Shovel Knight: King of Cards Reviews
For its last platformer chapter, the Shovel Knight series let us play through the Monty Python King Knight, a wanabee king travelling the world to defeat its potential adversaries. Through this lovely pixel art adventure, the players will alos discover the Joustus, a card game within the game, for ever more fun in every tavern of this grotesque world.
Review in French | Read full review
Shovel Knight: King of Cards is a glorious, flowing, challenging addition to the series. There's more to do, and more to love - and love it you will.
Yacht Club Games continues to dig up gold with Shovel Knight: King of Cards, despite a momentum slowing card game.
This is likely the last we’ll see of the ‘core’ Shovel Knight series for some time, and King of Cards acts as a worthy swansong for a now-legendary platformer. Bravo.
Shovel Knight: King of Cards revisits the formula one last time with new maps and bosses, as well as a brand new card game. It's ambitious, but it's also the least essential of the major Shovel Knight episodes. If you own Treasure Trove, play Shovel of Hope and Specter of Torment first, then circle back to King of Cards if you still want more.
This is a historic moment for Shovel Knight: half a decade later, I can recommend picking up anything and everything Shovel Knight related, which is easy to do with the Treasure Trove compilation. Yacht Club Games has a lot to be proud of and has accomplished a lot in their short run, and I can't wait to see what they come up with next.
Shovel Knight: King of Cards is a master-class in platforming, design, pixel art, and much, much more. Offering a good amount of new content, as well as the all-new card mini-game, Joustus, you have an overall package that is hard not to recommend, even if good portions of this feel wholly the same as the original Shovel Knight and its successive releases.
Yacht Club Games has once again created a character that somehow feels familiar to play, yet fresh. The world and characters are enchanting, and the entire package is endlessly charming.
Yacht Club Games has delivered once again in the latest expansion for Shovel Knight thanks to exciting gameplay and level design that proves Shovel Knight: King of Cards was well worth the wait.
It’s my least favourite of the Shovel Knight entries, but with the bar raised so high, that doesn’t mean that King of Cards isn’t worth your time.
It’s incredible that Yacht Club Games has finally reached the finish line on their most popular title, but it was a worthy sendoff for the first saga of a franchise that revolutionized the indie video game space.
Like its brethren before it, Shovel Knight: King of Cards features some of the best platforming game design ever seen in a video game.
Like each campaign before it, King Knight’s quest is a uniquely thrilling 2D experience that needs no asterisk assigned to any praise. This isn’t a retro throwback or an NES hanger-on, but a masterful platforming action that stands up to any and all contemporaries.
Despite my misgivings with our royal protagonist’s moveset, King of Cards is an excellent cap on what’s become a downright amazing collection of games.
King of Cards is the triumphant end of an era.
King of Cards is, without doubt, the most risky expansion of all of them. It brings brand new elements, as a complete card game (with collectible cards and fully playable) or a main character that plays very different from the previous ones, but as a whole it doesn't astound at the same level that Shovel Knight did up today.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Shovel Knight: King of Cards repeats some elements from previous entries, but it ultimately delivers one of the largest and more refined expansions in the series yet.
While I haven’t formally reviewed any of the previous Shovel Knight games I’ve been a quiet fan of the series since it started...
Shovel Knight: King of Cards is a successful union of its disparate halves, existing as both a platformer with consistently inventive level design and an engaging collectible card game. Joustus and the platforming offer a well-choreographed sequence of challenges that deliver constant variation.