Yacht Club Games has released two new games in the Shovel Knight series. The first is a local multiplayer titled Shovel Knight: Showdown and the second is a deck-building card-collecting prequel called Shovel Knight: King of Cards. 

Shovel Knight: Showdown is a local-multiplayer co-op where four players can brawl it out with characters from the series, including some that have never been playable before. Showdown also has a story mode that changes to fit your chosen characters; with 16 different characters, that's 16 different stories to play. 

Shovel Knight: King of Cards is a prequel to the Shovel Knight games where you play as the most dashing knight of them all, King Knight. The story follows the adventures of how the regal king managed to leap and pirouette his way onto the throne. Alongside King Knight's graceful platforming, King of Cards also includes a deck-building collectable card game called Joustus and King Knight has his sights set firmly on winning the Joustus crown because if there's any character in Shovel Knight that needs more bling it's the king. 

Yacht Club Games has kindly put both Showdown and King of Cards in an ultimate Shovel Knight bundle called the Treasure Trove where you can also nab additional games in the series. Buy the bundle and you'll receive Shovel of Hope, Plague of Shadows, Specter of Torment, King of Cards and Showdown for $25 / £19. If you're new to the series this bundle is a great place to start. 

Shovel Knight has had so many cameos since his debut in 2014. According to his Wikia page, he has appeared in 30 different games in various forms like a chatty NPC in Yooka Laylee, a guest character in Indivisible, and was even honoured with the role of an assist trophy in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. 

One of Shovel Knight's most recent appearances is in the gothic metroidvania, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night that released earlier this year. If you apply a piece of armour to your character, they transform into the blue knight who looks pretty buff in 3D. 

But, Shovel Knight isn't done with Bloodtsained quite yet, the free fan-made game Shovel or Whip casts him back into the metroidvania's dark universe. But this time it is to the series' great NES ancestor, Castlevania. He's not alone though, Miriam, Bloodstained's main protagonist, is also there but she is less than happy to see him. 

Shovel or Whip is a fan-made mini-game that consists of a single boss fight, you play as Miriam trying to defeat Shovel Knight who has made himself at home in the castle comfortably sitting on his throne. Although it's only one fight, Shovel or Whip is carefully crafted to keep true to the atmosphere and feel of the Castlevania games. Both Miriam's moveset is a direct callback. The way she slides across the floor, how her axes arc when she hurls them, and, obviously, she has Castlevania's iconic whip. 

Shovel Knight has some pretty slick moves too, he can bounce around on his shovel to avoid your attacks, summon a giant golden gauntlet that slams into you, and uses his shovel to dig up parts of the castle floor to hit you. He's a tricky opponent but it's more fun then difficult to beat him, but there are two more difficult modes if you're up for a challenge. The game also offers controller support and re-bindable keys. 

Shovel or Whip is a short, fun, and loving ode to Shovel Knight, Bloodstained, and the history of the Castlevania series, and the best thing is that it's totally free and available to download and play over on itch.io. For more excellent free games make sure you check out our list of the best free games on PC.

Five years after the release of the original Shovel Knight, developer Yacht Club Games has dropped word that a new game is on the way. Shovel Knight Dig is a collaborative effort between Yacht Club and Nitrome that will tell an all-new story about Shovel Knight and his dastardly nemesis, Drill Knight.

As the title suggests, Shovel Knight Dig will take players underground, where they'll dig up vast riches that will enable the purchase of new, more powerful items and upgrades. Visually, it's a big step forward from the first Shovel Knight, with 16-bit-style "high color pixel graphics" and hand-crafted levels that are "stitched together using proprietary generation techniques" to provide long-term replayability. Players will encounter new knights, enemies, and other characters on their travels, but the tale will be told with the same lighthearted humor as the original game.

Dare to compare:

The title and the trailer are both reminiscent of the robotic spelunker Steamworld Dig, although Shovel Knight's take on tunneling looks a little more frantic than I recall Steamworld's being. There's no word on when we'll find out how the two actually compare: Yacht Club said Shovel Knight Dig has been in development for more than a year, but "it’s got quite a ways to go still."

Shovel Knight's final two expansions will launch in April—and one of them is a newly-announced, local multiplayer add-on called Showdown.

Showdown will bring together all the key heroes and villains of Shovel Knight (16 of them), and some of them are playable for the first time. You can brawl one-on-one with a friend, with up to four players in a free-for-all, or in teams against each other or AI opponents, taking on modes such as Gem Clash and Showdown.

The expansion also has a story mode, which is customised to each character, and includes mini games and and all-new final encounter.

Showdown will be free for all owners of any edition of Shovel Knight, but it will also release as a standalone game. Developer Yacht Club Games has not yet announced a price for the standalone version.

You can watch ten minutes of gameplay, courtesy of IGN, below.

It's out on April 9 alongside the King of Cards expansion, which adds a card game, naturally, but it's a full campaign in its own right. You control King Knight on a thirty-stage adventure that spans four different worlds. That, too, will be free to owners of the base game, and will also be a standalone game. 

Retro platformer Shovel Knight, originally released in June 2014, recently passed two million copies sold. Developer Yacht Club Games dropped the number in a blog post, which also offers a detailed breakdown of where those sales came from. Before that, some more good news: in celebration of this milestone, Shovel Knight is 20 percent off on Steam, GOG and Humble for the next week. 

Shovel Knight originally released on PC, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, so it's no surprise it's sold the most units on PC (24.4 percent of sales) and 3DS (23.9 percent of sales). More surprising is the Nintendo Switch's spot at third place (17.6 percent of sales) given its newness—Shovel Knight only came to Switch in March 2017. 

