Hollow Knight is an excellent budget title that could serve as the framework for a truly special game. The scale of its world and its contents is simply astonishing, and the universe it all takes place in is certainly a fascinating one. Hallownest feels like the remnants of a once-thriving, underground kingdom. No matter where you go, you catch glimpses of its former glory buried beneath the scars of tragedies and conflicts that have long since passed. You walk through the fractured remnants of a society slowly being reclaimed by its broken ecosystem. The atmosphere is perpetually tinged with a nigh-palpable moroseness, but it's not so overwhelming that it blends all the different areas together.
Every biome is visually distinct from each other, and they all tell self-contained stories about the different corners and communities of Hallownest. It is no secret that Hollow Knight's greatest aspect is its world design. Even a contrarian dickass like myself cannot deny that the world design is anything short of fantastic, and I think that it's worthy of all the praise it has received. It's hard to make a game's world feel truly sprawling-- even big budget titles struggle with that-- but Hollow Knight's map feels like it goes on forever in every direction. It's not just that the map's filled with wide, empty levels with nothing to do, there's a lot to do just about everywhere. Every biome is packed with things to discover, and even if you miss some of those things, just seeing how the different levels and biomes connect together is certainly one the biggest motivators for playing the game. There's always something else to do, there's always something you haven't seen yet. A lot of love went into both building this game’s world, and making it interesting to explore.
The most impressive thing to me, though, is not its world, but rather the amount of art that’s in it. The game was made by a core team of 3 people (4 if you count the composer/sound designer), but only one person made the entirety of the art and animations. For context, there are over 150 enemies and bosses in the game, many of which have multiple unique states and poses, and one guy designed and animated all of them on top of drawing all the characters, art assets, environmental assets, visual effects, UI assets, and more. I don’t usually like giving all the credit to one person in a team, but Ari Gibson is an absolute fucking beast of an artist, and I strongly believe that his work is a key factor of why Hollow Knight captured the hearts of many. In fact, his art is what initially made Hollow Knight interesting to me. Every part of the game is filled with beautiful, screenshot-worthy material, and every screenshot shows off an enthralling universe just begging to be explored. It’s a game that obviously wants to be played; a notion that’s echoed by its incredibly low price of entry.
I’d heard nothing but praise for the game since the day of its release. I’d seen dozens of people fall in love with it. In fact, I sat next to someone who played it every day during class on her macbook. Even without the sound, I could see she was enthralled by it. At the very least, it seemed like something I'd enjoy, too. So years later, when it finally came time for me to play Hollow Knight, I wanted to give the game the best chance I possibly could to shine. I approached the game with a completely open mind and made it my mission to focus on how playing it made me feel.
However, the more I played the game, the more my priorities shifted. No longer was I “giving the game a chance,” I made it my mission to see everything it had to offer. I was determined to do the ultimate playthrough of Hollow Knight, in which I would refuse to get an ending until I memorised the entirety of Hallownest, completed everything in the game, mastered the mechanics, and accomplished absurd personal challenges.
For 9 months, I basically played nothing except for Hollow Knight. I amassed 165 hours of playtime and saw nearly everything in the game. But here's the catch– to this day, I have only done a single playthrough and have not gotten a single ending. I haven’t finished the game, and I do not ever plan to.
Before I continue, I want to explain why my playtime is so absurd. Hollow Knight is definitely a big, nonlinear game, but when you’re as immensely stubborn as I am, it becomes even longer than it was intended to be. Backtracking is a significant part of progressing through it, but the most interesting parts of the game for me were the moments I was meant to turn away from.
For example, I spent a long-ass time beating the Colosseum while vastly underlevelled. I’d say I spent nearly ⅓ of my playtime doing so because it pushed me to master the mechanics and required my undivided effort to beat the challenges. Yes, it was a serious time sink that was easily avoidable, and sure, I may have had to motivate myself to play it at times, but even though I wasn’t exploring Hallownest, I was learning how to use my arsenal to its full ability. The different layouts and enemy encounters in the Colosseum were not just interesting to discover as I progressed, they were intriguing to engage with and discover how to most effectively beat. So even though it took me a long time to beat, I didn’t regret a single second I spent there and never once lost my patience.
