You can do the first three in one run pretty feasibly (I got 1:20 on my first attempt, so it worked out), but I imagine you'd want to stop and do the card houses after beating the game and getting those achievements.
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Shovel Knight: King of Cards | Review Thread
- Thread starter Robin64
- Start date
You can do the first three in one run pretty feasibly (I got 1:20 on my first attempt, so it worked out), but I imagine you'd want to stop and do the card houses after beating the game and getting those achievements.
Yeah, my plan was to do all the speed run related stuff in one run, and then knock out the Joustus stuff post game. If I start hoovering up powerful cards from the fourth house/areas first I should be able to clear the earlier ones easier. In theory at least!
And I'm done. All feats cleared on all Shovel Knight games. I'd say King of Cards might be the hardest, but that's solely down to me having issues at first with Joustus while the other games were pretty straight forward. As expected the speed run (and shortest path run) as King Knight were a blast because his movement is really good for stuff like that.
As for Joustus? Its not that bad, and you can give yourself a leg up in the beginning - as you can't buy cards you need to go looking for them instead, there's a small number of really good cards you can get without doing any battles (like Hat Man, Shovel/Shield Knight) that you can go after before attempting any Joustus stuff, you'll then be able to clear most tables with ease I found, and really just make sure you pick decent cards when you win (even replaying if you want to bolster your deck) and you should have an advantage.
Also, I think I finally came around to Joustus, or maybe its my deck (or both). The more I played the more fun it got, and in doing all the feats I think I really enjoyed it.
Liking it a lot more post-world 2. Some of the level design and mechanics they throw at you in world 3 are really great, like the cyclone portals, the platforms you hit make other ones pop up, or how King Knight gracefully skates on ice and always does a twirl jump off of it.
Also the tornado/spinning top heirloom is insane and I love it.
Also the tornado/spinning top heirloom is insane and I love it.
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I finished King of Cards today. 17 hours clocked. Almost got everything, just need to grind for money indefinitely to buy the rest of the pointless stuff. Not sure if I'll bother. But that was one amazing experience. Crazy value and I thought the story and characters were some of the best yet.
Pros:
- Great pseudo-RPG scenario feeling
- Airship music
- Joustus is amazing
- So much content
- Bite-sized stages are actually really fun
- The brand new bosses are unique and challenging
- Love the secrets
Cons:
- The majority of the bosses were a letdown because King Knight can break them too easily
- Really would have liked to be able to build and name multiple decks and save them, for different situations
Pros:
- Great pseudo-RPG scenario feeling
- Airship music
- Joustus is amazing
- So much content
- Bite-sized stages are actually really fun
- The brand new bosses are unique and challenging
- Love the secrets
Cons:
- The majority of the bosses were a letdown because King Knight can break them too easily
- Really would have liked to be able to build and name multiple decks and save them, for different situations
Finished King of Cards today with 87% cards collected (only due to falling a little short of cash to buy the rest) and 100% on the rest. I logged 27 hours, slightly above my 100% runs in all three other games combined, but that's what happens when you finish on a Joustus record of 171-76-8.
The majority of those losses came early on, when I committed to learning the game properly, forswearing cheat cards, and earning back all of my lost cards the hard way, one at a time—which also led me to figure out how enemy decks are populated with cards that are lifted from the player. (One at a time, and in a specific order: so if you lose a common card that the opponent owns several of already, it takes some trial and error before you win back the correct card and move on to the next one you want to reclaim.) By the end I was one-shotting nearly everything, including the final Joustus bosses.
Apart from that, I thought the difficulty progression of adapting to different board styles and new mechanics was rather terrific the whole way through: there was just enough repetition to let the player develop some fluency in the gimmicks and engage with them over multiple scenarios, but also enough novelty to make nearly every character battle come off as a unique level design or puzzle map. You're rewarded for knowing the basic principles of how to play your deck, but also for your ability to adapt and improvise.
Round of applause; now that's commitment. I'm not much of an achievement-hunter in these games, but I think I might replay King of Cards at least for the remaining Joustus feats like doing a full run without purchasing anything from Chester. I'm confident I can do that easily, but didn't notice the achievement existed until after I'd already done some spending early in the game, so it wasn't happening this run.
I've got to agree with you about the risk. After completing everything, I think what stands out to me about Plague of Shadows and King of Cards is that they're the kind of games that are only really possible as expansions, even though King of Cards follows Specter of Torment in being purchasable by itself.