The Switch's launch month also surpassed PC's launch month by 40,000 copies. But outside of the Switch's sales spike, PC acts as the best acid test for Shovel Knight's sales. Roughly 170,000 copies sold on PC in 2014, 140,000 in 2015, 100,000 in 2016, and 75,000 in 2017.

While PC is Shovel Knight's biggest platform, Switch is its most profitable. In no small part because the game's price increased to $25 on Switch following the release of its Specter of Torment standalone (compared to $20 on Steam), Yacht Club says Switch has already earned more revenue than any other platform. This also speaks to how frequently it's been discounted on Steam. 

Specter of Torment itself, however, has yet to turn a profit. It cost $1.5 million to develop, and it's still in the red. The same goes for the Plague of Shadows add-on, which cost $1 million to make.

Nevertheless, the Yacht Club still fully intends to finish and release Shovel Knight's four-player mode and King of Cards campaign. 

"All we can say is that our plans haven’t changed," the studio said. "We made promises during our Kickstarter, and it’s been our mission to deliver on these promises in the most amazing way possible. We wouldn’t be here without that initial support, and we’re going to continue paying it off by exceeding our promises to the best of our ability. Hopefully in the end, we’ll have created a product that will be heralded as one of the most exciting, diverse, complete platformers out there." 

Shovel Knight's numbers are consistent with what we heard when we spoke to the creators of Darkest Dungeon, Super Meat Boy and SteamWorld Dig 2 about the state of indie games on Switch versus Steam. Collectively, they agreed that Switch is a good home for indie games and undeniably the new hotness, but that PC still offers considerable advantages. 

NES-inspired platformer Shovel Knight is getting a NES-inspired add-on: the three heroes from ultra-hard '90s beat 'em up series Battletoads are leaping into the game.

Rash, Zitz, and Pimple have been exclusive to Xbox One for the past two years but now you can stomp them on PC during three optional boss battles. The green amigos arrive in a free update, and players controlling Shovel Knight can find them in a secret room off the Hall of Champions (hint: go right). 

Defeat them one by one in levels that are full of homages to the Battletoads series and you'll be rewarded with some new armour and the chance to befriend the trio.

The update also allows you to bind your mouse buttons to in-game actions (I can't really imagine playing it with a mouse, but there you go), fixes some bugs and improves controller support. The full change log is here.

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (the complete edition of the game) is £18.99/$24.99 on Steam, Humble Store, GOG and the Windows Store.

Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment is the latest in an ongoing series of post-launch campaigns for the very beautiful and very fun platformer. Announced last month as part of a (rather confusing) re-structure of how DLC will be doled out for the game, Yacht Club Games has announced that Specter of Torment will release in April – though it'll most likely release first for the Nintendo Switch next month.

The announcement was made on Twitter, where a nice animated .gif also featured. In case you missed the news last month, Yacht Club Games is splitting each of Shovel Knight's campaigns into standalone games, though people who already own the base will continue to get the expansions for free. Other bonuses are afoot as well, including local co-op and a local "battle mode".

Some big changes are coming to NES-inspired platformer Shovel Knight, beginning with a new name, Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, which will contain the original Shovel Knight campaign, now known as Shovel of Hope, as well as the Plague of Shadows campaign and the upcoming Specter of Torment. To break that down a bit: Plague of Shadows was a free DLC campaign first released in September 2015, while Specter of Torment is all new.

The renaming was necessary because developer Yacht Club Games will soon offer each campaign, which were originally intended as free updates, as separate, standalone games.

"We want to keep our promise of releasing free content for all players. We also want to continue building these campaigns and features to be the best! Somewhere along the way, the game has simply gotten too big!" Yacht Club said in the Treasure Trove FAQ. "It’s difficult for many players out there to find everything or even know that these campaigns exist. We believe that providing standalone versions will provide better entry points for different types of players and allow more people to continue enjoying each adventure on their next favorite platform." 

Yacht Club also announced plans for a new, not-yet-officially-named four-player "Battle Mode" (local only, not online) and a fourth campaign for the King Knight, which it described as "a crazy campaign with the gilded goob himself." Both are expected to be ready for release later this year, and will be included with the Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove.

Another bonus: local co-op, previously only available on Wii U, is coming to the PC for free, too.

All existing Shovel Knight owners will automatically be updated to the Treasure Trove edition, "and will continue to get each of the planned free campaigns and features via updates." The price of Shovel Knight will be going up sometime in the spring, but until it does, purchasing it at the current price ($15/£11/€15) will get you the Treasure Trove upgrade. If you want it, in other words, better to do it now than later. 

The first trailer for Shovel Knight's next campaign, Specter of Torment, appeared at the Game Awards tonight. Like the previous update, Plague of Shadows, Specter of Torment will come as a free update. Check out the trailer above to see former adversary Specter Knight's moves in action.

Specter of Torment is set to release in the spring, and will be followed at some point by one more campaign, which will star King Knight.

Shovel Knight might be finished, but it's not finished finished, on account of the extra campaigns promised in Yacht Club's Kickstarter. We've already contracted Plague Knight, and we're still waiting to pick up the cloak and scythe of Specter Knight, and put on the shiny gold armour of King Knight too. As with Plague of Shadows, the two upcoming story campaigns will be entirely free for owners of the game, and now we finally know when one of them is going to release.

Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment will be out Spring 2017, as revealed on Twitter by developer Yacht Club Games. It swaps the steadfast Shovel Knight for the spooky Specter Knight, while bunging in new story elements and adding an extra mode; you can read all about it, and the King Knight campaign, here.

Work continues on that campaign (Yacht Club is working on both simultaneously), but Specter of Torment will be out first. It will include either the new Body Swap or Battle Mode, the latter being a single-screen multiplayer combat minigame.