Shovel Knight to appear in Yooka-Laylee

Shovel Knight, the titular hero of the brilliant retro 2D platformer, will feature as an NPC in Yooka-Laylee, revealed overnight in a character trailer video at EGX.

The video uploaded to Playtonic Games’ YouTube channel shows the range of characters who will play a part in the game, including an amusing appearance towards the end of the video where the shovel-wielding knight converses with Yooka and Laylee.

Yacht Club Games, the developers behind Shovel Knight, echoed the excitement about their character’s first 3D appearance and teased the possibility of more 3D adventures in the future:

Whoahhh!!!! Isn’t it amazing to see Shovel Knight rendered in 3D?! It was a team effort too! Our very own Sean Velasco made all the funny noises for Shovel Knight’s voice. Is that what Shovel Knight really sounds like?

Yacht Club Games designed and built the model itself while Playtonic rigged and animated it to life. Shovel Knight sure looks comfortable in a 3D world. Who knows…maybe one day we’ll see Shovel Knight running and jumping around his very own 64-styled adventure! Wouldn’t that be neat?

Earlier in the year, it was announced that Shovel Knight had surpassed 1.2 million units sold; a massive 46% coming from 3DS and Wii U sales alone. This was likely attributed to the awesome amiibo figure released late last year which added more content such as co-op play. It was recently announced that the game will be receiving even more free DLC in the form of Specter of Torment, arriving in Autumn 2017.

It is not yet known to what extent Shovel Knight will feature in Yooka-Laylee, but perhaps the amiibo might get some love for the Wii U version when it comes out in the first quarter of 2017. With the talented ex-Rare developers working on Yooka-Laylee, you can count us excited.