INTRO:
Continuing its promises of expanding on the backstory of the characters, Yacht Club Games’ third expansion for Shovel Knight is Spectre of Torment. This is a story about the Spectre Knight, which had been represented as little more than a typical take on the Grim Reaper in video games. Plague of Shadows’ ending scenes suggest that there is more to this character than it seems; this is indeed the case.
Like the expansion before it, Spectre of Torment sports a different player character. However, there are also different level designs this time around, with new gameplay features too.
PREMISE:
Spectre of Torment is a prequel. Its intro scene does not mention anything about the events in Shovel of Hope and Plague of Shadows, because they have not exactly happened yet. Rather, the intro begins right away by introducing Spectre Knight as a knight of The Enchantress, who is already around (suggesting that this story takes place sometime after the Shovel Knight was separated from his lady companion).
The Spectre Knight has been directed to recruit the most formidable knights of the land – by force, if necessary. Thus, he goes out to do her bidding. However, there is reluctance on his part. Indeed, his personality in this story is noticeably different from that seen in Shovel of Hope or Plague of Shadows.
The progression of the story will reveal the truth behind the Spectre Knight’s presence, in addition to more revelation about what happened in the Tower of Fate when the Shovel and Shield Knights tried to storm it.
SPECTRE KNIGHT AS A PLAYER CHARACTER:
As a player character, the Spectre Knight has noticeably fewer powers than when he is a boss. Indeed, he starts with not much other than his scythe and his skill.
Some of the differences between him and the other player characters are superficial. The most notable of these is that his health is renamed to “will” and recoloured, to fit the narrative about him being undead. Indeed, restoratives are swapped, from (seemingly) fresh food to rotten and mouldering remains. It is a wonder why Spectre Knight would even consume these, but this is likely intended to be little more than a joke.
However, there are plenty of significant dissimilarities between him and the other player characters in terms of gameplay.
STANDING ATTACKS:
When Spectre Knight stands on the spot, he can swing his scythe with considerable rapidity – which is a feat, considering that scythes are not exactly swift weapons to use, even in most fantastical settings. This advantage will be useful in certain situations, such as when fighting Tinker Knight. (There will be more on the bosses later.)
However, these attacks are not likely to be the player’s main method of going on the offense.
SOMERSAULT:
Perhaps one of the frustrations that players would have had with the other player characters is that if they hit the edge of platform, they count as having failed to clear that platform and will fall.
This is not so for Spectre Knight, who is lithe enough to somersault onto the platform if he hits the edge of one instead of clearing over it. Indeed, there will be many moments in which this is useful, or even necessary.
WALL RUN AND WALL JUMP:
The Spectre Knight can run up a wall that he has jumped into for a short distance, before falling off. However, the player character can have him touch the wall again, and run up it again. Spectre Knight will still be losing height, but at least the player can stall the inevitable descent.
At any time during the running animation – and only this part of the wall-run – the player can have him jump off the wall. Indeed, this will be of importance in some platforming sequences.
It is notable though that platforming sequences that have him doing many consecutive wall jumps in a row are rare. This is perhaps just as well, because there have been a lot of indie platforming games that do this.
Not every vertical surface allows for wall-jumping. Surfaces with hazards are obvious no-nos. Then there are the vertical surfaces that have visual features which indicate that they cannot be run upon. To help the player recognize these, the first screen of each level has such vertical surfaces without any danger nearby; of course, the player must be observant and inquisitive enough to notice these and test them.
DARKNESS:
Spectre Knight’s magic reserves – called “Darkness” in his story expansion – are slightly different from that of the Shovel Knight. Like Shovel Knight, he cannot readily restore his reserves. As in Shovel of Hope, there are collectibles in Spectre of Torment that restore magic reserves.
However, unlike Shovel Knight, he has more opportunities to restore magic during a fight. Where Shovel Knight has to defeat enemies and hope that they yield potions, Spectre Knight extracts Darkness from enemies as he hurts them. Thus, Spectre Knight can maintain pressure on enemies rather readily.
CURIOS:
Spectre Knight feeds the Darkness that he has into “Curios”, his equivalent of the Relics and Arcana that the two other player characters use. (Incidentally, visually similar versions of these would later become part of his repertoire of attacks as a boss character.)
The default capabilities of the Curios are not really impressive, however. For example, the Curio that has him throwing a boomerang is rather underwhelming. Indeed, prior to upgrading any Curio, the player is likely to favour the Will Skull above all else, if only because the skull is a portable healing item.
As for how the Curios are acquired, they are obtained through collecting Red Skulls. These will be described later.
UPGRADED CURIOS:
The Curios become much, much more potent when they are upgraded. The upgrading service is provided by a certain NPC in the home-base of Spectre Knight.
