Shovel Knight: Dungeon Duels

Shovel Knight: Dungeon Duels

Shovel Knight: Dungeon Duels is a competitive, side-scrolling miniatures board game for 1-4 players developed by Panda Cult Games and officially endorsed by Yacht Club Games, based on the popular video game series.

General gameplay

Each player will play as a different colored Shovel Knight or other characters, moving through a side-scrolling dungeon, jumping over pits, collecting treasure, and fighting baddies by rolling Shovel Dice! While players may not directly damage each other, they may push each other around into deadly foes, spiked pits, and other obstacles. When a Knight is defeated, they drop half of their treasure onto the board, allowing other Knights to come steal it. All Knights have infinite lives and will respawn. The Knight with the most treasure at the end of the dungeon wins.

History of the Kickstarter campaign

The original Kickstarter campaign was supposed to run from July 2 2019 to July 27 2019. It originally offered only a 70$ pledge, which featured the complete board game and all stretch goals reached as well as including a playable Shield Knight addon. However the campaign was momentarily cancelled on July 10 2019, because Panda Cult Games wanted to provide more affordable options to backers.

The campaign relaunched on August 13 2019, this time sporting two versions of the board game: for 40$ backers would receive the 2D edition, featuring standees instead of plastic miniatures; for 70$ backers would instead receive the 3D edition, which features the original plastic models as well as the standees. Both pledges would also receive all stretch goals met, the Shield Knight addon and a Kickstarter exclusive playable character, Fish Head, while also including in the base game special crossover cards meant to make Shovel Knight a playable character in Panda Cult Games previous board game, Wander: The Cult of Barnacle Bay.

The original pitch offered the possibility to play as one of the four differently colored Shovel Knights, Fish Head or Shield Knight and face off against Plague Knight, Specter Knight, King Knight or the Enchantress in their respective stages, while collecting treasures, Relics, Armors and upgrades and clashing against Propeller Rats, Boneclangs, Goldarmors and Wizzems.

However the outstanding success of the campaign made possible to reach multiple stretch goals, such as making Plague Knight, Specter Knight and King Knight playable, add Treasure Knight, Mole Knight, Polar Knight, Propeller Knight and Tinker Knight (complete with punchboard Tinker Tank) as both bosses and playable characters, their respective stages and hazards, the option to make Shovel Knight into a boss as well as adding Arcana, Curios, Heirlooms, Cloaks, Bomb Powders and new enemy variants in the form of the Liquid Samurai swordmen and Hoverhafts. New optional addons were also offered, one of which made Mona a playable character, one which made Black Knight both a boss and a player, and one which made Reize, Baz, Mr. Hat and Phantom Striker bosses, players and mid-stage bosses (characteristic unique to them).

The very last stretch goal pitched, make the Bard playable, was unfortunately short of less than 3000$ to be reached before the end of the campaign. However the total amount was so near the intended goal, that Panda Cult Games decided to turn the Bard into an optional addon, with the backers having an exclusive reduced prize. The campaign ended September 7 2019 with a total of 222.713$, 218% more money than it's original goal of 70.000$.

While the production and subsequent delivery both ended up severely delayed and hindered due to the various problems created by the global pandemic of COVID-19, as of the end of September 2021 all the pledge rewards have been shipped and delivered to the backers across the world.

On February 8 2022, due to some errors and inaccuracies present in the original print of the Rulebook, Panda Cult Games digitally pubblished a new version of the it, as well as a tutorial video. The updated Rulebook, currently can be found on their website here.

At the moment it is unknown when the game will be available from physical retailers, but on August 19 2022, Panda Cult Games put Dungeon Duels up for pre-order on their website.

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