Despite teasing a new Shovel Knight game a few years ago, Yacht Club Games aren’t sure if that will be its next release. Thanks to the success of Mina the Hollower, the studio’s homage to Zelda, it has more confidence in releasing games that aren’t just sequels.
“The 3D [Shovel Knight] game is close to being showable but I’m not sure we are going to commit to it,” artist and animator Nick Wozniak wrote in a recent Reddit AMA. “There’s a lot of possibilities going forward and we need to take stock before choosing a definitive path.”
The studio posted about the future of its Shovel Knight series in 2024 and included a small teaser with a 3D version of its logo. There were no follow-ups until late last year when it told Bloomberg that it’s been working on Shovel Knight 3D on and off since 2020 but decided to switch focus to finishing Mina the Hollower.
While the plan at the time was for the studio to go back to Shovel Knight 3D after Mina the Hollower’s release, it sounds like the positive reception and over 300,000 copies it sold in the first few days has led it to reconsider its options.
In a recent Bloomberg interview, the head of the studio Sean Velasco said he was happy with the critical response to Mina the Hollower, but was hoping for it to sell better. Given that the studio has said Shovel Knight’s Kickstarter obligations were hard to manage and that working on two games at the same time was unfeasible, I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes some time to figure out how to avoid similar pitfalls with the next project.
That also might mean it won’t spam updates to Mina the Hollower as it did with Shovel Knight over the years. And, honestly, if that means it can make more excellent games like it, I see no problem with that.
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