Shovel Knight On Wii U Takes A Leaf Out Of Dark Souls’ Book

In a conversation with Nintendo, Yacht Club Games founder Sean Valesco has shared details on how Shovel Knight will make use of the Miiverse social network on Wii U.

Shovel Knight’s Miiverse-integration sounds like it’s inspired at least in part by Dark Souls. While playing the Wii U version of the game, players will be able to write messages on Miiverse, pertaining to different rooms in the game, and these will be displayed during the game itself on the GamePad screen.

“When you go onto the Wii U version of the game, everywhere that you run through, on the bottom screen, you tap the ‘Digger’s Diary’ button. Then, it’s like a journal that appears and it has different Miiverse messages from different players everywhere,” explains Valesco.

“They all pertain to that specific room, though,” Valesco elaborates. “So if you were in a room—like for instance, in the cauldron boiling lava room—there would be a tip that would say, ‘Hey, watch out before you jump here.’ Or it could be right before the boss room, there could be a bunch of pictures of the boss that people have drawn to antagonize the player.”

Valesco says the feature has been created to enhance communication between players and encourage them to trade secrets with each other, similar to how children share and discuss game strategy with each other in school yards.

Note: Quotes slightly edited for grammar and easier reading.