Shovel Knight delayed 'by a few weeks'

Shovel Knight, the Kickstarter-funded 8-bit action adventure from Yacht Club Games, will miss its previously announced release date of March 31 "by a few weeks," the studio announced today.

"The crew at the Yacht Club is tired; we've been working literally every day, and every waking hour, to make the game great. But! We're just not quite there yet," reads a blog post from the team. "Shovel Knight will be missing March 31 by a few weeks to make sure it's a world-class experience, and can release on all platforms simultaneously."

This is the game's second delay. Yacht Club originally planned to launch the game in September 2013 after a Kickstarter campaign that ended successfully last April. The studio raised more than $311,000 — over four times its original goal of $75,000 — and expanded the scope of the project, which led the company to push the title back to early 2014.

According to Yacht Club, the extra time will allow the studio to "get everything polished and aligned." The last few weeks of work will include finalizing dialogue and scripted events; finishing up level design for the last few stages; game balancing; meeting platform-specific standards; and lots of testing.

Yacht Club will announce a new release date when the studio is certain of a concrete date and it has been confirmed with Nintendo and Steam. Shovel Knight is in development on Mac, Linux, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Windows PC. For more, check out our preview from New York Comic Con 2013.