Specter is really smooth and accessible: between its movement, its Mega Man format, its relative ease, and its original prequel story (probably the most distinctive and substantial of the lot), it fit perfectly into its role as a Switch launch title and a return after a lengthy absence. But Plague and King are both the kinds of games that, if they had only ever appeared standalone, you could imagine being panned for their idiosyncrasies and turning off new players. Here I'm setting aside the obvious, that Plague reuses nearly all of the same layouts and could never have stood alone anyhow. I'm talking strictly about how the characters play: they're ideas that make the most sense as variants of an already familiar picture of what "normal" Shovel Knight looks like. And they do this in directions that are polar opposites. Plague uses the old Shovel stages as an anchor of familiarity for a character-centric progression where you practically build your own move set over the course of the game. King, meanwhile, is very static in that your movement remains more or less constant throughout the game (even when you factor in armour and relics), and all of the variation is level-driven; the layouts take the lead the whole way through.
Late-game Plague Knight is still my favourite overall, but I'm not going to bother to rank the campaigns. They should be lauded for their distinctiveness. There is very little sense of redundancy, and yet each of the boss-specific stages and zones still feel familiar across every game: you see the same enemies and stage elements repeated but each character engages with them differently. Naturally, not everything will work for everybody, and the risk is that anybody will see something or other as their least favourite.
We've come to the end of a very complete experience—and I also have to add that I'm surprised at how much mileage Yacht Club got out of King Knight when my initial sense, when I completed Shovel Knight in 2014 and looked up what the Kickstarter pledges were, that he was one of the most boring picks the backers could have chosen (even accounting for how they voted purely based on previews of the character art). It's still admittedly hard not to look at Propeller or Tinker Knight and wonder what could have been. But I guess they had to stop eventually, and while I'm looking forward to whatever YCG does next after years of hearing them say they didn't want to be pigeonholed as the Shovel Knight studio or NES retro workshop and nothing else, you've got to imagine that a Shovel Knight 2 with the unused knights (and perhaps some new ones in the mix) would be effusively received by players, should it ever come to exist. I'm happy with what we have, anyway, and I think this will stand as one of the great success stories of the 2010s.
The majority of those losses came early on, when I committed to learning the game properly, forswearing cheat cards, and earning back all of my lost cards the hard way, one at a time—which also led me to figure out how enemy decks are populated with cards that are lifted from the player. (One at a time, and in a specific order: so if you lose a common card that the opponent owns several of already, it takes some trial and error before you win back the correct card and move on to the next one you want to reclaim.) By the end I was one-shotting nearly everything, including the final Joustus bosses.
If there's one thing I'm not too fond of about the last two bosses—the final one in the fourth House of Joustus and the unlockable boss, Cardia—it's that their unique mechanics involve imposing intense time pressure on the player instead of a power that would be more interesting to play around. This is partly a prejudice of mine, but I'm temperamentally not a blitz player and I find that time pressure isn't particularly interesting or fun as a form of difficulty in turn-based strategy. The Cardia battle is quite thrilling when she starts to dump everybody's special power on top of the board, but I got the vague sense that this was all a lot of spectacle and the AI was tuned to perform much worse than I knew it could to give the player some wiggle room to be sloppy. Opponent-reading is the main thing you learn to do over the course of the game, so it seemed a little odd for the final battles to strip that element away instead of rewarding the player for planning and caution.
Apart from that, I thought the difficulty progression of adapting to different board styles and new mechanics was rather terrific the whole way through: there was just enough repetition to let the player develop some fluency in the gimmicks and engage with them over multiple scenarios, but also enough novelty to make nearly every character battle come off as a unique level design or puzzle map. You're rewarded for knowing the basic principles of how to play your deck, but also for your ability to adapt and improvise.
Round of applause; now that's commitment. I'm not much of an achievement-hunter in these games, but I think I might replay King of Cards at least for the remaining Joustus feats like doing a full run without purchasing anything from Chester. I'm confident I can do that easily, but didn't notice the achievement existed until after I'd already done some spending early in the game, so it wasn't happening this run.
I've got to agree with you about the risk. After completing everything, I think what stands out to me about Plague of Shadows and King of Cards is that they're the kind of games that are only really possible as expansions, even though King of Cards follows Specter of Torment in being purchasable by itself.