Some upgraded Curios make certain platforming sequences trivial. Chief of these is the Hover Plume, which makes Spectre Knight float and fly (though the player has no control over verticality). The Chronos Coin also makes getting past timed hurdles a lot easier.
Some other Curios, when upgraded, can make attacks that go past obstacles entirely. The most prominent of these is the Judgment Rush, which makes the player character go past obstacles outright.
DASH SLASH - OVERVIEW:
Early on in the playthrough, the player is introduced to Spectre Knight’s special move: the Dash Slash. This is never exhibited in the previous expansions, mainly because that version of Spectre Knight no longer has need of it.
Anyway, Dash Slash is how Spectre Knight work around his inability to fly (an ability that he does have in the previous expansions). However, this is so for one of the two variants of Dash Slash.
For either variant, it can only be performed when a certain visual indicator appears on-screen.
VISUAL INDICATOR FOR DASH SLASH:
The visual indicator only ever appears if the Spectre Knight is in mid-air or mid-jump; this is an important requirement, for whatever reason.
The next requirement is the Spectre Knight has to be in close proximity to an object that can be hit with his dash-slash. The requirement after that is that the Spectre Knight must be diagonally above or below the object; he must not be vertically above or below. Another requirement is that his sprite must be horizontally directed towards the object.
Learning about these requirements without any explicit tutorial or referring to a guide is not difficult, but it requires a lot of first-hand testing. There is a screen in the first level that has no hazards for this purpose.
Making use of the visual indicator is another matter, however.
DIRECTION OF VISUAL INDICATOR:
The visual indicator is represented as a diagonal orange and flashing gash over the object that can be dash-slashed. The orientation of the gash is determined by the position of the player character relative to the object.
For example, if the player character is below and to the left of the object, the gash would be oriented upwards and to the right, according to the player character’s perspective.
The orientation of the gash also indicates the direction that the player character is going to take when performing the dash-slash; this direction is also relative to the position of the player character. However, which direction that the player character would take depends on the size of the object.
PLATFORMING DASH SLASH:
The platforming variant of dash slash is performed on small objects, whether they are on the ground or are in mid-air. In this variant, Spectre Knight moves through and past the small object that he dash-slashes.
Consider the example of a small object that is above and to the right of the player character. If the player character dash-slashes it, Spectre Knight would be moving through and past it, upwards and to the right, as indicated by the direction of the gash on the object.
This is mainly used for platforming. In such a situation, the player will want to keep in mind whether the object will be damaged by the dash-slash or not. If it can be destroyed, it is likely that the player character can only do the dash-slash once.
DASH SLASHING SMALL MOVING OBJECTS:
Some of the aforementioned small objects can move. They may be pendulum-swinging, or they may be moving along a rail (for whatever reason). These would have been a convincingly greater challenge, but there is a serious problem with registering inputs for dash-slashing such objects.
The player may attempt to enter the control inputs, but the game might not register them. This may be due to a short delay between the visual indicator appearing and the window for registering the control inputs being activated. During this delay, the moving object or the player character might move out of the eligible distance between each other, which causes the control inputs to fail because the aforementioned window did not activate.
Thus far, my best work-around for this issue is to press the “Up” control input before pressing the attack button. This improves the chances of the control inputs being registered, but this does not always work all the time.
COMBAT DASH-SLASH:
The combat variant of dash-slashing is performed on large targets. Instead of dash-slashing through such targets, the Spectre Knight rebounds off them in the direction that is indicated by the gash.
For example, if Spectre Knight is above and to the left of the target, the gash on the target would appear to be oriented downwards and to the right, from the perspective of the player character. If Spectre Knight makes the dash-slash, he hits the target and rebounds off them to the left of the target and above it.
In his rebounds, he makes a lot of somersaults that give him a lot of air-time. Since he counts as being airborne, he can make more dash-slashes and more rebounds.
In other words, this is much like Shovel Knight’s Shovel Drop attack, albeit in a diagonal direction, less vertical height, and more air-time. Indeed, the player can defeat almost every enemy with the rebounds.
HARSH TUTORIAL LEVEL:
Unfortunately, all of the above about dash-slashing is not told to the player in the first level. Learning them the hard way can be very frustrating. This is especially so for the part about dash-slashing swinging objects.
It is only after the player character has returned to the Tower that the new player can learn more about dash-slashing. This is done through talking with the NPCs. Of course, the player has to complete the tutorial level first; there is a chance that the tutorial level can be so frustrating that the player stops playing in disgust.
HEAVIER THAN HE LOOKS:
For whatever reason, Spectre Knight’s armored feet are inimical to rocks. If he lands on top of a solid rock and jumps off it, the rock is damaged. In the case of sand rock, it crumbles outright when Spectre Knight lands on it. However, Spectre Knight will not destroy any rocks if he runs on top of them – which is perhaps even more bizarre.
