Shovel Knight: Metroidvania Mania
By: Deniz Soral
Shovel Knight: Metroidvania Mania
I was in the middle of the best speedrun of my life; I was dealing the last hits of damage to the final boss; I was hitting my stride and doing everything I could to speed it up. I was pressing the button to deal the final hit, all of my practice was adding up to this last button press. The timing was perfect! The boss was right in front of me! I hit the button and the run was over.
Weeks before, I had just finished washing my hands and was quickly running downstairs to play a new video game. I had just bought Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment, and I couldn’t wait to play it. I booted up my Xbox and launched the game for the very first time. I immediately fell in love with the character’s personality and the uniqueness of the game. All of the mechanics were well-tuned, and I could tell I was going to enjoy this game.
My passion for video games started around 1st grade, when I first became determined to play a game all the way through, unlike most other games I played at the time. This game was Ubisoft’s hit game, Rayman. After a year of playing Rayman on my iPad, I wanted to get it on the magical console called WiiU. My first gaming console, the WiiU, opened my eyes to the incredibly huge world of games. I started playing big titles like Splatoon, Mario, Pikmin, and more. And to top it all off, I made some friends based on my love for video games.
Then I got my Xbox, which I saved up a whole $170 to purchase on my birthday. The first game I got there was Adventure Pals, which was also the first game that I actually almost fully completed. To this day, I still have that 97 percent complete save file. This was also the first time I beat a game quickly, finishing it in 1.5 weeks. After that, I went through a while of not finding any good games I liked; I tried games like Slime Rancher, De Blob, Forza, and another soccer game called PES, while these were good games, they weren’t my kind of game.
Then I found it: the amazing game called Ori and the Blind Forest. An indie wonder, it now even has a sequel called Ori and the Will of the Wisps. This was the first game that I fully had a 100% game file, every item, and every secret nook and cranny found in one game file. I would later come back to this game to redo all of my achievements and re-experience how much I loved this game. But most importantly, Ori falls under a lesser-known game category of Metroidvania.
The idea of a Metroidvania stems from the original 2D Metroid games starring main character Samus Aran. This game series actually got a recent release called Metroid Dread, which I strongly recommend. Metroidvanias usually have a very large 2D open-world map with a lot of secrets to find and explore; you may think that this is confusing, right? Well, no, the way Metroidvanias work is that it starts you with very simple abilities like walking jumping, and maybe a weapon. With these abilities only some parts of the map are accessible, but as you progress, you gain many abilities, like double jumps, sprinting, dashing, and many other abilities. But what makes Metroidvanias interesting to play are the new mechanics in each game. Ori has the Bash, Samus has the Morph Ball, The Knight from Hollow Knight has Spells, Shadow from Cyber Shadow has their attacks, Eshe from Sundered has the Skill Tree and Sides, and there are many other games with many more abilities. What I’m trying to get at is that every Metroidvania is unique in its own way.
Another key part of Metroidvanias is their exploration and backtracking. They don’t have a linear progression. Instead, you get an ability then backtrack to find all the items that you could only get with that ability before finding the path to continue forwards. And no game does this better than Hollow Knight.
After fully playing through Hollow Knight (112% save file), I looked up similar games, and Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove popped up; This is a version of Shovel Knight with all 4 adventures, each featuring different characters plus the fighting game for the series. After playing the first installment in the series, I moved on to the third game titled Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment. This game featured the series coolest and most grim character, Specter Knight. He’s covered with golden armor, a dark red cloak wrapped around his body, and a red and gold scythe in his hands. This game is probably one of the best games I have ever played, with slight Metroidvania-ish aspects and amazing mechanics and platforming. I fell in love with this game.
After getting every single item in the game, I decided that I was ready for a speedrun. I did my first blind (meaning not having looked up the routes) speedrun, and I sped through most of the levels at what I thought was a good pace, until I eventually got to the final boss. I stood there gazing up at the peak of the tower as I walked inside the highest room.
Suddenly, pieces of the wall started flying at me; I swung my scythe and dodged them feeling the whoosh of the air as I stood on a small platform above a bottomless pit. It had to have been the enchantress’s dark magic. I had once bowed down to her but I knew that today her madness would have to end. And as I walked up to her, I easily defeated her, but little did I know that I had fallen into a trap. We tumbled down a large pit and she grabbed someone, it was Reize, my dead friend Luan’s son. Then she filled Reize with dark magic and made him fight me. I took him out after a long and hard battle, but then Reize was going to die, so as Reize’s last wish, I told the enchantress that I would become her loyal servant until she died. But then as a last act of my own volition, I took all of the souls that I had collected and used them to sap all of the dark magic out of Reize. And I did this all in record time, 1 hour and 35 minutes. That was the best speedrun of my life. And when I finished it I felt soooooo good
Nowadays, I play more Metroidvanias and Super Smash Bros. These genres will likely remain to be my favorite genres for the rest of time. Video games are unique, amazing, and an enjoyable experience overall, and my video game journey had been every single one of these points. So I sincerely hope that you will try a video game someday, and maybe even one of these Metroidvanias that I love so much! Thanks for listening to my TED talk everybody.
