Shovel Knight Dig

Each run in Shovel Knight Dig drops you straight down through a procedurally assembled chasm, shovel in hand. You slash enemies, bounce off their heads with the Shovel Drop, and carve wide paths using a Speed Shovel mechanic that lets you move fast through soil. The land above collapses as you descend, so hesitation costs ground. Themed biome layers stack below you, populated with enemies, traps, mini-games, and boss encounters, and you collect gems and Relics along the way to build a run’s power curve.

Relics function as equippable tools with distinct combat and traversal uses. Choosing which ones to carry shapes how each attempt plays out.

Between runs, coins and unlockables feed into permanent upgrades and new items that expand your options on subsequent descents. The levels themselves are hand-crafted segments stitched together through Nitrome and Yacht Club Games’ own generation system, which keeps layouts varied while preserving intentional design in individual rooms. Players who want a traditional platformer with predictable level structure will find the randomised assembly and punishing restarts a poor fit. For everyone else, the game’s distinguishing quality is that its action foundation, borrowed from the Shovel Knight series’ tight controls and expressive animation, holds up under the roguelite repetition in a way many action roguelites don’t manage. Jake Kaufman composed the soundtrack in a new style, and the whole game runs in high-color pixel graphics with scaling, rotation, and parallax effects that mark a visual step up from earlier entries in the series.

Shovel Knight Dig released on September 23, 2022.

In March 2023, Yacht Club Games issued Fate and Fortune, a free expansion adding Knightmare Mode, Mementos for the hub area, and quality-of-life improvements throughout. A development update in August 2023 previewed further changes. The second free expansion, Wicked Wishes, launched in May 2025 after an announcement the prior summer. It added Hoofman’s Guild Hall as a hub for quests and rank progression, new bosses, enemies, and Relics, and a storyline built around the Guildarch. A hotfix followed within the same month. Both expansions are included with the base game.