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.