Shovel Knight officially set to release for Nintendo Switch, new updates planned

Nintendo’s big Nintendo Switch presentation isn’t being held until late tomorrow night (or early Friday morning, if you live in Europe, Japan or Australia), but it looks like yet another Nintendo Switch port has been revealed early. Yacht Club Games announced today that their hit retro throwback game, Shovel Knight is officially headed to Nintendo Switch, alongside the game’s upcoming free DLC campaign, Specter of Torment, which will allow players to embark on an all-new adventure as one of the game’s bosses, Specter Knight.

Alongside confirmation of a Nintendo Switch port, Yacht Club Games also detailed a slew of DLC and upgrades being planned for Shovel Knight in the near future, for both the upcoming Nintendo Switch version, and the other current-gen versions of the game that are already available. The developer is now referring to the game as ‘Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove‘ for starters, and anyone who has already purchased the game will be automatically upgraded to the new version, and receive the planned expansion updates for free, as previously planned.

For players who have yet to take the plunge on Shovel Knight, the overall pricing of Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is increasing in Spring, likely to coincide with the release of the Nintendo Switch version, but players will also have the option to buy the expansion campaigns separately if they wish (currently, only one expansion campaign, Plague of Shadows, has been released), with the game’s original campaign now being called Shovel of Hope, and also having the option of being sold separately. It would seem then that Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is now being treated like a ‘Complete Edition’ build that will net you all of the campaigns together, at the cost of a slightly higher price for people who didn’t already buy the game on any platform, giving players the option of buying everything together, or buying the campaigns piecemeal.

Yacht Club Games also re-affirmed plans for a King Knight-starring expansion campaign later in 2017, and will also be offering a four-player Battle Mode on all platforms except for Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita. A new ‘Body Swap’ mode that lets you change the genders of Shovel Knight and female lead, Shield Knight is also in the works for all platforms, to be released alongside Specter of Torment. Finally, the two-player co-op mode, which is currently exclusive to the game’s Wii U version, and can only be accessed by scanning a Shovel Knight Amiibo figure on the Wii U Gamepad’s NFC Reader, will soon be expanded to the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game, via a free update. Obviously, no Amiibo will be required for those versions.

Shovel Knight expanding to Nintendo Switch was seemingly inevitable, as the highly well-received, award-winning Kickstarter-funded indie title began life as a timed Nintendo console/handheld exclusive in 2014, alongside its basic PC version. The Nintendo 3DS and Wii U builds of the game offer unique exclusive features to this day as well, namely the StreetPass Arena that’s unique to the 3DS build, and the Miiverse Journals unique to the Wii U build. Shovel Knight later expanded to PlayStation platforms and Xbox One in 2015, where it was cross-buy on PlayStation, and offered an exclusive boss battle against God of War’s Kratos in the PlayStation builds, and the Battletoads in the Xbox One build.

Keep digging Eggplante for all major news and updates on Shovel Knight.