Yacht Club Muses on the End of Shovel Knight, Studio's Future

Shovel Knight is arguably the biggest indie game on the market. But even legends have an end. Yacht Club Games has reached the end of Shovel Knight's planned development cycle and the company will soon be moving on to something else, including publishing.

Yacht Club Games COO James Chan spoke with GamesIndustry.biz during Gamecom. In the interview, the mused about what it was like developing for a game that exceeded their expectations and where they will be going now.

Chan explains that, originally, they only intended to support the game for about two years after it's release on March 2013. But with the astounding success of the game's Kickstarter, they had more and more backer rewards to follow through on. All the extra work took extra time, resulting in delays. The last and recently released examples being the King of Cards and Showdown DLC. And now that those have been delivered, they're going to be putting the game to rest.

"[King of Cards and Showdown] is the end of the Kickstarter list. That's it. This will be the wrap up, this will be the end of Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, and then it'll be pre-production on the next thing, which we're not quite sure what it is yet."

While Chan couldn't divulge what their next game might be, they were able to expand on a venture that they're wanting to do more of: third party publishing.

This was an idea they had back in 2016. But due to limited manpower and time, they weren't able to do a job they were satisfied with and they resigned the idea. Now they've hired more employees, have greater funding, and more time.

Chan expressed an intention for their publishing process to be very helpful, providing resources, knowledge, and beneficial information.

"It's probably a more expensive form of publishing than anyone else is doing. We're not just selling a game. We're sharing all of the knowledge we have so that they can become a successful developer, too."

So while we might not see anything from Yacht Club Games in the near future, they'll still be bringing quality games to the masses in the meantime.

Our helmets come off to you, Shovel Knight. You're a legend that won't be forgotten.