Specter is really smooth and accessible: between its movement, its Mega Man format, its relative ease, and its original prequel story (probably the most distinctive and substantial of the lot), it fit perfectly into its role as a Switch launch title and a return after a lengthy absence. But Plague and King are both the kinds of games that, if they had only ever appeared standalone, you could imagine being panned for their idiosyncrasies and turning off new players. Here I'm setting aside the obvious, that Plague reuses nearly all of the same layouts and could never have stood alone anyhow. I'm talking strictly about how the characters play: they're ideas that make the most sense as variants of an already familiar picture of what "normal" Shovel Knight looks like. And they do this in directions that are polar opposites. Plague uses the old Shovel stages as an anchor of familiarity for a character-centric progression where you practically build your own move set over the course of the game. King, meanwhile, is very static in that your movement remains more or less constant throughout the game (even when you factor in armour and relics), and all of the variation is level-driven; the layouts take the lead the whole way through.
Late-game Plague Knight is still my favourite overall, but I'm not going to bother to rank the campaigns. They should be lauded for their distinctiveness. There is very little sense of redundancy, and yet each of the boss-specific stages and zones still feel familiar across every game: you see the same enemies and stage elements repeated but each character engages with them differently. Naturally, not everything will work for everybody, and the risk is that anybody will see something or other as their least favourite.
We've come to the end of a very complete experience—and I also have to add that I'm surprised at how much mileage Yacht Club got out of King Knight when my initial sense, when I completed Shovel Knight in 2014 and looked up what the Kickstarter pledges were, that he was one of the most boring picks the backers could have chosen (even accounting for how they voted purely based on previews of the character art). It's still admittedly hard not to look at Propeller or Tinker Knight and wonder what could have been. But I guess they had to stop eventually, and while I'm looking forward to whatever YCG does next after years of hearing them say they didn't want to be pigeonholed as the Shovel Knight studio or NES retro workshop and nothing else, you've got to imagine that a Shovel Knight 2 with the unused knights (and perhaps some new ones in the mix) would be effusively received by players, should it ever come to exist. I'm happy with what we have, anyway, and I think this will stand as one of the great success stories of the 2010s.
Just finished the game along with
Incredibly pleased with King of Cards. I wasn't so sure about Joustus at first but after the first house I started to really dig the card game. I'm proud of myself for not buying any cheat cards even if it's a silly thing.
Now that it is all said and done, it does make me wonder what they could've done with the other knights. Perhaps one day we'll see.
Looking forward to seeing Yacht Club Games next project.
secret boss.
Incredibly pleased with King of Cards. I wasn't so sure about Joustus at first but after the first house I started to really dig the card game. I'm proud of myself for not buying any cheat cards even if it's a silly thing.
Now that it is all said and done, it does make me wonder what they could've done with the other knights. Perhaps one day we'll see.
Looking forward to seeing Yacht Club Games next project.
Beat and loved the vanilla version of the game and have yet to fully give all of the added DLC a round but definitely plan to fix that soon. Also love how they added all this for free if you bought the games before the cutoff date. Such goodwill and much respect Yacht Club Games!
Thanks :) And yeah, if you got the hang of Joustus you'll be able to do a no purchase run. The game saves upon entering the map screen, so if you are looking like you'll lose a match just close the game via home screen and reload. Other than that, just play the game all the way to the end first and then grab the best cards that are hidden in chests and then start on the card game, as its perfectly doable that way (I'd usually purchase some level 4 cards from Chester but since that's not an option here, I carefully pick and choose the cards I want when I win). Really the only time I had issues was against Mona, who's pretty darn good I found. But the mini game grew on me so much I enjoyed the challenge in the end!
You can smash a wall in the top left hand corner of the screen that has green goo which can then be knocked onto the top of him. Which transforms him into the green slime character, which you can also play against at Joustus - its worth mentioning that in order to get the 100% Joustus opponents trophy you have to beat both his slime and fire forms.
Oh thanks! Weird that you have to do some weird environmental trick for it to count as beating him. Wish it had been explained better...or maybe it was and I just wasn't paying attention.
They hint at it in the same house. One of the players mentions that they can't get him to cool off, something like that.
It's interesting to hear your opinions on Joustus, given that I went about it in the opposite fashion! I am simply far too impatient to sit back and analyze all the possible moves I can make and all the moves the opponent can make to counter them, so I absolutely hated Joustus on the first playthrough. I merrily purchased and used the cheats (though I think Gem Thief is a bit overpowered) to brute-force most of the matches.
The time pressure gimmick, then, was my favorite gimmick to fight against, since it rewards thinking quickly rather than punishing it. I had most of the good cards at that point, so I don't believe I had to cheat for that one. I also decided, upon seeing that Cardia doesn't take cards when she wins, to defeat her without cheating. That took 15+ attempts.
