There wasn’t a good tutorial, and each time you lose, an opponent can take one of the cards that you played, discouraging you from experimenting. It’s a bit confusing to describe, and that’s partly because I found the game a bit confusing and frustrating to play. With a deck of 16 cards (each based on enemies or characters from the world of Shovel Knight), you’ll square off with an opponent on a game board grid to push each other’s cards around to vie for gems on the board. You can also play a card game called Joustus. You won’t just be running through platforming levels in King of Cards. I also became surprisingly invested in the plot King Knight is definitely my new favorite character in the series.

Throughout the game, you’ll have a lot of silly interactions with many characters you’ve seen from previous Shovel Knight campaigns (and a few new ones), each packed with the series’s typical groan-inducing puns. Outside of the level design, King of Cards also boasts an impressive amount of charm. Their brevity and focus make them the best levels out of any of the Shovel Knight campaigns. King of Cards’ levels are also much shorter than those in previous games, but there are more of them to charge through. Yacht Club puts King Knight’s shoulder bash and graceful twirl to clever use in smartly designed levels that are typically built around one specific mechanic or gimmick, similar to levels in side-scrolling Mario games. When you bash into something, King Knight will twirl through the air, letting you bounce on enemies, break through certain types of ground, and dig through treasure piles. King Knight’s signature move is a powerful shoulder bash that feels a lot like Wario’s from the Wario Land series.

King of Cards stars the humorously pompous King Knight, and just like the other three Shovel Knight campaigns, he has a unique mechanic and play style that the whole game is built around. But if you didn’t love the original, they likely won’t change your mind. For fans of the series, the new releases are a welcome excuse to dig further into Shovel Knight’s charming world. This week, the studio finally released the third and final expansion, Shovel Knight: King of Cards, as well as an entirely new fighting game called Shovel Knight Showdown.

As part of the Kickstarter for Shovel Knight, developer Yacht Club Games promised an enormous amount of content in the months and years to come. Shovel Knight came out back in June 2014, and it’s a wonderful 8-bit-inspired 2D platformer that’s one of my favorite games from this decade.

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