Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight, from Yacht Club Games, is one of the best titles to arrive on the Wii U and 3DS eShop stores this year — it's a platformer with plenty of loving nods to retro ideas and aesthetics, yet moves beyond mere nostalgia with terrific design and wonderful gameplay. We put it through its paces on both systems, and it scored 9/10 on both Wii U and 3DS.

A number of North American Nintendo gamers, no doubt, already know this, but unfortunately the title is yet to make it to other regions. Originally funded on Kickstarter, this is the studio's first game and publication, and it's struggled to get the game over the line and available to all backers and gamers within its original deadlines. Necessary growing pains, perhaps, but frustrating for those in Europe, Australia and Japan keen to enjoy the game.

Yacht Club Games has published a welcome update on its official website with the rather awesome pixel-based progress bars, below, showing where each region stands in the localisation process — the news isn't particularly good, though some additional steps are close to being completed.

SK Europe
SK Aus
SK Japan

The whole article is worth a read due to the level of detail it provides, while it ends with a promise to keep working hard to complete an International release.

As you can probably see, releasing one game in every territory in the world is not a small amount of work, especially for a team of half a dozen people. That said, any amount of work can be conquered, and so we’re doing our best to get this game out to everyone as fast as we can!! All lessons learned here will help us know what to expect next time around, and plan even better for a simultaneous worldwide release for new games! We’ll try to keep this page updated in the future, so if you’re curious about how long it is until you can see Shovel Knight in your territory, keep this page bookmarked! Thanks again, and I hope everyone can enjoy Shovel Knight soon!

Are you impatiently waiting for this, or enjoying it in North America and feeling a bit smug? Let us know, without the smugness, ideally, below.

[source yachtclubgames.com]