Only an hour in, but so far it's very good.

It's really really good. I think people saying it's easy are crazy. It gets pretty hard by the end, though it's nothing impossible.

For me, it is the kind of game that stands out not because of how innovative it is, but because how great everything feel. It does nothing really new or different, which prevents it from being a true classic in my opinion, but succeeds wonderfully at what it does.

It's pretty good.

@fear_the_booboo: 100% agree. I do find it quite challenging so far if i'm honest. I'm playing it on PC because it's not released on anything else yet, here. I really think it will be the hardest on 3ds in my opinion.

I think it's pretty great. I think it succeeds in spite of being a pixel platformer because of how well it executes in the style. Controls feel good, it's visually appealing, I'm having a difficult time thinking of more memorable music (or better composed, for that matter). If they had chosen to not make this game in this style it would still be just as good, frankly.

It makes sense that they made the stylistic choices they did, and they fit the whole theme incredibly well, but I'm interested to see what Yachtclub makes after this. Assuming they keep this level of craftsmanship and care in their next game, I'll be sure to enjoy that one as well.

Also, it wasn't punishingly hard, but I'm not sure what people were really expecting? Most of the difficulty from this era of game came from weird design choices and some cheap deaths, it serves the game better to be challenging but not controller-breakingly hard.

I had no issue controlling it on the 3DS. I think that people complaining about its difficulty are comparing it a little too much to the likes of Spelunky and 1001 Spikes, when it's not meant to be that kind of game. Compared to games of the era that it's trying to capture nostalgia of, it's pretty challenging without ever being cheap.

Also it's probably my favorite game released this year. I said this in a different thread - if you have ever enjoyed a 2D Mega Man or Castlevania game, then this game should be something you get a hold of soon. It's fantastic. I cannot think of any notable complaints with it, which is rare for me. It's just such an excellent use of classic game mechanics, from beginning to end.

I accidentally destroyed several checkpoints. Fuck that system.

Hey. Hey.

...

Spelunky ain't cheap.

Shovel Knight is like, the best game to come out in the last 2 months, easily.

That's right Transistor, I'm not going to give it to you, because your story was kinda bad.

Anyway, Shovel Knight is great, and now I'm contemplating how many of these "finish the game under these crazy circumstances" achievements I'm going to attempt.

That line was meant to reference NES games, not Spelunky - sorry.

The art is way worse than Rayman.

Shovel Knight is 1 game better than Brothers.

It's pretty good, though I'm not a big fan of the combat system. I'm mostly just mashing my way through bossfights.

I haven't beaten it yet but I'm really loving it on the 3DS so far.

@fordroog: It's quite good. I'm about 4 hrs in, and it is really quite the work of art.

Well made and charming.

I like it but I think I would like it more if I grew up playing games like it as a kid. Something like Meat Boy and 1001 Spikes are more gratifying to me because it requires the levels to be mastered. Shovel Knight is a little more loose and less demanding. But demanding enough that it requires more focus then I sometimes think. It's in a weird middle ground for me where I like it but I don't want to master it or really play it a lot.

Shovel Knight is somewhere between Baller and F*cking awesome for me. Scratches my Nostalgia real nice and is a great game as well. I want to dive right into New Game + , but I also kind of want to wait for the DLC / updates and see all the boss modes and stuff.

I mostly enjoyed it. Once I got into the second and third tier of bosses I got a bit frustrated. It seemed like on each dungeon things would be going fine until I hit that one screen in which the platforming was a bit fucked (at least for me) and I would lose all of my gold thanks to it floating in unreachable areas. I left dungeons with less gold than I entered them with more than once, usually due to a single section. That could just be me, but it was a pretty big buzz kill for me, even though over all I really enjoyed it.

Wonderful. It's exactly the kind of retro-inspired platformer that indie developers have been promising in the past 5 years.

Best thing I've played this year.

@sbaitso: Wear the red armour! Cuz yeah, sometimes money ends up stuck on the underside of platforms that hang over bottomless pits, and it is unrecoverable. To the dev's credit, the money TRIES to float up so that it's reachable, but sometimes stuff prevents it from doing so.