This is used for more than a few puzzles involving rocks that have been stacked on top of each other. Incidentally, these rocks often occur over instant-death pits, so the wrong sequence of jumps would end with Spectre Knight running out of rocks to land on.
CLOAKS:
Sometime into the playthrough, Spectre Knight encounters an NPC that can upgrade his fabrics (and armour). This changes the colour palette of his sprite. (A follower of the series would be quite resigned to such palette swaps by now.)
One of the cloaks addresses a perennial complaint about Shovel Knight – specifically the complaint about instant-death hazards. When Spectre Knight gets into one of these hazards while having the cloak, he disappears and reappears at the nearest on-screen horizontal platform that has no hazards. If there are not any, he still perishes.
If he reappears, he gains invincibility frames for as long as the player does not move him. After he moves or performs any action however, the frames quickly go away. This is handy, especially if he is in a particularly challenging platforming sequence.
However, he does lose four pips of his health, and three sections of his darkness meter. This is a considerable setback.
Two other cloaks provide optional benefits that also come with risks. One of them enables the ability to surf on his scythe across just about any surface (except dangerous ones), while another gives powerful buffs if the player has the Spectre Knight destroy checkpoints.
TOWER OF FATE:
Interestingly, the Tower of Fate is the Spectre Knight’s base of operations, or at least the place that he leaves when he goes on a mission. This is where all of the service-providing NPCs are located, though the Spectre Knight has to transition across multiple screens to get to them.
One of the least important, gameplay-wise, NPCs is Horace the living suit of armor. Horace offers an optional platforming challenge that poses little reward in return for the effort and time spent (though the challenge is useful for the purpose of practice and acclimation with the Spectre Knight’s controls). Horace’s main value as a character though is that he lets slip something about the Tower of Fate, which has been around for quite a long time.
LEVEL DESIGNS:
Plague of Shadows did not exactly receive universal praise. Its almost-wholesale reuse of the levels in Shovel of Hope did not sit well with some, despite the narrative excuse of that expansion’s story.
Thus, it is fortunate for Spectre of Torment that a lot of levels are quite different. The levels appear to be redesigns of the previous ones, albeit tweaked to fit Spectre Knight’s capabilities. Indeed, there are visual designs that suggest that these levels take place elsewhere other than the lands that were shown in the previous expansions’ stories. The presence of the lanterns is an example.
There are also certain hazards that were not seen in the levels of the previous story campaigns. For example, the Plantos that appear in Propeller Knight’s level in this expansion were not seen in Shovel of Hope or Plague of Shadows, thus suggesting that Propeller Knight’s mobile base was elsewhere in the prequel.
On the other hand, since the game is a prequel, one would wonder why some of the things that were shown in Spectre of Torment are not there in Shovel of Hope or Plague of Shadows. For example, the boss fight with Propeller Knight has a second phase that is very different, and which revealed that he has – or had – a fleet of fighter planes.
For better or worse, there are a lot more fall hazards in Spectre of Torment than there are in the other stories. However, Spectre Knight’s advantages at platforming can overcome such prevalence, assuming that the player could acclimate to his movement methods.
LANTERN POSTS:
Lanterns are level features that are specifically introduced in this expansion; there is no narrative explanation as to why they are in this expansion.
That said, they are there for the player to make use of the Knight’s dash-slashes. The Knight’s dash-slash will not destroy most of these lanterns, however, which is perhaps fortunate.
The default lantern burns red-orange; this acts like a small object that can be dash-slashed. There are two other types. One of these is doused with greenish goo; this causes the Spectre Knight to bounce off them instead of slashing through them; this occurrence is utilized in certain platforming sequences.
The other type is encased in a bubble that will somehow not burst when dash-slashed. The bubble does let the lantern float on the surfaces of water, however, and it moves about on the surfaces when struck. These traits become a platforming gimmick in Treasure Knight’s level.
DIFFERENT ENEMIES – OVERVIEW:
Spectre of Torment is a prequel, so there are different settings and circumstances in which the characters are put in.
Oddly though, many enemies in this game appear to be more powerful or capable than those in Plague of Shadows and Shovel of Hope – even though they have supposedly been made more formidable by the Enchantress. There are even some enemies that were not seen in the chronologically-later stories, even though they are supposed to have joined the Enchantress’s army.
Some notable enemies will be described here, to elaborate the above.
TREASURE CHEST MIMICS:
There are very, very few games with fantastical settings that would not have the scourge known as “mimics”, i.e. creatures who disguise themselves as treasure chests to lure in unsuspecting adventurers. Shovel Knight is no exception. Prior to Spectre of Torment, there was only one appearance of such a creature: a giant angler-fish.