It’s places like the Colosseum that demonstrate the best of what Hollow Knight has to offer, gameplay-wise. When the player is pushed to improve their skill by pushing back against the friction of the world, it legitimises their actions in the world. Those moments of triumph made me feel like I was progressing just as much, if not more than when I was simply exploring the map.
There’s proper brilliance embedded throughout Hollow Knight, but its limitations hold it back from being something I’d consider to be a truly great game. It’s obviously impressive that Team Cherry was able to create something so massive out of a very simple framework, but by aiming to make the largest map possible with incredibly simple core mechanics, those peaks in gameplay are divided by increasingly large valleys of mediocre filler.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the world design is lacking or anything like that, obviously the levels are fantastically arranged. However the excellent world design is brought down by the parabolic gameplay pacing and lacklustre level design.
When I say that the level design is lacklustre, I do NOT mean the levels are poorly constructed. There isn’t a level I can think of off the top of my head with poor construction or readability (actually I technically thought of one of the levels with Loodles in them, but that’s not really worth mentioning, I say as I make mention of it). Most of them are adequately put together and relatively enjoyable to beat the first time you see them. The issue, however, is that, as I stated earlier, Hollow Knight is heavily based around backtracking, which means you will venture through most of these levels many different times. One of the most difficult aspects of designing a game like this is making levels that are interesting or enjoyable to play through multiple times, and Hollow Knight does not have many levels that are like that.
The vast majority of them are made up of the same floating platforms, spike pits, walkways, and enemy placements in slightly different arrangements. There is generally only one way to venture through them without much in the way of variation, save for the occasional shortcut or biome-specific obstacle. Although the traversal options change with the acquisition of new movement abilities, the levels themselves stay largely the same as the first time they’re discovered. The player is tested on exactly the same things regardless of how skilled or experienced they are with the mechanics. While there are some changes and rewards for backtracking through the map, they are generally incidental in nature and do little to breathe new life into the levels. For lack of better phrasing, there comes a point where Hallownest stops feeling like a world, and the moment that happens, Hollow Knight becomes a large grocery list.
See, at first it takes a while for the game to open up and become interesting from a gameplay perspective. But once it does, you really embrace that feeling of discovery, of seeing new things within this ever expanding world. Unfortunately, once you reach the endgame, that sense of discovery begins to fall off. The destinations stop being worth the journeys you have to take because you have already encountered the exact same obstacles on your previous journeys. Once you become familiar with Hallownest, you inevitably lose the feeling of excitement in its mysteries. The pursuits become mindless. You end up having to trek through the same simple levels, just to see what else is there, even if the things aren’t worth seeing. There is always something else to do, there is always something you haven’t seen, but the distance to the reward becomes further as the reward itself becomes ever smaller.
Once you’ve seen most of what Hollow Knight has to offer, it is no longer intriguing to traverse its world. You begin just chasing places for the mere sake of chasing places, and you inevitably run out of steam and motivation with that pursuit. That was the trap I fell into. At a certain point, I was just playing the game just so I could say I had completed everything, and not because I was getting anything out of it. The thrill of adventure and discovery had long since turned into a slog since the contents of the game itself was ultimately stretched way too thin.
I want to love Hollow Knight, I really do. I put so much time into it and tried as hard as I could to do so. Some would even say I tried too hard. There is a lot to love about the game and I applaud Team Cherry for what they managed to achieve with it. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in their shoes right now, given both the immense amount of hype people have for Silksong and the fact that they have to make a follow up to a game like Hollow Knight. I, myself, am looking forward to seeing how they evolve with the release of their next game. But as for Hollow Knight itself, I’m glad that I played it, but I certainly don’t have any desire to revisit it.
