Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon Impressions – Deep Pockets Of Fun And Challenge

Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon launches tomorrow and offers an intriguing change of pace for everyone’s favorite shovel-wielding hero/obligatory indie cameo star. Its action-oriented take on tile-matching puzzles works great, as I have seen it play out many times. Assuming you can put up with a surprisingly steep difficulty curve, Pocket Dungeon is worth checking out if you’re looking for a new puzzler to chip away at. 

Pocket Dungeon’s boards feature descending tiles, which can be monsters, obstacles, health potions, and other items you must prevent from stacking to the top by clearing matching tiles adjacent to another. These boards allow you to move Shovel Knight and other unlockable characters. While tiles fall slowly at the beginning, they decrease faster as you move. Both you and monsters both have health bars and many foes will respond to being hit. Pocket Dungeon is a difficult balance between clearing tiles quickly and carefully attacking foes in order to prevent you from getting hurt. Tile-clearing also rewards gems used to purchase new items and fills up a meter that multiplies your gem intake.

As a fan of tile-matching games, Pocket Dungeon’s more action-oriented approach took getting used to. Honestly, I still haven’t mastered it. Intuitively, I smashed into any matching stack of monsters that appeared, even though I knew I’d take more damage. You can die in two different ways depending on how you play traditional, roguelike or both. Traditional play grants you unlimited life, and the only thing that can make you lose is a full board. Playing under roguelike rules means you start from scratch after each death, regardless of the board’s state. I’m playing the traditional format, but I’d describe it as “less hard” rather than easy, per se. Sure, Shovel Knight can die repeatedly, but respawning takes precious seconds, and the game doesn’t wait for you to return. By the time you’re back, the board may have filled up, resulting in failure. I learned to monitor my health, and to know the best times to attack. 

You don’t need to wipe a board clear to win. Finding keys to open exit doors advances you to the next stage, so it’s really about surviving until said door appears. You can also unlock chests with useful power-ups like a sword that penetrates multiple targets or a shield that stops attacks. A smokescreen is useful to negate enemy counterattacks. My favorite is a simple bomb that clears large chunks of tiles, though it can damage you as well if you don’t escape its range. 

Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon presents a challenge. Since tiles descend faster when you move (and drop slower when you’re stationary), quelling the knee-jerk desire to plow through as quickly as possible is tough and can result in a hasty death. It is particularly true for enemies who require more thought, such as ghosts and frogs who become electrified after every hit. Managing multiple enemy types that all require their own approach to defeating them isn’t easy. After many harrowing experiences, I finally found my rhythm. My ability to navigate boards and act quickly is now second nature. I feel immensely satisfied when I clear more than 10 blocks of an evil enemy. 

I believe the difficulty rises too early, even though it is still a good start. The first stage introduces you to basic enemies and makes it simple to understand the rules. The second stage introduces shield-bearing foes that must be attacked from all directions, since they are obstructed by the angle at which you hit them. It’s a tricky idea to wrap your mind around so early into the game, and it feels like it should have been saved for the 3rd or 4th stage minimum. Because of this, I was unable to overcome it. I fear that other people will follow my lead and make it harder than they should.

You can’t fail a stage, but you will be able to purchase fast travel options that allow you to instantly return to your chosen stage. In between runs, you’ll hang out at a base camp to purchase helpful items from a rotating shop inventory. You can also gain more hit points or have a longer-lasting gemmeter. NPC distractions are also a favorite pastime of mine, such as the reflex-based tile-hitting challenge. 

Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon continues to evolve, and overall, I’m having a good time seeing what devious tricks it has in store. The pixel art looks unsurprisingly great, and the soundtrack is as bop-worthy as you’d expect from a Shovel Knight joint. I’m also getting my metallic butt handed to me less, but the game remains an uphill climb in terms of challenge. Shovel Knight’s puzzling block experiment is shaping up to be a fun, though often swear-inducing, success.  

Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon is available for PlayStation 4, Switch and PC.