Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon launches tomorrow and offers a fascinating change of pace for everyone’s favorite shovel-wielding hero/must-have indie guest star. After countless matches, I can say that its action-oriented spin on puzzle games works well. Assuming you can hit a curve of surprisingly steep difficulty, Pocket Dungeon is well worth a try if you’re looking for a new puzzle game to tackle.
Pocket Dungeon’s boards have descending tiles that can be monsters, obstacles, potions, and other items that you must stack to the top by clearing matching tiles adjacent to other tiles. . You move Shovel Knights (or other unlockable characters) in these boards to beat matching titles. Although the tiles will automatically descend slowly at the start, they will decrease faster each time you move. Furthermore, both you and the monster have health bars, and most enemies will fight back after being attacked. Losing health leads to failure, so Pocket Dungeons become a difficult balance of clearing cells relatively quickly while attacking enemies carefully to avoid getting yourself killed. Clearing tiles also rewards gems used to buy new items, and filling a meter multiplies your gems.
As a lover of puzzle games, you should be familiar with Pocket Dungeon’s action-oriented approach. Honestly, I haven’t mastered it yet. In the first place, I instinctively rushed at every suitable monster I saw, forgetting that in return I usually took the same damage. Depending on the form of play you choose, traditional or roguelike, dying has two outcomes. Traditional play does not limit the number of lives, so you only lose when the table is full. Playing by the same rules means you start all over again after every death, regardless of the state of the board. I’m playing the traditional format, but I’d describe it as “less difficult” than easy, as it were. Sure, Shovel Knight can die multiple times, but respawning takes precious seconds and the game doesn’t wait for you to return. By the time you return, the table may have filled up, resulting in a failure. This taught me to always monitor my health and judge the right time to attack.
You don’t have to clear a clear board to win. Finding the key to open the exit door will take you to the next stage, so it’s really about surviving until the aforementioned door appears. The key also opens chests that provide useful power-ups such as a spear that pierces multiple targets, a shield that blocks attacks, or a smokescreen that blocks enemy counterattacks within range. My favorite is a simple bomb that can break large blocks of bricks, although it can also damage you if you don’t get out of its range.
Challenging Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon. Since tiles drop faster as you move (and drop more slowly when you’re stationary), quelling a player’s desire to plow through as quickly as possible is difficult and can lead to a hasty death. This is especially true of enemies that require more thought to eliminate, such as ghosts that disappear for a period of time after each hit or frogs that become electrified every other step. Managing a variety of enemies that all require their own approach to defeating them is no easy feat. I hit quite a few times before I finally found a groove. Now, I can carefully navigate a table while still acting quickly. Clearing over 10 nasty enemy blocks feels incredibly satisfying.
Even if still, I think the difficulty spiked sooner than it should. Phase 1 serves as a good introduction to basic enemies, making it easy to grasp the mechanics. However, Phase 2 unleashes shielded enemies that must be hit from multiple directions because they block the angle you last hit them. It’s a tough idea when you should be focusing on the game so early and it seems like it should have been saved to at least stage 3 or 4. I hit the wall early because of it. I worry others will too, and will return sooner.
Skipping a stage means starting over from Stage 1, but luckily you can end up buying a fast-travel option to jump right back to your chosen stage. Between runs, you’ll hang out at base camp to buy useful items from the rotating inventory. Helpful perks include gem gauges that last longer or gain more hit points. I also enjoy participating in NPC distractions such as the reflex-based brick-smashing challenge.
Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon continues to grow and overall, I’m happy to see what tricks it has in store. The pixel art looks amazing unsurprisingly, and the soundtrack is just as good as you’d expect from a Shovel Knight part. I also get less of my metal butt, but the game is still a tough climb in terms of challenge. Shovel Knight’s puzzling block experiment is shaping up to be a fun, though often disappointing, success.
Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon will be available on PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC.