But nah, in conclusion, bad game by lazy dev. By the way, why do people like the OST so much, it’s really not that special smh.
Every biome is visually distinct from each other, and they all tell self-contained stories about the different corners and communities of Hallownest. It is no secret that Hollow Knight's greatest aspect is its world design. Even a contrarian dickass like myself cannot deny that the world design is anything short of fantastic, and I think that it's worthy of all the praise it has received. It's hard to make a game's world feel truly sprawling-- even big budget titles struggle with that-- but Hollow Knight's map feels like it goes on forever in every direction. It's not just that the map's filled with wide, empty levels with nothing to do, there's a lot to do just about everywhere. Every biome is packed with things to discover, and even if you miss some of those things, just seeing how the different levels and biomes connect together is certainly one the biggest motivators for playing the game. There's always something else to do, there's always something you haven't seen yet. A lot of love went into both building this game’s world, and making it interesting to explore.
The most impressive thing to me, though, is not its world, but rather the amount of art that’s in it. The game was made by a core team of 3 people (4 if you count the composer/sound designer), but only one person made the entirety of the art and animations. For context, there are over 150 enemies and bosses in the game, many of which have multiple unique states and poses, and one guy designed and animated all of them on top of drawing all the characters, art assets, environmental assets, visual effects, UI assets, and more. I don’t usually like giving all the credit to one person in a team, but Ari Gibson is an absolute fucking beast of an artist, and I strongly believe that his work is a key factor of why Hollow Knight captured the hearts of many. In fact, his art is what initially made Hollow Knight interesting to me. Every part of the game is filled with beautiful, screenshot-worthy material, and every screenshot shows off an enthralling universe just begging to be explored. It’s a game that obviously wants to be played; a notion that’s echoed by its incredibly low price of entry.
I’d heard nothing but praise for the game since the day of its release. I’d seen dozens of people fall in love with it. In fact, I sat next to someone who played it every day during class on her macbook. Even without the sound, I could see she was enthralled by it. At the very least, it seemed like something I'd enjoy, too. So years later, when it finally came time for me to play Hollow Knight, I wanted to give the game the best chance I possibly could to shine. I approached the game with a completely open mind and made it my mission to focus on how playing it made me feel.
However, the more I played the game, the more my priorities shifted. No longer was I “giving the game a chance,” I made it my mission to see everything it had to offer. I was determined to do the ultimate playthrough of Hollow Knight, in which I would refuse to get an ending until I memorised the entirety of Hallownest, completed everything in the game, mastered the mechanics, and accomplished absurd personal challenges.
For 9 months, I basically played nothing except for Hollow Knight. I amassed 165 hours of playtime and saw nearly everything in the game. But here's the catch– to this day, I have only done a single playthrough and have not gotten a single ending. I haven’t finished the game, and I do not ever plan to.
Before I continue, I want to explain why my playtime is so absurd. Hollow Knight is definitely a big, nonlinear game, but when you’re as immensely stubborn as I am, it becomes even longer than it was intended to be. Backtracking is a significant part of progressing through it, but the most interesting parts of the game for me were the moments I was meant to turn away from.
For example, I spent a long-ass time beating the Colosseum while vastly underlevelled. I’d say I spent nearly ⅓ of my playtime doing so because it pushed me to master the mechanics and required my undivided effort to beat the challenges. Yes, it was a serious time sink that was easily avoidable, and sure, I may have had to motivate myself to play it at times, but even though I wasn’t exploring Hallownest, I was learning how to use my arsenal to its full ability. The different layouts and enemy encounters in the Colosseum were not just interesting to discover as I progressed, they were intriguing to engage with and discover how to most effectively beat. So even though it took me a long time to beat, I didn’t regret a single second I spent there and never once lost my patience.
