It's a huge gamble, as destroying a checkpoint renders it inert, ostensibly sending you way closer to the level's start point (and even farther from your dropped loot) upon death. If you ever find the distribution of checkpoints is making your playthrough too casual, you can, at any point, smash a checkpoint, granting you the huge pile of gold within. The game's biggest achievement is how it has - no exaggeration - perfected the idea of checkpoints.
It's a system that reinforces constant, challenging risk-reward evaluations - can you even get back to that point without dying again, starting that cycle anew? It has a novel, almost Dark Souls-ian take on death, forcing you to drop a large portion of your collected gold when you die, but giving you a single chance to get back to the scene of your death and reclaim your loot. Those lovingly reimagined mechanics are bolstered by a handful of more modern designs that help Shovel Knight establish itself as more than just a retro knock-off. Bouncing is really the main order of the day - it allows you to dispatch enemies without putting yourself in harm's way, and lets you cross gaps by chaining together head-stomps. Shovel Knight's unique, titular weapon behaves like Scrooge McDuck's cane, allowing him to flip enemies, bounce over obstacles or unearth hidden treasures. Though tons of NES games make up Shovel Knight's DNA, the most obvious mechanical comparison is Capcom's 1990 platformer DuckTales. The all-too-common praise for these sorts of modern-retro projects is lauding them as "the best NES game never made." Shovel Knight is, by leaps and bounds, the most authentic retro game ever made, and might actually be deserving of that designation.
The magic of Shovel Knight is how it accomplishes that recombination without becoming derivative. It's the stuff our childhood dreams were made of, assuming you dreamt of combining your favorite platformers from the '80s and early '90s into a single, streamlined package. Countless games have attempted to exploit our nostalgia for the 8 and 16-bit golden age, but none have cherry-picked the era's best attributes as judiciously as Shovel Knight.
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