Yacht Club Games, which created Shovel Knight, has been lying on this suddenly popular IP for several years, taking out some DLC to hang the appetite of players every once in a while, but the core gameplay has hardly changed much. You can't say that people are completely unworked, but from the perspective of market feedback and real machine sales, you have to sigh that the player's eyes are shiny, and they will not easily pay for these small repairs.
Yacht Club Games may also realize that this is not the way to go, so in early 2021 released the retro side-scrolling action game "Cyber Shadow" developed by Aarne "MekaSkull" Hunziker, and in many places you can see the shadow of the FC version of Ninja Gaiden, the game itself is very good, but the sales are not good.
Towards the end of the year, Yacht Club Games went back to hug the thigh of Shovel Knight, only this time, and came up with a very different block elimination game developed by vine studios with the same worldview but a new gameplay.
The game is quite difficult in the default settings, and the adventure mode retains the Roguelike rules of the Shovel Knight series, once out of the camp and into the dungeon, there is no way to turn back, and you must play level by level according to the preset content of the system until the character dies and returns to the camp.
At this point, the player will bring back gold coins earned during a round of gameplay to unlock artifacts that may be picked up in the level. If the technique is good enough to defeat other knight characters during the game, you can also unlock them and control these new characters for adventure.
Although the amount of content in the game is relatively poor, the simple operation and the endless combination of levels, props, and enemy blocks collide with each other, bursting out full of attraction, making people can't help but keep playing another game. In addition to the adventure mode, the game also supports two-player battles, and the rules are similar to many classic block elimination works.
However, the unique rules and high difficulty are also visible to the naked eye for novices, although the official provides a more tolerant difficulty adjustment function, but in general, it is still a small-volume casual game with obvious advantages and disadvantages.
Maverick to indescribable gameplay
The basic gameplay of "Pocket Dungeon" is very unique, and it is an elimination game from the basic rules, but the specific elimination method and operation method are different from most similar works on the market.
First of all, its rule is not the traditional "match 3" that puts the same blocks together and makes them disappear, but like "Poof" can eliminate all the same types of blocks that are connected together; secondly, players still need to control a character in the game with a top-down view like ARPG to "hit" various blocks - after hitting the enemy, both the enemy and we will press their respective attack power to deduct blood or trigger other special effects, HP will disappear when it returns to zero, hit the blood vial will return blood, hit the key can be picked up, Use to open chests to obtain items or open dungeon doors to the next level.
So from a more intuitive body feeling, I initially felt like playing a "Incredible Labyrinth" series of turn-based ARPG with the "Shovel Knight" MOD in a frame to eliminate the game, and only the left stick (cross key) can complete all the character operations, but you have to carefully plan the route, think about the order of picking up props and battles; at the same time, you must use three-dimensional thinking to comprehensively consider how to connect as many of the same blocks as possible like the traditional falling block elimination game. This allows a single impact to have an effect on all connected blocks and trigger combos, either attacking or reverting, trying to avoid hitting only one or two isolated blocks at a time.
In fact, there is a big contradiction in combining these two game methods, that is, the ARPG of the "Incredible Labyrinth" class is turn-based, and players can carefully plan their battles and marches; then the falling blocks are instantaneous, and every second there are new blocks generated and fallen, which makes people overwhelmed, and the difficulty of the two is very different.
So the solution to Pocket Dungeon is to introduce a game option with a large tuning range. In the "Adventure" column, you can directly set the game to be turn-based or real-time, the default is real-time (speed is "X1"), adjusted to "Off" to become turn-based, each time the player moves a step, the enemy also moves a step.
In addition, players can also set a lot of content, such as "reserve" equivalent to the number of lives in a game, the default is 1, the character HP will be Game Over once zeroed, but even if it is adjusted to "unlimited", it will not affect the unlocking achievement.
This is the difficulty freedom given to the player by the production team, in addition to the above mentioned "speed", "reserve", you can also adjust the character health, attack damage, whether there is a boss battle, whether there are auxiliary items and artifact drops, etc., if the adjustment is "boss", "health" and "attack damage" these three options, the system will prompt "merit will be disabled", that is, can not unlock achievements, indicating that the developer believes that these three options on the balance of the game is more damaged, generally speaking, the more critical " Reserves (number of lives)" are less important.
Difficult but thrilling gameplay
If you play with the default difficulty, Pocket Dungeon is undoubtedly a very difficult work.
After the selected character enters the level, the player will face a scene similar to the elimination of the block class game, the size of 8×8 square space, at the beginning the system will lay three layers of random blocks at the bottom of the level, divided into enemies, recovery bottles, obstacles three categories, in the instant state from the top of the screen there are random positions, random types of blocks falling, once the block will fill the scene will be Game Over, so the player's most basic game goal is to control the character to continuously hit and eliminate the blocks, Also use items dropped in blocks, items, and money earned to enhance the elimination ability to avoid the situation where the venue is filled.
