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Shovel Knight release date unearthed for 31 March

Shovel Knight Yacht Club Games

The Yacht Club Games dig has run into more than a few problems. In April last year they found funding to unearth the video game thought lost to history, Shovel Knight. They flew seasoned video game archaeologists to the dig site in Nicaragua and began excavation of the location said to house a gold disc of the ancient game.

Then, in October, disaster struck: the archaeologists’ diamond tipped drill bit shattered on a particularly resistant section of the Daikatana crust. The archaeologists held up their hands and cursed Ion Storm for their game which sold so poorly that copies litter the Earth’s surface forming a crust over everything older than the year 2000. The delay would push the excavation back two months.

December brought further delays when the team accidentally uncapped a pocket of noxious gas thought to have been formed by Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. Again, the project was delayed.

News has come from the dig site that hazmat suits have arrived and once again work is underway. They now believe they will have uncovered Shovel Knight by 31 March.

The news comes with a new trailer:

Shovel Knight, like so many other Kickstarted games, is tapping into the 80s-style platformers on the early consoles. Unlike other Kickstarters it’s doing it rather knowingly. Hence the protagonists less than sensical weapon of choice and the style of the trailer.

When the music makes a shift into the electric guitar solo I couldn’t help but catch a whiff of One Track Lover:


Dr Lucien Sanchez – One Track Lover by dm_518fb6fb96de3

Shovel Knight’s just entered alpha, so the team “have first pass completion of all content in the game,” say the Yacht Club. “All features are implemented. All levels are playable. All bosses are fightable. All items are gettable! Everything is there. You can play the entire game from front to back. It’s all real!

“And if you’re wondering why it took so long, let’s just say the game got a lot bigger than we originally intended, and we think everyone will be happy with that!“

Huzzah.

Also, for your listening pleasure, here’s the full version of One Track Lover: