines will have to go without our shiny PC disc. I don’t know about you, but I feel as thought the digital version will get me by just fine.
The release dates announced are October 13th, 2015 for North America and October 16th for Europe, so get ready to start digging this coming fall. The price is set at $19.99, which is a tad more pricey than the Steam digital version, but that’s to be expected with physical copies. Especially since you can’t hug a digital version.
However, with the physical version of Shovel Knight, you’ll get some free updates, with more campaigns for different characters, a body swap mode (wink) and a Battle Mode all set to be included.
Excited? You should be.