The game's operation is extremely simple, every time the joystick is flicked in four directions, the character will move one block, and the whole game will pass through a turn, and there will be new blocks falling above. If there are obstacles in the direction of travel, the character will interact with them, while if blocks and enemies are ignored, they will be stacked from bottom to top.
Battles with enemies take place in the form of collisions, if the enemy has an attack power of 1 and HP of 2, then the protagonist with an attack power of 1 needs to hit the enemy twice (two turns) and lose 1 HP to destroy it, and so on for other enemies. In the middle and late levels, there will be hp up to 2-digit enemies, the boss is more than a number of blood slots, and the protagonist's HP is only 10 points, as long as the battle will almost certainly lose blood, so hard fighting is definitely not feasible, you need to collect various items during the journey to strengthen their offensive ability or weaken the enemy.
▲ Find the key to open the treasure chest
The props in the game are divided into three kinds of instant effect classes, temporary equipment and artifacts, the first two need to be picked up in the level after the key is opened to obtain or luck to eliminate the blocks containing these props directly picked up, the real-time class as long as it is touched can take effect, generally bombs, ice bombs, flame bombs, etc., after encountering there will be several rounds for players to escape the explosion range (department bombs are ineffective for the protagonist), then the most afraid of the escape road there are enemies blocking, so be sure to carefully choose the line.
Temporary equipment class is also obtained by picking up the key and then opening the treasure chest, generally the number of uses is limited, automatically equipped after picking, and then the attack will be accompanied by special effects given by props, such as penetration, ignition, freezing, increasing attack power, etc., there are special effects such as pause time, injury avoidance, etc., because there is a limit to the number of times, so in theory it is best to pick up and use at the right time to play the maximum effect, but in most cases it is still directly used to save the field after picking up.
▲ There are shops in the camp and in the levels
Artifacts need to be purchased in the store for the money obtained during the game, and can be held in the game after acquisition. There is only one shop in each level, and 3 artifacts will be randomly swiped for players to choose from, and the price will continue to rise with the number of artifacts held by the player.
The specific functions of the artifact include simply increasing the attack power and increasing the HP ceiling, as well as special effects such as automatic resurrection and increasing chain rewards. However, the current version only has a total of 27 artifacts, and the functions are slightly repetitive, and the diversity is relatively not enough.
The game's adventure mode is a level system, a total of 10 scenes, each level will brush out a locked door after surviving dozens of hundreds of rounds, as long as you pick up the key that is then swiped to open the door to enter the next level, and before that, you need to use attacks, positions and flexible thinking to prevent blocks from filling the entire field, otherwise it will be Game Over.
Every 3 levels or so, you will encounter a boss who can be collected into the camp after victory, and then used to replace the default protagonist Shovel Knight when you restart the game. These characters generally have different special abilities, such as ghost knights who will restore 2 health points after killing enemies, but will deduct blood when drinking potions, so their operation thinking is very different from other knights; the Prism Knight's stunt is to teleport 2 blocks away, and if there is an enemy on the target grid, it will swap places with it; the treasure knight will deal more damage when attacking enemies from below; the repair knight can build mechs, and the machine will explode, but his body only has 3 initial HP, which is 2 points less than most knights.
The early version of the game contains a total of 13 operable knights, and the unlocking process is not complicated, but it takes some time to adapt and familiarize yourself with the characteristics of the different characters.
summary
"Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon" is obviously a unique elimination game of high difficulty Rougelike rules from the original design, not only has only one life under the default difficulty, but also the falling blocks will bring great pressure to the player, while quickly moving positions, but also to seek the optimal solution to the route, in the face of dense obstacles, enemies, supplies, when you first started, you can not react at all, giving people a great sense of frustration.
But if you change the game mode to a turn-based system according to the method I mentioned above, the overall difficulty will drop geometrically, the player has enough time to think about how to deal with the complex situation in front of them, and a tense and exciting action game immediately becomes a strategy game like playing chess, this transformation is too drastic, so that the consumption rate of game content will also be doubled, and there is a feeling that it is not worth the loss.
Of course, there are 0.25 times, 0.5 times and up to 4 times the speed part, and the "reserve (life number)" can also be selected from 1 to 10, proving that the difficulty of the game is extremely tolerant, but the lack of content is real. The game has a total of only 10 scenes, props, enemy types are not many, even if the hidden rooms in the level are randomly refreshed, the hidden mission props that need to be unlocked with three keys are all added, and it is not thick by the standards of Rougelike games, giving people a feeling of lengthening the game time with high difficulty, coupled with the maverick game method, which may be the main reason for the lack of interest after the game is launched.
However, objectively speaking, "Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon" actually has a good foundation, good feel, IP popularity is high enough, the gameplay is easy to learn and difficult to refine, if there is a large number of content updates after that, occasionally used to kill time is still very qualified, but the price of the first 70 yuan is indeed not worth it, and players who like it can wait for a while to start.
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