Month: September 2022

Enlarge / Dig deeply enough in Shovel Knight Dig, and you'll find trippy treasure just like this. (credit: Yacht Club Games)

Shovel Knight Dig has been on our radar since its announcement in 2019—back when games could be revealed and immediately demonstrated at physical gaming expos. That many years ago, Dig was one of a few planned series spinoffs, and its demo at that year's PAX West show floor filled me with dungeon-digging excitement.

This week, the series' third formal spinoff finally goes on sale on PC, iOS, and Nintendo Switch, and in great news, Dig is easily the best Shovel Knight offshoot yet. What's more, it stands out compared to other arcadey, action-focused roguelites, and the result feels like a depth-filled mod for the mobile classic Downwell.

A new pit stop on the randomly generated road

Shovel Knight has reasons to dig with his namesake weapon in search of treasure, secrets, and revenge. If you're interested in this character-filled story, Dig's interactions with beautifully drawn and animated animals are as charming as the plot found in the mainline series' four campaigns. Or you can mash buttons to skip the dialogue and get to the satisfying digging.

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  Shovel Knight can dig left, right, and downward, but never upward. If you mash the dig button, he'll keep going, even if there's no ground beneath his feet to support his weight—and you'll need to abuse this clever, Looney Tunes-esque mechanic to survive certain tricky races against time.

Control in this new 2D side-scrolling game resembles the mainline series, as well: Use an action button to swipe your shovel left or right (or downward if you hold down on the D-pad) while your hero lands from jumps and falls with his shovel facing downward, which not only harms vulnerable foes but also makes the Knight bounce upward off most stuff it contacts, except certain ground types. Instead of running left or right to a goal, Shovel Knight now digs downward through randomly generated levels (with a few left and right exceptions, usually found in the game's wealth of hidden challenges).

Enlarge / Face and upper body of one of two South American mummies that were likely murdered, based on a recent "virtual autopsy." (credit: A-M Begerock et al., 2022)

An international team of scientists used CT scanning to conduct "virtual autopsies" of three South American mummies and found evidence of fatal trauma in two of them, according to a recent paper published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine. One of the mummies had clearly been hit on the head and stabbed, possibly by two assailants, while the other showed signs of massive cervical spine trauma. The third female mummy also showed signs of trauma, but the damage was inflicted post-mortem. The study is part of ongoing efforts to determine the frequency of violence in prehistoric human societies.

According to the authors, there is a large database of ancient Egyptian mummies and skeletons that show signs of having suffered a traumatic injury, but there is far less data for South American mummies, many of which formed naturally and are exceptionally well-preserved. Nonetheless, evidence of fatal trauma has been reported previously in a few cases, such as a pre-Columbian skull from the Nasca region showing rational trauma to the cervical spine and accompanying soft tissue bleeding into the skull. An almost complete female mummy showed signs of facial bone fractures consistent with massive strikes from a weapon, as did the skull of a mummified male infant.

An extensive 1993 survey used conventional X-rays to analyze 63 mummies and mummy fragments, 11 of which showed signs of trauma to the skull. But those mummies came from different locations, populations, and time periods, making it difficult to draw general conclusions from the findings. Last year, researchers looked for signs of violence in the remains of 194 adults buried between 2,800 and 1,400 years ago in the Atacama desert of northern Chile, 40 of which appeared to have been the victims of brutal violence.