Yacht Club on how the Shovel Knight amiibo came to be, Nintendo’s role, cut idea

In an interview with Nintendo Life, Ian Flood and David D’Angelo from Yacht Club Games spoke all about Shovel Knight. One prominent topic was the Shovel Knight amiibo.

Speaking about how the figure came to be, the two developers stated:

David D’Angelo: That started in 2014, the possibility of it even happening – what it would look like, what it could do.

David: Yeah, Nintendo said “pitch us on it” when they showed us the New 3DS. We started chatting about ideas with amiibo and they asked us whether we wanted to formally pitch to do an amiibo. That kind of thing is strange, like you’re sending a paper to no-one! But the whole thing was shocking, really, they kept saying let’s move this forward, and we couldn’t believe it was going to happen.

Ian: The excitement leading up to it was something else. What was funny was that we were waiting for the announcement, website, trailer and stuff like that, and retailers kept leaking it. It was tricky to get the information out there. It’s one thing to leak that it’s a thing, but it’s another to leak that it’s in a game series it’s not! There was a lot of information around, and we couldn’t easily say it was wrong without talking about it fully.

Ian: Yeah, we had to say it was a mis-listing, so not denying everything. We had people getting pre-emptively mad about the release date, pricing. All mad at details that were incorrect. We’re pretty receptive online and tried to answer queries.

Ian: So we tried to calm everyone down and put out a definitive update with full details. But that was fun, a few guys were at PAX for the reveal at the Nindies@Night event, and we were all excited that we had prototypes in a box. The guys were keeping them under their coats at the hotel so that we kept a lid on it, yet the whole time that was happening images were online. It was a bubble where the guys at the event were keeping a secret, but EVERYONE in the entire would knew about it.

But still, it was an immensely exciting day with everything coming together.

Yacht Club Games also commented on Nintendo’s role with the Shovel Knight amiibo. The studio was responsible for elements such as “the design of it, how it looks, how the toy works and so on,” according to Flood. D’Angelo said Nintendo was there to ensure that “everything is correct and to their standards.”

Lastly, Flood and D’Angelo talked about one idea for the Shovel Knight amiibo that didn’t make it into the final game:

David: What we pitched to Nintendo is ultimately in the game with the amiibo. One thing we did cut out was that initially we talked about having Custom Knight be a co-op AI character, like Tails or levelling up in Smash Bros.

Ian: We thought it through in terms of it gaining abilities, and we thought about whether it’d be fun to have an AI Shovel Knight also jumping around on screen. Ultimately we didn’t think that would work.
I always thought about whether you’d be impressed or disappointed in the AI, and thought most times you’d be disappointed in it. If it did all the jumps would it make the player feel foolish, or if it failed would you want to help a baby Shovel Knight that wasn’t very skilled?

David: We also thought about how that’d work in co-op – would you both have AI partners? Four Shovel Knights? We quickly thought that’d be a dumb idea.