Recent reviews by Simulacrum

I've been waiting for this!

Amazing platformer. It looks like one of those typical Indie games with 8 bit graphics and soundtrack but where Shovel Knight truly excels is its gameplay. Since the difficulty's steadily increasing with each new level, the game proves to be quite challenging and even frustrating, especially for beginners (with DS esque gameover mechanics where you drop some of your gold/souls after dying but only have one chance to pick it up). But just like DS, once you get the hang of it, the game's actually really fun to play!
Right now there are only three campaigns available (Shovel of Hope, Spectre of Torment and Plague of Shadows) but they aren't too long so you get bored after a while but at the same time not too short that it might leave the impression of an "incomplete" game. It's just the appropriate amount of time for an indie game.
The soundtrack by Jake Kaufman's very impressive and manages to make the game's world even more vivid. Even if you die a million times at the same spot, you just want to stay for that awesome level music, or wouldn't you?

So as you see I really enjoyed playing Shovel Knight and... you know what? Just buy the game. You'll see soon enough what I mean.

This obviously outshines the anime/manga. Gameplay seems to be similar to other CC2 games, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. And even if it did, you'd still be blown away by all these amazing animation sequences ;)