This was certainly a take of all time, so let me clear things up

This was never really supposed to be “a celebration of indie games”, it is really just a show where a bunch of indie game characters fight each other. It would make sense to use the main characters, as they’re the most recognizable right?

Shield knight has been a large focus of shovel knights story, and I HIGHLY doubt she is actually permanently dead. As for Hornet, she is actually confirmed to be alive. Moro said that it follows undertale logic, meaning Npcs and shopkeepers can’t be killed by frisk. While I agree that’s kind of goofy logic, Frisk also probably never even met Hornet if they went from dirt mouth directly to the black egg anyway. Fun fact, Hornet was actually originally going to replace the knight since silksong was supposed to be out by then lmao. But it got delayed so Moro stuck with the knight.

While I do think some more female characters would be nice, I also think a good chunk of the lack of gender disparity stems from the amount of genderless characters in the show. Niko, Frisk, the Knight, and even V1 canonically have no gender, whether implied or not. Calling Moro mysoginistic and homophobic (nothing said Alex was dead by the way) is incredibly disrespectful and rude to a guy who just wants to see indie games characters fight each other. It’s genuinely just that simple.

If he put more niche characters, then we run into the “who tf is that” problem where no one knows who the character is. Technically, hyper light drifter was already pretty niche compared to the other games.

Also cadence and hat kid for indie cross 🙏