In Spectre of Torment, there are more of such creatures. However, these new ones are not ghastly creatures with too many teeth or are merely lazily-designed moving boxes. Rather, they appear to be magical fennecs, who disguise themselves as treasure chests so that they can “play” with adventurers. Adventurers, being allergic to physical contact with just about anything, are not likely to find this experience to be pleasant.
DIFFERENT BOSS PATTERNS:
Spectre Knight very much has to force just about all of the other Knights into the Enchantress’s service. It is notable that many of them are not willing, but after they are brought to the Tower, most of them seem to be placated by the Enchantress’s offerings – especially the food. (It is unclear as to how the Enchantress obtained the food supplies – if they were even natural in the first place.)
It is also notable that most of the bosses appear to be more challenging than they were in Plague of Shadows and Spectre of Torment. There is the example of King Knight, who was very much a push-over in either Shovel of Hope or Plague of Shadows. In Spectre of Torment, his boss fight has the additional complication of instant-death pits appearing where there were not any in those other story campaigns. (One of the NPCs foreshadows this by mentioning that King Knight has been slacking in his duties, specifically in the renovation of the castle that he is residing in.)
Perhaps the most notable example is Tinker Knight, who is much more formidable this time around. His first phase is still goofy, but he is no longer a straight push-over in it. His second phase, specifically the one that involves his mech, is surprisingly more difficult than the previous second phases with the same mech. This is because of the inclusion of horizontal auto-scrolling, introduction of instant-death pits and Tinker Knight having a jetpack and moving about instead of sitting in his mech.
Therefore, it can seem a bit odd that the bosses are weaker in Plague of Shadows and Shovel of Hope. In some cases, this difference is explainable, such as Tinker Knight having his equipment broken when Specter Knight fought him. In others, like Propeller Knight’s conspicuously absent fleet in the chronological sequels, the difference is not so easy to wave away.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
In addition to having different capabilities as a player character instead of a boss, Spectre Knight also looks noticeably different. His robe has lesser fabric so the armour underneath it is more visible. This is intentional, because a variation of his sprite would be used for exposition of his backstory when he was less deathly.
Despite the armor, he does look quite lithe, which is apparently the intended visual theme for his character. More importantly, his sprite is notably larger than those for the Shovel Knight or Plague Knight, but he also happens to be hunching almost all the time. Therefore, the apparent size – and the hitbox – for his sprite is similar to those for the other two player characters.
Then there are the visual designs for the locales. Some levels that are associated with the other Knights have their backgrounds altered. The foregrounds may at most have only texture changes. There are also the visual designs for the vertical surfaces on which the Spectre Knight cannot wall-run, such as the drapes in King Knight’s level.
The Tower of Fate was not shown in much detail in the previous two story campaigns. There were some gothic backdrops, where there was any. Most of the foreground were generic amethyst tiles.
In Spectre of Torment, there is more to see from the Tower of Fate. There are clearly interior spaces for living space, a bar, a dining hall and even a library. The architecture is somewhat haphazard though, because Spectre Knight seemingly has to get around by jumping off walls.
There are the sprites for the new characters. Most of these are for NPCs in the Tower of Fate, so the player should not expect more than a few frames for each character. Still, some of them are associated with the additional visual designs for the Tower of Fate. For example, Red the red skeleton noble has been around for a long time, and has amassed hundreds of red skulls in one section of the Tower.
There are more animations for characters that have been introduced in the previous story campaigns. For example, there is the Enchantress’s haughty laugh (something that would be all too familiar to followers of anime shows where there are arrogant and pretty villainesses).
There are also dancing animations for the Spectre Knight, though the player only gets to see these if the player has a completionist streak.
SOUND DESIGNS:
Most of the new sounds that the player would hear is from the music. Many of the tracks in Shovel of Hope have been remixed to fit Spectre of Torment, typically taking on more edgy undertones to fit Spectre Knight’s brooding personality. On the other hand, it might seem like Jake Kaufmann did nothing much.
There could be new sound clips for the non-music assets. However, by this time, it would be hard to tell them apart, considering the very limited range of tone, pitch and frequencies that “retro” audio can provide.
SUMMARY:
Yacht Club Games ticked off another notch in its milestone tracker for its debut and flagship IP. This time, instead of reusing many assets to highlight a different player character, many of the levels have been redesigned to fit the Spectre Knight. Unfortunately, the level designs retained the prevalence of instant-death fall hazards – a predilection that Yacht Club Games just could not discard, even if it did implement a feature that mitigates such hazards.
In terms of storytelling, this is a much welcome expansion on the backstory of the game. The individual titled knights have been implied to be their own persons, and this expansion expands on that. Having Spectre Knight being the protagonist of this expansion allowed for a change in tone from that of Shovel of Hope or Plague of Shadows, as well as the set-up that led to the events seen in those campaigns.