Shovel Knight's King of Cards Expansion Gets a New Release Date: Whenever It's Ready

The final content for Shovel Knight, Yacht Club's celebrated action-platformer series, has been delayed. That means we won't be seeing the physical releases of Shovel Knight's Treasure Trove collection or the series' latest DLC, King of Cards, for some time yet. Good thing patience is a knightly virtue.

Yacht Club recently delivered the bad news about the delay on its official blog. Treasure Trove collects Shovel Knight and its DLC into one package, and its physical release on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 was originally set for an April 9 launch along with the last shovelful of Shovel Knight's story content. Yacht Club says a new, exact release date will be announced as soon as possible.

"This is not a major delay so much as more space to bring everything together for a polished and complete finale," states the announcement. "As always, these last steps require coordination with many teams beyond our own."

As its name suggests, Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is stashed with good stuff for fans of the shovel-wielding knight. Since Shovel Knight's vanilla adventure (subtitled "Shovel of Hope") and the various DLC adventures are available across several platforms, Treasure Trove collects Shovel Knight's journey and his DLC into a physical Nintendo Switch card or PlayStation 4 disc (or into a single download on other platforms). Yacht Club is also working on an Amiibo three-pack to celebrate Treasure Trove's physical arrival.

Unfortunately, the Amiibo three-pack is affected by the delay. So is Shovel Knight's final DLC story campaign, King of Cards featuring King Knight. Last summer brought news about a Super Smash Bros.-style fighting game called Shovel Knight Showdown, and that's also (you guessed it) been knocked back by the delay.

"This isn’t new ground given our development style or Shovel Knight’s history. We do our best to set and work toward deadlines, but sometimes additional time is needed," writes Yacht Club. "The final phases in particular focus a lot more on playtesting and iteration which is more nebulous to anticipate ahead of time."

The remainder of Yacht Club Games' post outlines what the team hopes to polish up before Shovel Knight's last hurrah, and it serves as a good reminder of everything involved with modern game development. Shovel Knight is arguably the industry's best celebration of retro games, but Treasure Trove requires far more playtesting and localization than the earliest Mario and Mega Man games did.

Shovel Knight is an excellent standalone adventure, and all its DLC maintains its high standard. It's been a while since the last story campaign was released (2017's Specter of Torment), but Yacht Club's dedication to quality means the long wait for King of Cards should be worth it.