Shovel Knight: King of Cards

I have a soft spot for games that know exactly what they are, and King of Cards wears its identity like a gilded crown. You play as King Knight, a delusional, tantrum-prone would-be monarch whose entire arc is built around a card game called Joustus sweeping the kingdom, and his desperate, comedic need to become its champion. The writing is sharper and funnier than you might expect from the premise: the dynamic between King Knight and his doting mother is a particular highlight, and the game threads enough genuine pathos into its absurdist setup that the ending lands harder than it has any right to. The platforming is where the craftsmanship really shows. King Knight's core moveset is a two-part rhythm: a horizontal Shoulder Bash that launches him upward on contact with any surface or enemy, followed by a spinning pirouette where he can bounce across enemies like a very regal pinball. It takes a level or two to internalize, but once it clicks, chaining bashes across a screen of enemies feels genuinely graceful. Yacht Club has also rethought the level structure compared to earlier campaigns. Levels are shorter and more numerous, spread across a branching world map that lets you skip stages if you want, though you rarely will because the most challenging ones tend to be the most inventive. Heirlooms, purchased with Merit Medals earned through exploration and card matches, add tools like a deflecting cloak and a floating bubble, each of which subtly reshapes how you read a room. Joustus is trickier to evaluate. The card game has genuine depth: players push directional-arrow cards onto a shared board, competing to sit on the gem spaces when the board fills up. There are 148 collectible cards, cheater items you can buy from Chester to bend the rules in your favor, and boss players who use their own illegal tricks to keep you guessing. The design intent, that King Knight is a scoundrel who wins by any means necessary, is charming on paper. In practice, though, Joustus breaks the momentum of the platforming every time it surfaces, and a handful of reviewers and players have noted that the card mechanics feel under-explained and luck-dependent in the early going. Most Joustus matches are optional, which is a smart concession, but it also means the game's second pillar never quite bears its fair share of the weight. The presentation is, as always with Yacht Club, meticulous. Jake Kaufman's score layers new tracks over familiar riffs in ways that feel like reunion rather than repetition, and the pixel art for the new worlds and bosses is as careful and expressive as anything in the series. The reuse of stages and boss encounters from previous campaigns is a mild knock for anyone who has played all three prior campaigns back-to-back, but King of Cards is substantial enough on its own terms, roughly six to ten hours depending on how deep you go into Joustus and secret exits, that it never feels thin. New Game+ and challenge Feats extend that runtime for the completionist-minded.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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