Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight is a textbook example of how to revive the eight-bit era without turning it into mere nostalgic pastiche. A knight wielding a shovel instead of a sword sets out across a fairy-tale kingdom to rescue his companion Shield Knight and defeat the members of the sinister Order of No Quarter along the way. Each of them sits at the end of their own level with their own theme, their own traps, and their own musical track, exactly according to the unwritten rules of 1980s platformers.

The controls rest on two things: a simple shovel swing and a jump in which the shovel can be aimed downward to bounce off enemies, lamps, and flying objects like a spring. This creates movement that's easy to understand and hard to master perfectly. Treasure is spent on armor upgrades and special items, there's a map between levels in the spirit of classic games, towns offer shopping and small side tasks, and the game also offers an optional higher difficulty for those who dare. Anyone who wants to can smash checkpoints in exchange for treasure, wagering their own comfort against the reward. The Wii U version also got its own guest boss fight against Battletoads found nowhere else, and the game fully supported playing directly on the GamePad without a TV.

Technically it holds to the voluntary limitations of period hardware — a limited palette, flicker, jerky background scrolling — but warms them up with modern level design and fair checkpoints. The chiptune soundtrack from Jake Kaufman ranks among the best ever heard in independent games and carries most of the atmosphere. The game came about thanks to a very successful Kickstarter campaign, earned excellent reviews, and its creators went on to release free expansions for years in which you play as the individual bosses. Today Shovel Knight is considered one of the defining independent games of its era, and it found one of its first homes on Wii U.