After doing a second playthrough (which was a speedrun playthrough) I went back and fought everyone semi-legitimately for the achievement (using some of the cards from lategame chests) and didn't hate it as much. That was mainly due to being able to make moves faster now that I understood the general strategy of the game (don't actually go for gems until the match is nearly over, try to fill up the board with your own cards, try to 'lock' cards in place once they're on a gem).
I still don't really like Joustus (in the sense that it took away development time), but I can't say I'm too upset about it being in the game when it was technically optional and 'cheats' were available to semi-bypass it.
I love Plague of Shadows for the same reason I don't really like Joustus. Plague Knight's gameplay allows one to make tons of really quick decisions that get one in-and-out of danger, and one doesn't really need to stop and think if they can react quickly. Joustus is about thinking several turns ahead.
Buy the armor that saves you when you fall in exchange for hearts!
How do you feel about Showdown then? I feel that took away much more development time and I'm still struggling to fully enjoy it. Joustus is awesome tho!
I'm certainly a bit more peeved about Showdown. I'm fairly sure King of Cards would not have been delayed anywhere near as long if Yacht Club hadn't decided to join the release with Showdown's for the purposes of the physical edition, and I don't quite understand what Showdown is for. Shovel Knight is a very popular indie game, but it's still an indie game, and I don't have any friends that like Shovel Knight enough to play a party game with a learning curve. I don't like that I have to play Showdown for the achievements if I want to re-100% Shovel Knight again (I've 100%ed it three times, I don't want to stop now!).
The single player aspect of Showdown feels a bit wonky, too. The CPUs seem to have inhuman guarding reaction times against some attacks and don't guard at all against others. The Polar Knight vs Two Polar Knights battle is downright miserable because one of the two giant hitboxes constantly in your face is likely to be in a guard state, intercepting your giant attack and leaving you vulnerable to a counter.
I just wanted to jump in to say how much I adored King of Cards. It's one of my favorite games this year, and probably my favorite Shovel Knight campaign. This despite the fact that I don't really care for joustus and just skipped over the matches after the first handful.
I haven't played too much Showdown with others so I can't comment too much on it, but I'll say that so far I've enjoyed playing it with others as a party game.
But I absolutely detest the single player story. The AI is terrible and just seems to want to mess with you more than they actually want to win, the gimmick fights are frustrating, and the imbalance between sides just runs in the face of any semblance of balance. I really wanted to like it more than I did, but I'm just relieved to be done with it.
Is it a new feature where basically every boss and monsters drop hearts ?
I could barely die with everything around me healing.
I could barely die with everything around me healing.
That is a feature specific to King Knight. I believe he has less maximum health than average to compensate.
Yeah that's exactly how I feel about Showdown. The AI is frustrating especially at later levels, the concept is sound but really poorly implemented on a single player level so much so that I think I would have preferred it without single player at all. They tried to go all out with the content to make it feel like a real stand alone party fighting game with all the expected modes and even full stories and cutscenes but I think here their lack of experience in the genre and a mismatch for their talents resulted in a rare miss. It just doesn't come together like everything else they've made and the lack of polish and consistency shows.
Putting that Percy bonus stage in the middle of the story mode and making it MANDATORY to beat for progression instead of just a fun scoring thing, is a terrible terrible terrible decision!
I finished this earlier today and the game was a blast. The more bit-sized gameplay worked rather well with King Knight's style imo, as ultimately I feel the movement lends itself more to level design rather than quick action like e.g. Shovel Knight. As a result it can feel a bit.... of a "all or nothing" when it comes to deaths, if that makes sense. The joust card game was nice as well, but I'll admit I used cheats for the last few battles as they're kinda crazy!
A bit late, but you were right that it's a really lenghty campaign! It took me 8-9 hours with not too many deaths, so still a bit quicker than you though. I still got some extra things to do as well. Really meaty package!
God, I am looking forward to playing this on or after Christmas if a friend doesn't get a switch for me to couple this with. Should there be a new OT for Treasure Trove now that it's all out? I feel like there is a lot to talk about and enjoy now that the whole thing has come out, and I'd love to talk strategy about using different characters in Showdown.
Plus, this might be a lot of people's Christmas presents, so it'll be useful timing to do around the end of December and beyond! Or is there a Shovel Knight OT I've missed?
Plus, this might be a lot of people's Christmas presents, so it'll be useful timing to do around the end of December and beyond! Or is there a Shovel Knight OT I've missed?
