Yacht Club Games announced Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon during a video presentation today. This is a new title in the series, but it won’t be an action-platformer like the original game.
Pocket Dungeon is a falling block puzzle game with elements of dungeon-crawlers and roguelikes. The title does not have a release date, and we do not know how its monetization will work. We also don’t know what platforms it is coming to, although the word “pocket” in the title makes you think of mobile.
Shovel Knight launched in 2014 as an action-platformer inspired by classics like Mega Man and Castlevania. Since launch, Yacht Club has turned the title into a franchise thanks to adding new character campaigns and a fighting game mode to the original. Pocket Dungeon is the second spinoff title for the franchise, with Yacht Club announcing Shovel Knight Dig last year (it is coming in 2021).
Yacht Club Games is working with Vine, an indie game developer that happens to share a name with the defunct mobile looping video app. Vine worked on a project called Puzzle Knights, which looks a lot like Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon.
freeze gems are probably my favorite bomb in PUZZLE KNIGHTS ?
im tempted to boost the spawnrate a shitload just for me#pixelart #gamedev #indiedev pic.twitter.com/OCE4pDxYE8— VINE (@VINE2D) July 6, 2018
In fact, a character named Puzzle Knight will appear in Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon. So, is Pocket Dungeon a conversion of this other game?
“We wouldn’t say it was converted,” Yacht Club told GamesBeat. “Pocket Dungeon is built from the ground up based on the ideas Vine explored while doing Puzzle Knights.”
Yacht Club is growing not just the Shovel Knight brand, but itself. The studio is getting into publishing and working with other developers. Along with this collobaration with Vine, it is working with Nitrome on Shovel Knight Dig. Yacht Club is also publishing Cyber Shadow, a Ninja Gaiden-inspired sidescroller from Mechanical Head Studios that is coming out this fall.
