Shovel Knight - Specter of Torment

Shovel Knight - Specter of Torment casts players as Specter Knight, servant to the Enchantress, in a prequel campaign explaining how he was recruited into the Order of No Quarter before the events of the original Shovel Knight. Released in April 2017 as a standalone Steam listing, it built a small but strongly positive following — 94% Very Positive across 248 English reviews — though reading closely through that sample reveals the single most important thing for a prospective buyer to know has nothing to do with the gameplay itself.

The purchasing trap reviewers say matters more than anything else

Before any discussion of level design or controls, the review sample is dominated by one specific, urgent warning. The single most-upvoted review, with 451 votes, states it in capital letters: "DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOU ALREADY OWN SHOVEL KNIGHT!!!! It's a free update to the Original Shovel Knight if you purchased it. Not a bad game by any means, has the same charm as the original S.K., but why pay for it here if you can get it free with the original (now called Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove)." Multiple other reviewers independently confirm falling into exactly this trap: "I didn't realize I already owned this since I bought the original game way back" and "Turns out, I completely wasted $10 on this game I already had and Steam won't refund me." This isn't a niche complaint — it's the review sample's dominant, most-corroborated finding, and it belongs at the front of any purchasing decision.

A moveset reviewers say is charming but poorly tuned on PC

Setting the purchasing question aside, the actual gameplay draws a real, specific split. Reviewers who enjoy it credit the new moveset directly: "Awesome addition to the game, I always wanted to play as the specter knight! The story was pretty well done and of course with the goofy humor." Reviewers who don't, however, describe a specific mechanical problem: "Scythe Slash is used for not less then 60% of the jumps. I got tired while using this ability. It is overused." Another, more pointed: "your character will automatically jump, grapple and bounce into death due to how touchy and automated the movement is." A third frames the same frustration in terms of lost control: "The character feels like you're controlling a rock, the jump is completely useless." Three independent, technically specific accounts of the identical underlying issue — an automated movement system that frequently overrides player intent — is strong enough convergence to treat as a genuine, current characteristic of the PC version specifically.

A detailed case for calling it the series' weakest entry

Beyond the control complaints, one especially detailed reviewer builds a comparative case against the campaign's fundamental design: "in practice it adds two new mechanics and the ability to constantly heal in order to make up for the lackluster boss and level design. This genuinely feels like a poor copy of the original in nearly every way. The levels are far less interesting." That's a specific, structural critique distinct from the control complaints — an argument that the level and encounter design underneath the new moveset doesn't match the quality of the original Shovel Knight campaign, with a forgiving healing system covering for that gap rather than genuinely challenging encounter design.

A specific complaint about the PC port itself

A separate, more technical thread singles out the Steam version specifically, distinct from the game's design on other platforms. One reviewer, who also owns the 3DS release, states it directly: "This game was not meant for steam... I love Yacht Club and their 3DS version (which I own as well) but this Steam version is terrible... please at least play-test the controls before you send it over to the PC world." That's a specific, platform-targeted complaint worth flagging separately from the broader moveset criticism, since it suggests PC players specifically may face a rougher experience than console owners of the same content.

What the achievement data shows

Global achievement statistics offer a useful, corroborating data point on the difficulty and control complaints above: just 32.0% of the playerbase reaches the victory milestone, a relatively low completion rate for a campaign explicitly marketed as more accessible and shorter than the full original game. That figure is consistent with reviewer accounts of a control scheme that fights players more than it should, driving a meaningful share of buyers to abandon the campaign before finishing it.

What genuinely works, according to fans of the moveset

It's worth crediting the other side of the split fairly, since the positive reception is real and substantial. One reviewer who logged 176 hours calls it "fricking amazing," specifically praising the music as a "10/10" and the overall design as similarly strong, adding that the game "requires some timing and gives you time to learn your new weapon" — framing the same Dash Slash mechanic other reviewers found overused as a skill worth developing rather than a design flaw. Another, more measured, credits the narrative specifically: "The story was pretty well done and of course with the goofy humor," adding that a first playthrough took "a little under six hours" with "many more hours to spend on it" for players chasing full completion. That's a genuine, substantial audience for whom the moveset clicks exactly as intended, and it's worth weighing against the control complaints above rather than treating this as a uniformly rough experience.

Verdict

Shovel Knight - Specter of Torment offers a distinctive, if imperfectly executed, prequel campaign with real charm for the specific audience that needs it as a standalone purchase. For everyone else — and the review sample suggests that's a large share of potential buyers — the most important piece of information isn't about the gameplay at all: check whether you already own any edition of the base Shovel Knight before spending a cent here, since you likely already have this exact content for free.

Sources: Steam store page and appdetails API (release date, pricing, platform data); Steam's aggregate review data (query_summary totals, English-language sample); individually read user reviews, both positive and negative, sorted by helpfulness and recency; Steam's global achievement statistics API; Yacht Club Games' own partner-events history from 2017 through 2021.