Shovel Knight
No roguelike randomness or permadeath. No Metroidvania backtracking. No Soulslike difficulty curves. Shovel Knight is just a top-tier platformer that doubles as a satisfying tribute to classic 8-bit games like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and DuckTales. It came out over a decade ago and was ported to Switch in 2017. It’s incredible to think the studio behind it, Yacht Club Games, hasn’t released anything but expansions and spin-offs since. If you’re excited for their new game, Mina the Hollower, this October, however, you need to start with Shovel Knight first.
