Should I Play Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove? The Kickstarter That Changed Indie Gaming

What It Is

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is the complete collection from Yacht Club Games, containing five games in one package. It started as a Kickstarter campaign in March 2013 that asked for $75,000. It raised $311,502 from nearly 15,000 backers. The original game, Shovel of Hope, launched on June 26, 2014. Over the following five years, Yacht Club delivered every single stretch goal, turning one great game into five.

The core campaign follows Shovel Knight, a small knight with a big shovel, on a quest to rescue his partner Shield Knight from the Enchantress. You dig through dirt, bounce off enemies with your shovel’s downward strike, and fight your way through the Order of No Quarter, a lineup of themed bosses that rivals anything from the Mega Man series.

But that is just the first game. Treasure Trove also includes Plague of Shadows (play as Plague Knight with explosive alchemy mechanics), Specter of Torment (a prequel starring Specter Knight with wall-running and aerial slashes), King of Cards (a full campaign with a built-in card game), and Showdown (a competitive multiplayer battle mode). Each campaign reimagines the same world through a completely different moveset and story.

Shovel Knight holds an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam with 96% positive reviews from over 16,000 players. It scored 85 on Metacritic (PC) and won Best Independent Game at The Game Awards 2014. The franchise has sold nearly 3 million copies worldwide.

Why You Should Play It

Five complete games for one price. Treasure Trove is not a base game with some DLC tacked on. Each campaign is a fully designed, standalone experience with its own story, mechanics, and level design. Specter of Torment alone would be worth buying as a separate game. Yacht Club delivered all four additional campaigns as free updates to original backers. That kind of generosity is rare and worth rewarding.

The level design is exceptional. Every screen in Shovel of Hope teaches you something. New hazards appear in safe environments before the game asks you to use them under pressure. Pits, enemies, and platforming challenges are placed with the precision of a master clockmaker. If you enjoy games that respect your intelligence and teach through play rather than tutorials, this is a textbook example.

Each campaign plays completely differently. Shovel Knight bounces on enemies. Plague Knight launches himself with bomb explosions. Specter Knight dashes through enemies in midair. King Knight shoulder-charges and pirouettes. Switching campaigns feels like playing a different game built in the same world. The variety keeps you coming back long after you have finished the first story.

The boss fights are outstanding. The Order of No Quarter is one of the best boss lineups in any platformer. Each knight has a distinct personality, a themed stage, and a fight that tests a specific skill. Polar Knight’s snowbound arena plays nothing like Propeller Knight’s airship battle. And then each DLC campaign remixes these encounters for a completely different character.

The music is a chiptune masterpiece. Jake Kaufman’s soundtrack captures the spirit of NES-era composers like Manami Matsumae (who also contributed two tracks). “Strike the Earth!” is one of the most recognizable indie game themes ever written. Each campaign has its own musical identity, and the Specter of Torment soundtrack in particular is a standout.

Why You Might Not

The retro aesthetic is not for everyone. Shovel Knight goes all in on the 8-bit look. Pixel art, chiptune music, limited color palettes. If you did not grow up with NES games and that visual style does not appeal to you, the art direction might feel more like a limitation than a stylistic choice. The game looks great within its constraints, but those constraints are deliberate.

It is a 12-year-old game in a crowded genre. The indie platformer space has exploded since 2014. Celeste refined the precision platformer. Hollow Knight redefined the Metroidvania. If you have already played dozens of indie platformers, Shovel Knight might feel familiar rather than revelatory. It pioneered a lot of what came after, but playing the pioneer after the descendants can dull the impact.

My Take

Shovel Knight is one of the most important indie games ever made, and Treasure Trove is the proof of that claim.

When Yacht Club Games launched their Kickstarter in 2013, retro-style platformers were a novelty. The idea that a small team could make something that stood alongside the NES classics, not just as nostalgia bait but as a genuinely excellent game, was still unproven. Shovel Knight did not just prove it. It set the standard.

What makes the Treasure Trove collection special is the ambition behind it. Most studios would have shipped Shovel of Hope and moved on. Yacht Club spent five years delivering on every stretch goal, turning what could have been a one-and-done indie hit into a franchise. Each new campaign was not a quick asset flip. Plague of Shadows reworked the entire physics system. Specter of Torment rebuilt levels from scratch. King of Cards added a full card game. That level of commitment to your backers, to your own craft, is what separates a good studio from a legendary one.

I keep coming back to Specter of Torment. It is faster, darker, and more fluid than the original. The wall-running and dash-slash mechanics feel incredible, and the prequel story gives Specter Knight a tragic backstory that recontextualizes every encounter in Shovel of Hope. If you play nothing else in the collection, play that.

Playing Shovel Knight in 2026 means playing it with the full weight of its legacy visible. You can trace a line from this game to Super Meat Boy, to Hollow Knight, to the entire wave of retro-inspired indie games that followed. Yacht Club proved that a Kickstarter pitch, a shovel, and an incredible amount of dedication could change the industry. For shovelry.