Shovel Knight artist says throwback games need ‘retro authenticity’ but can’t coast on nostalgia alone: ‘Part of the appeal of the NES era of game making was that everything was a new idea’

Ahead of the Shovel Knight: Steel They Shovel live concert series coming to New York and LA in the next month, I got the chance to talk to Yacht Club artist Nick Wozniak about the indie game’s legacy and the state of games today. Wozniak understandably had a lot of thoughts on nailing an authentic retro arty style, but also pointed out that you can’t get by on nostalgic authenticity alone.

With Wozniak having defined the look of one of the most successful retro throwback games ever made, I was curious as to what he looks for in one, and how he judges their success. He cautioned that the sort of authenticity that distinguishes a really good nostalgic game is “hard to define,” but argued that there’s no faking real familiarity and love for a given era of games.

“I can tell when I’m playing a game made by people who are well versed in the game type they are making,” said Wozniak. “The people who are making an NES game should play a ton of NES games and be experts on the topic.

“What do you treasure about that era, what makes it special to you and sets it apart in your mind? That true knowledge will help you connect with the players and serves as the underlying glue that is going to hold things together.”

With Shovel Knight, Yacht Club famously (mostly) limited itself to an NES-authentic color palette to evoke some of its more subtle appeal. “The original NES hardware literally only had around 55 colors that were pre-programmed in and no other color was allowed,” Wozniak explained. “We broke this rule by adding 5 colors to help with a few things the NES palette lacked⁠—namely, darker and desaturated colors. But we justified that decision by treating it as compensation for the fact that everyone is playing these games on much brighter, higher fidelity screens than the CRTs of the past. By sticking 95% to the bright saturated colors, it helps anchor Shovel Knight as part of that era of game development.” On the music front, Wozniak pointed to how composer Jake Kaufman produced Shovel Knight’s score in such a way that the files can be uploaded to an NES cart and played on original hardware.

For a recent example of another developer who excelled at this craft aspect of retro-focused game dev, Wozniak praised the gone but not forgotten Bloodborne PSX Demake and its trademark-friendly little sibling, Nightmare Kart, saying that they’re “such good examples of devs clearly understanding the era and harnessing its nostalgia.” Among many flourishes, Wozniak said he appreciated how the Nightmare Kart team replicated the PSX’s affine texture warping⁠—the jittering, dancing effect present in so much environment art on the platform.

But while some type of authentic grounding is crucial for a nostalgic game, Wozniak noted that “something that many of the throwback games get wrong is that they rely too much on their source material and don’t add their own touch.”

“Part of the appeal of the NES era of game making was that everything was a new idea. The precedents hadn’t been set yet,” said Wozniak. “You can go back via emulation/virtual console and play some of the weirdest games put to cart (looking at you Wai Wai World) because the tropes hadn’t been established yet. Recently, UFO50 did a great job of capturing this intangible retro authenticity by presenting each of the games’ idiosyncrasies without flinching.”

I was also surprised to learn that Wozniak still thinks there’s plenty of meat on the bone with perhaps the most well-explored type of throwback retro game, 2D platformers. “There’s always new and interesting ways to make platformers more appealing to players of any age or experience,” he explained. “More than most genres I would say the 2D platformer appeals to a broad range of skill and as a result is a really effective way of channeling creative juices… Can you tell that I really want to make another 2D platformer?!”

But before that can happen, Yacht Club has to finish its first non-Shovel Knight game, Mina the Hollower, a top-down adventure primarily drawing inspiration from Link’s Awakening and the Oracle Zeldas. If this all has put you in a big Shovel Knight mood and you live in New York or LA, the Shovel Knight live concert series might be just the thing to tickle your nostalgia.