Interview with Yacht Club Games about “Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon”

Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon Maintenance

Since the landscape of indie gaming changed in the 2014s Shovel knight, Developer Yacht Club Games has done a bit of everything: they’ve expanded their successful platformer into a massive franchise, collaborating with dozens of developers on cameos and crosses, and have recently ventured to publish the work of other independent developers. With the next one Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon, however, they are completely digging into new territory.

For the first time, Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon sees this series move away from its familiar 2D platforming roots in favor of a more confusing and empowering mix. “We’ve taken everything we love about falling block puzzles and mixed it with our love of roguelikes,” said Celia Schilling, Marketing Manager at Yacht Club Games, speaking to Goomba Stomp at a recent episode of the Nintendo NXpress podcast. “It’s like a kid in love with everything we love about these two genres.”

The result? A game that can even be described as a whole new genre. However, the Yacht Club did not embark on this new project alone: Pocket Dungeon is the result of a collaboration with an independent independent developer Vine, whose work on his own puzzle game would provide the perfect foundation for Shovel Knight’s next adventure. It is the synergy of Vine’s talents combined with the expertise, passion and resources of the Yacht Club, says Schilling, who made Pocket Dungeon possible.

“The game fits the Shovel Knight genre strangely so well.”

The first moments of Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon Make one thing clear: Despite the drastically different gameplay, this is an end-to-end Shovel Knight game. When Shovel Knight is trapped in the miniature world of the “Pocket Dungeon”, he finds himself in a strange but strangely familiar place. While the gameplay will have players take down rows of enemies and obstacles rather than jumping left to right, longtime fans will find a lot to recognize and enjoy: the art of pixelated characters. , the original dialogue and heroic chiptune soundtrack are all present and acted upon.

It is perhaps all the more surprising that Pocket Dungeon started life as a completely different game. It all started with Knights of the puzzle, a game developed by Russell Rafferty, the sole developer of Vine, that mixed together falling block puzzles and dungeon crawling action. As the developer promoted the project with daily screenshots and gifs on Twitter, the game started to gain traction, often garnering hundreds of likes with every post. This popularity eventually caught the attention of the Yacht Club and they immediately saw its potential.

“The game fits in so well with the Shovel Knight genre,” Schilling said, noting that Vine’s work had some weird (and practical) similarities to the world of Shovel Knight with its cast of skeletons, blobs, and knights. Schilling adds that his team were particularly won over by the way Knight puzzle managed to elegantly blend roguelike and puzzling gameplay: “We fell in love with it because it’s not just something we love, it’s of them things we love, so let’s go! Schilling adds.

With this ideal match in place, it wasn’t long before Vine and Yacht Club officially teamed up to develop Knights of the puzzle in a full-fledged Pocket dungeon. This expansion wasn’t a simple cosmetic upgrade with a coat of Shovel Knight paint; on the contrary, the collaboration between the two developers “was a very practical process,” recalls Schilling. “Unlike previous projects, the Yacht Club Games team was very involved in this one. We wrote the copy of all dialogue in the cutscenes. We helped build the story. We have given tons of comments on the art. Russell needed a little help, so we built a team around that.

Collaborate on Pocket Dungeon was not just a project, it was a passion for the Yacht Club and Vine. The Yacht Club made available a pixel artist, designer and other team members to help Vine bring the game to its conclusion, providing new perspectives until the very last minute. “We kept coming up with cool ideas. What if we do that? What if we added that? It’s so cool, and then we got to where we need to submit the game, and we were like, “Oh no! We need to stop adding stuff to be able to ship the game.

“As this fits into the Shovel Knight timeline, only time will tell …”

Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon is built on a combination of two entirely new genres for the Shovel Knight series – puzzles and roguelikes – but according to Schilling, Vine’s original work on the game makes it a natural addition to the Yacht Club’s flagship series.

“Shovel Knight is really wacky, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and the humor and lightness of the gameplay really shines through in the personality of the IP. I think it fits so well with what Russell had built in the beginning. [in Puzzle Knights] that it created such a synergy with the genre, and that made it more enjoyable to introduce something new.

As new as it may be, Schilling confirms that Pocket Dungeon occupies a place in the official Shovel Knight lore right next to the series’ previous entries. “Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon is canon. This isn’t a direct sequel … but as it fits into Shovel Knight’s timeline, only time will tell – maybe in the Shovel Chevalier Historia, if we ever do.

Finding a brilliant balance

As enthusiastic as the team may have been during development, development naturally posed challenges. Pocket Dungeon With unusual hybrid playstyles, Vine and Yacht Club were faced with a difficult question: how to make such an original game accessible to new players, while still providing the level of challenge expected to engage avid roguelike or gaming fans. reflection ?

Pocket Dungeon answers this question with a major mechanic: it gives players the ability to activate Infinite Lives, allowing them to focus solely on solving puzzles rather than worrying about their health meter. Of course, that doesn’t eliminate the challenge of the game entirely – letting all the rows of enemies or objects reach the top of the screen will always end the game like in any other puzzle in the game. block.

Because as crucial as this mechanism is for Pocket Dungeon, however, that hasn’t always been part of the game. “In the beginning there weren’t endless lives,” says Schilling, “but we asked, how can we make this more fun for players who are big fans? of the roguelike type? One way to do it, and to make it more accessible and fun, was to add endless life. So this came later in the development process.

Ultimately, this mechanism is tied to a much higher priority. “Our goal is always how to make this more fun?” Because that’s the reason we play games, ”says Schilling. “But it’s a different story when people play super hard games for fun, even if they have fun with it too. We had to ask ourselves how do we make every character, every level and every experience in this game more enjoyable? Having that balance where the player could choose themselves just made the most sense for us. Otherwise, if we force them into some type of situation, they might not take advantage of it, hit a wall and stop playing. That’s why we personalized it. [the lives system]. “

“It’s just another universe that Shovel Knight could be in.”

A place where Pocket Dungeon continues to deviate from other titles in the series is its visuals. Leaving behind the traditional 16-bit visuals of the main Shovel Knight games, Pocket Dungeon introduces a bulkier yet adorable graphic style. Schilling says this change is only natural: “It comes down to the name, Pocket dungeon. Everything there is small and cute, as if you could put it in your pocket. Ultimately, it goes back to the show’s relentless versatility: “Shovel Knight is an overall franchise, so it’s just another universe that Shovel Knight could be in.”

But will other universes find their way to Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon? The Shovel Knight series has already made a name for itself with many huge crossovers in previous games, such as Kratos in the PlayStation version of the original. Knight of the Shovel. While Schilling notes that Pocket Dungeon already offers a crossover with another character from the Yacht Club – Scrap Knight from the next one Knight Digging Shovel–It leaves the door open to other collaborations. “For external IPs, we’ll see in the future… the team is usually on board [for crossovers], but it just depends if we have the time.

Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon presents an exciting variation on one of the most beloved indie series, and with Knight Digging Shovel Along with a myriad of inevitable sequelae going on, it’s unclear just how far the series can continue to dig. While the Yacht Club may not be ready to share too much about what the future holds for Shovel Knight after Pocket DungeonSchilling says one thing is certainly true: “We plan to make Shovel Knight games forever and ever. As for our plan, it’s just about whatever looks cool and fun to do.

Special thanks to Celia Schilling for her time. This is only part of the conversation – for more on our discussion of all things Pocket Dungeon and Yacht Club games, tune in to the latest episode of the Nintendo NXpress podcast!

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.