I'm having a great time with Showdown tbh. I like their little "arcade mode" bits of story for each character and the final boss is pretty cool (although very difficult with certain fighters.) The game itself reminds me of that viewtiful joe party game centered around objectives rather than straight fights, which is really cool. It's really NOT trying to be Smash bros, which is one of the things I was a little worried about when I first saw the game.
I'm still working on Shovel of Hope but the renewed interest in the whole game thanks to this release is a lot of fun.
I'm still working on Shovel of Hope but the renewed interest in the whole game thanks to this release is a lot of fun.
My favorite part (outside looking in since I haven't played yet) is just the depth of options afforded to each character, you can do so many cross ups with so many it's crazy. Look on Yacht Clubs site, they actually have moveset guides for a bunch of characters already, and are planning on doing more after all the hubbub these days have concluded. So far it's up to Mole Knight.
https://yachtclubgames.com/shovel-knight-showdown-characters/
They also show examples with gifs, which can be pretty amazing and funny.
I absolutely despised the fourth Joustus boss gimmick. You shouldn't change a turn based game into a time-sensitive game, especially that late. I beat it regardless on my first attempt because the enchantress card steals games.
Baz card is single arrows only and is pretty good for quite a while tbf (and is a generally solid opener card).
I don't like how single arrows lose all defensive capabilities by the second house, with the exception of defending against bombs. Bombs are also kinda weak due to how long they take to set up, but they do break some boards that would otherwise require Count (and reduce board clog at the same time... provided you get them early enough).
Shout out to the Rookie (who I like to call "Jeff") card with literally no arrows (although a grave version would be legit incredible).
Baz card is single arrows only and is pretty good for quite a while tbf (and is a generally solid opener card).
I don't like how single arrows lose all defensive capabilities by the second house, with the exception of defending against bombs. Bombs are also kinda weak due to how long they take to set up, but they do break some boards that would otherwise require Count (and reduce board clog at the same time... provided you get them early enough).
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It's more of an advantage than a hindrance because you can pass your turns without playing anything, which wasn't possible before. Just let the enemy throw stuff on the board until it's near full, counter their stuff, and then finish off the board. I beat the "secret" boss on my second attempt this way without cheating.
Somewhat. The levels are more challenging and linear than Wario Land's, but searching for hidden collectibles is a fairly important part of the gameplay.
Finally beat this, didn't expect so much content,, the ending gave me
vibes lol... If i were to rank all 4 games, it would go Shovel Knight>Plague Knight>King Knight>Specter Knight. I hope Yacht Club revisits the game in 5-10 years and creates campaigns for the rest of characters. This package as a whole is in the top 5 game of the decade for me.
Revenge of the Sith
That was my take away as well personally - forcing the AI to play a card when I don't have to opened up a world of traps for me, which I loved. Actually made that fight easier compared to early card deck battles against Mona and Black Knight.
Have you got the one that's related to blowing the horn next to the horn dude? I was stuck on this particular one - you first have to get 5000 gems and go to the first Joustus house, talk to the bar made, buy everyone a round of drinks and you get a horn weapon (his confetti horn attack from his main game boss fight). Now go back to the crag with the horn dude and use the move next to him, he'll create a portal that leads to the chest with the card in it.
I'm super excited to try Showdown and go for Mole Knight, the way his moves can cross into each other, creating a huge guessing game as long as you practice switching it up, makes him crazy mobile and unpredictable!
Finally started playing Treasure Trove, and it's great! Loving Showdown, and for those of you who wanna know the tricky depth to all the characters, I found this amazing post on GameFAQs!
Shovel Knight Showdown: Character Tips
I knew I would love Mr. Hat, but I didn't know he had so much packed into his moveset! This is invaluable if you are struggling on harder difficulties or taking it seriously among friends and Fighting Game rivals! (It's fun and beneficial to have a rival for fighting games, if you have a friend you game with consistently, try it out!)
Edit: holy crap, you can do the one-Pixel crouch on the results screen with any character. It's hilarious.
Shovel Knight Showdown: Character Tips
I knew I would love Mr. Hat, but I didn't know he had so much packed into his moveset! This is invaluable if you are struggling on harder difficulties or taking it seriously among friends and Fighting Game rivals! (It's fun and beneficial to have a rival for fighting games, if you have a friend you game with consistently, try it out!)
Edit: holy crap, you can do the one-Pixel crouch on the results screen with any character. It's hilarious.