It’s places like the Colosseum that demonstrate the best of what Hollow Knight has to offer, gameplay-wise. When the player is pushed to improve their skill by pushing back against the friction of the world, it legitimises their actions in the world. Those moments of triumph made me feel like I was progressing just as much, if not more than when I was simply exploring the map.
There’s proper brilliance embedded throughout Hollow Knight, but its limitations hold it back from being something I’d consider to be a truly great game. It’s obviously impressive that Team Cherry was able to create something so massive out of a very simple framework, but by aiming to make the largest map possible with incredibly simple core mechanics, those peaks in gameplay are divided by increasingly large valleys of mediocre filler.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the world design is lacking or anything like that, obviously the levels are fantastically arranged. However the excellent world design is brought down by the parabolic gameplay pacing and lacklustre level design.
When I say that the level design is lacklustre, I do NOT mean the levels are poorly constructed. There isn’t a level I can think of off the top of my head with poor construction or readability (actually I technically thought of one of the levels with Loodles in them, but that’s not really worth mentioning, I say as I make mention of it). Most of them are adequately put together and relatively enjoyable to beat the first time you see them. The issue, however, is that, as I stated earlier, Hollow Knight is heavily based around backtracking, which means you will venture through most of these levels many different times. One of the most difficult aspects of designing a game like this is making levels that are interesting or enjoyable to play through multiple times, and Hollow Knight does not have many levels that are like that.
The vast majority of them are made up of the same floating platforms, spike pits, walkways, and enemy placements in slightly different arrangements. There is generally only one way to venture through them without much in the way of variation, save for the occasional shortcut or biome-specific obstacle. Although the traversal options change with the acquisition of new movement abilities, the levels themselves stay largely the same as the first time they’re discovered. The player is tested on exactly the same things regardless of how skilled or experienced they are with the mechanics. While there are some changes and rewards for backtracking through the map, they are generally incidental in nature and do little to breathe new life into the levels. For lack of better phrasing, there comes a point where Hallownest stops feeling like a world, and the moment that happens, Hollow Knight becomes a large grocery list.
See, at first it takes a while for the game to open up and become interesting from a gameplay perspective. But once it does, you really embrace that feeling of discovery, of seeing new things within this ever expanding world. Unfortunately, once you reach the endgame, that sense of discovery begins to fall off. The destinations stop being worth the journeys you have to take because you have already encountered the exact same obstacles on your previous journeys. Once you become familiar with Hallownest, you inevitably lose the feeling of excitement in its mysteries. The pursuits become mindless. You end up having to trek through the same simple levels, just to see what else is there, even if the things aren’t worth seeing. There is always something else to do, there is always something you haven’t seen, but the distance to the reward becomes further as the reward itself becomes ever smaller.
Once you’ve seen most of what Hollow Knight has to offer, it is no longer intriguing to traverse its world. You begin just chasing places for the mere sake of chasing places, and you inevitably run out of steam and motivation with that pursuit. That was the trap I fell into. At a certain point, I was just playing the game just so I could say I had completed everything, and not because I was getting anything out of it. The thrill of adventure and discovery had long since turned into a slog since the contents of the game itself was ultimately stretched way too thin.
I want to love Hollow Knight, I really do. I put so much time into it and tried as hard as I could to do so. Some would even say I tried too hard. There is a lot to love about the game and I applaud Team Cherry for what they managed to achieve with it. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in their shoes right now, given both the immense amount of hype people have for Silksong and the fact that they have to make a follow up to a game like Hollow Knight. I, myself, am looking forward to seeing how they evolve with the release of their next game. But as for Hollow Knight itself, I’m glad that I played it, but I certainly don’t have any desire to revisit it.
But nah, in conclusion, bad game by lazy dev. By the way, why do people like the OST so much, it’s really not that special smh.
4 Comments
salvale is gumshoe 🤯
This comment was deleted
"bad game by lazy dev"
You gave the game a 7/10 lmfao
You gave the game a 7/10 lmfao
Actually I use a 7-point scale, not a 10-point one
Salvale
1 year ago