Shovel Knight Dig review: retro meets modern in this clever roguelike

digitaltrends.com:

Last December, Yacht Club Games snuck one of my titles games of 2021 in just under the wire: Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon. The indie was a left-field surprise, ingeniously adapting key elements of retro platformer Shovel Knight into a fast-paced puzzle/roguelike hybrid. I left that experience with a newfound appreciation for Yacht Club, respecting its ability to dissect its beloved IP and reassemble it into something new rather than spitting out an expected sequel. Its latest release, Shovel Knight Dig, only reinforces those feelings.

Launching on iOS via Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch, and PC, Shovel Knight Dig is both very different from and very similar to Pocket Dungeon. It’s a more traditional roguelike that borrows ideas from Downwell and Spelunky, rather than a matching puzzle game with an action twist. The ethos of the two projects, however, is consistent: They’re both titles that connect the past to the present.

Shovel Knight Dig is perhaps too modest to be the next great roguelike, but it’s another fascinating piece of the franchise’s ongoing conversation with video game history. It further twists Shovel Knight’s retro framework into a pretzel, suggesting that the gap between “classic” and “modern” is much smaller than we might realize.

Shovel Knight Dig once again chronicles the adventures of the series’ titular hero as he digs through dirt and rival knights alike. At this point, each Shovel Knight spin-off feels like an episode of a Saturday morning cartoon. The heroes, bad guys, signature aesthetics, and excellent music all carry over but they’re reshuffled into another low-stakes bottle episode. The loose narrative justification here is as irrelevant as it is superfluous. There’s a pit that Shovel Knight