It’s true! Everyone’s favorite spade-swinging protagonist will be joining the Rivals cast this September! We could not be more excited to bring Shovel Knight to the game, and have been working like crazy to ensure that he not only lives up to the hype, but is true to the character you know and love.
In fact, we want to do something we’ve never done before, and take you on a little behind the scenes journey into the process of bringing Shovel Knight to life as a Rivals character. Rather than just describe the process, we want you to hear directly from the folks who made this all possible. So, we asked some of our awesome team to share their own experience in developing our latest guest character.
In this article, you’ll hear from:
Dan Fornace - Creator, Director, Designer
Trevor Youngblood - Programmer, Designer
Ellian - Pixel Artist, Animator
Marc Knelsen - Illustrator, Concept Artist
Why Shovel Knight?
The answer here is, of course, “because he’s awesome!” However, Dan had a bit more insight on what makes the character an ideal choice as a guest character. To him, there were three main draws to Shovel Knight as a playable fighter:
- “His abilities are perfectly set up to be in a platform fighter considering he has a wide array of tools in his own platforming adventure.”
- “The global appeal of Shovel Knight is off the charts. He is likely the most recognizable Indie Game character in the last 10 years and we wanted to create a moveset that fans have been asking for.”
- “The development team at Yacht Club Games is awesome. After meeting them at a few events during Rivals of Aether’s development, I knew I wanted to collaborate with them somehow and a character is the ultimate collaboration.”
Of course, once the team chose to make Shovel Knight playable in Rivals, they had to actually, y’know, make him.
Settling on the Shop Design
Making a guest character is a collaborative process. Since the team is borrowing a pre-existing character from a popular franchise, Shovel Knight’s original dev team needs to make sure that the soul of the character remains intact when translating him into a brand new genre.
Trevor said, “Shovel Knight’s shop mechanic came around after we tried two other designs first, and I think it’s by far the most interesting of the three.” That iterative process was important, because the team needed to find a way to make Shovel Knight fit within Rivals’ unique gameplay while still making fans of his original game feel as though they were playing the same character.
Dan explained that this was particularly difficult with Shovel Knight because he is essentially the “Mario” of his series. “He is the balanced, traditional character that balances against the rest of the Shovel Knight cast. That would be great if we were doing a roster of indie game characters where Shovel Knight could be one of the main mascots and have a traditional moveset. But because we wanted a character that stood out from the rest of the Rivals with a new mechanic, we had to come up with ideas that gave him a unique style while also pulling from Shovel Knight for inspiration”
This is where the Shop design came in. It retains the soul of Shovel Knight’s progression and access to a wide array of tools, while making him a completely unique character within the Rivals roster. Of course, Rivals is still a fighting game, and some items that are wonderful in a platformer could have been problematic when ported to a platform fighter.
“A lot of Shovel Knight’s relics are projectiles,” said Trevor, “which didn’t really fit our vision of him, since we didn’t want another projectile-focused zoner. The task became a lot easier when we started adding Custom Knight’s relics to his moveset. Some relics, however, would be extremely busted if we kept their original functionality, like the War Horn or the Phase Locket, so we took some liberties and tweaked their properties to fit Rivals better.”
Pixel to Pixel Translation
While the character design team is busy playing with all of Shovel Knight’s moves, the art team has its own unique challenges. Someone unfamiliar with Rival’s art direction may think that Shovel Knight would be a simple character to translate to Rivals. After all, they’re both pixel art games!
Indeed, translating an existing character does speed up the concept process. The designers and artists can more easily communicate about how each move should look, because they have plenty of direct reference material from which to pull. However, Shovel Knight’s particular aesthetic presented the team with a new, but familiar challenge.
Ellian said, “it's the fact that he has armor that was the biggest challenge. As for Elliana, in pixel art it's really hard to animate "non-organic" elements while retaining the smooth animation style that characterizes Rivals. I just didn't want it to feel like those old retro games, where it's just different layered parts that moves independently. But I think we managed to avoid that without losing our style. The coolest part (and the hardest!) was being able to add Shield Knight as a summon parry. It might be the animation we spent the most time on, because we wanted her to be perfect!”
He’s So Cool!
Throughout their interviews, the team could barely contain their excitement for Shovel Knight. So, we decided to just let them gush about their work for a bit.
Dan: I think the coolest aspect is probably the simplest. His Down Air is his Shovel Drop and that move just opens up so much more of his gameplay. Whether its bouncing off projectiles or using it with the Dynamo Mail to trigger Aerial Strong attacks, there is so much you can do with Shovel Drop in both Shovel Knight and Rivals of Aether.
Trevor: I was impressed by how many different references we were able to fit in. Almost every single move is pulled from something in Shovel Knight’s game (down tilt is the only one that isn’t a reference to anything). Also Shovel Drop is just an incredibly fun move that I’m glad we could port almost directly from Shovel Knight.
Ellian: My favorite aspect of doing Shovel Knight for Rivals is how DOPE it was to work on such an iconic character. I get to make my own take on it! That's wild! Yacht Club's main feedback was "just make sure it fits Rivals, that's the most important", and having such freedom was great.
Marc: I think the only thing I can say, on my side, is that it's been really fun to draw him “interacting” with the other Rivals characters, getting to explore reaction from both him and the other characters. And that obviously I feel honored to be involved in any way with such an iconic character, being someone who played Shovel Knight as soon as it came out on 3DS years ago and really enjoying the game.
We cannot wait for you to get your hands on Shovel Knight. To stay up to date on the latest news, make sure to
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follow us on Twitter. While you’re there, let us know what about Shovel Knight has you most excited!
Fight in the deadly undergrowth of the Aetherian Forest on “The Forest Floor”. Make sure you keep an eye on the local flora in Aether Mode, or you’ll find out firsthand the reason the Tree Dwellers never venture below.
Visit the Steampunk town where Elliana built her infamous mech. Fight on the city skyline and across an ongoing delivery operation in the bustling city of “Julesvale”. 