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And I'm done. All feats cleared on all Shovel Knight games. I'd say King of Cards might be the hardest, but that's solely down to me having issues at first with Joustus while the other games were pretty straight forward. As expected the speed run (and shortest path run) as King Knight were a blast because his movement is really good for stuff like that.
As for Joustus? Its not that bad, and you can give yourself a leg up in the beginning - as you can't buy cards you need to go looking for them instead, there's a small number of really good cards you can get without doing any battles (like Hat Man, Shovel/Shield Knight) that you can go after before attempting any Joustus stuff, you'll then be able to clear most tables with ease I found, and really just make sure you pick decent cards when you win (even replaying if you want to bolster your deck) and you should have an advantage.
Also, I think I finally came around to Joustus, or maybe its my deck (or both). The more I played the more fun it got, and in doing all the feats I think I really enjoyed it.
hm.. the PC version has A LOT more achievements, 138 to be precised, why is that?
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Steam has no limits on how many achievements a game can have, console certifications put a cap on them.
In the case of Shovel Knight, the feats are unchanged between versions, just fewer of them directly correlate to an achievement on the consoles.
Is this... a 4th expansion pack? I played the original game, plus the guy that throw laboratory stuff, and that other guy with the thing that cuts, you know, the ___). Is this a new campaign?
Just finished King of Cards tonight—absolutely fantastic like every other shovel knight campaign. I just can't get over the quality put into each new release—manages to feel fresh each time. I can't praise Yacht Club games enough. I hope they keep making these type of games forever. King of Cards is really good for those who haven't played it—highly recommend it!
Yes, it's a new campaign where you play as King Knight and also a seperate Smash type game mode.
No idea to be honest though it does get weirder - as far as I can tell all the trophies relate to feats, but the PS4 version only has a few trophy list for Shovel Knight with the three expansions merely getting a couple of add on trophies for "clear the game" and "do all feats". King of Cards gets a couple more beyond that, but only a couple.
However, the stand alone version of each expansion pack on the PS4 does get a full trophy list with a plat and everything. So quite why the addon versions don't is one of the great mysteries of PS4 trophies!
beat it. loved it. last boss got me a few times and second to last level gave me some issues, lost lots of money, but not playing joustus much so no biggie. had to look up if there was an alt ending! though it makes sense. now should i play the other two dlcs????
I'm on the final boss and loving it except for the last few platforming levels, some of them just go to frustrating over fun for me at the end, checkpoints too far and few in-between with a lot of really precise jumps mixed with new mechanics was a recipe for frustration.
Just beat it and enjoyed it a lot. I feel like not many people went back to play it. It's pretty much the perfect length but it could really last a long time if you decide to get 100% and every achievement. I'm also glad joustus wasn't mandatory. I played it on the first map and ignored it for the rest of the game. I guess it would get easier once you acquire the better cards but I wasn't going for 100% so I didn't really bother with it.
Really looking forward to see what Yacht Club Games does next.
Really looking forward to see what Yacht Club Games does next.
Anyone have the answer to this now? The physical version is on sale and I wanna know if I should jump on that or not.
It should, since both versions have different looking icon, but I honestly couldn't tell you. I think you should grab the physical if you want something nice to put on the shelf, but it's really optional, depending on how good that sale is.
It's a fun game, and Showdown's multiplayer focused gameplay and the capability of co-operative gameplay in Shovel Knight's campaign, makes it a safe option to keep in your gamecard slot to play with pals or something.
Pick it up when you can, it's a ton of fun!
I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying; are you saying that this physical version of Treasure Trove has a different icon than the digital version? 'Cause if that is the case then I'd assume the two versions wouldn't share the same save data and play activity. And to be clear, I'm specifically talking about the digital version of Treasure Trove compared to this physical release, not the stand-alone digital versions of King of Cards, Showdown, etc.
My decision between getting a Switch game physically or digitally (when the choice is available) purely comes down to whether or not both versions of the game are treated as one and the same when it comes to save data, play activity, etc. Mostly just because I really like consistency, lol, but also because if I were ever to decide to switch from a physical copy to digital copy for any game in the future, all the system data associated with the game would still carry over to the digital version in that case. It's just a weird self-imposed rule I have. =P
Anyway, thanks for your reply, though if anyone else here has actually double-dipped on Treasure Trove for Switch and could test this out between both versions, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could let me know the answer! Might have to just contact Yacht Club Games directly to ask (though I've tried reaching out to other publishers about this question for other games before and have gotten mixed replies, so even that may not be as reliable as having someone actually confirm for me...).