Hollow Knight
PC, Switch
Sometimes, you do get a second chance to make a first impression. Arriving on PC last February – yes, the same month that brought us Nioh and Horizon Zero Dawn, and just before a little game called Breath Of The Wild – Hollow Knight escaped the notice of many, including yours truly. No more. A Switch release has rescued it from the obscurity of an oversaturated marketplace and afforded it a fresh spotlight. A spotlight that it more than deserves: Hollow Knight is an astounding accomplishment, an expert refinement of the Metroidvania that wills you onward and keeps revealing more of itself the deeper you go. Break its surface, and you’ll soon find it difficult to break its spell.
The surface appears to be a sort of Dark Souls: Insect Edition. Playing as the diminutive Knight, you’re simply dropped into labyrinthine Hallownest with nothing but a nail with which to defend yourself. The subterranean world is populated by all manner of creepy-crawlies – some friendly, some not so friendly – that you slay to collect a currency called Geo, spent on becoming more powerful. Benches work as checkpoints, offering a chance to rest and recover health. Die in battle, and you leave behind a Shade containing the Geo you were holding. Hallownest itself is a seemingly endless sprawl of winding pathways and hidden passages, punctuated by NPCs that dole out clues as to how this place came to exist, and continues to. Perhaps unsurprisingly, at this point, it involves a kind of cycle.
Familiar, then. Yet the two-man team at Team Cherry insists it hadn’t played much of Miyazaki’s classic at all when work on its game began. Instead, Hollow Knight works from the same influences as Souls – early Zelda is a clear touchstone – and the path deviates as much as it runs parallel. Hollow Knight may be set underground, but it’s far from claustrophobic. While Dark Souls is purposefully oppressive, Hollow Knight offers breathing space. The tone is set by the health system. You earn Soul by striking enemies, which you can then ‘focus’ to heal by holding down a button. It’s capable of salvaging a potentially disastrous run to the next bench – as long as you are. If you can mentally reset when flustered, and patiently, carefully get your hits in, you’ll earn back health. While Bloodborne has a similar mechanic, it demands that you rush in before your window of opportunity disappears, and frequently makes you the fool. Here, you have time to back off, and gather yourself with the grace befitting a warrior.
It changes everything. Rather than throwing in the towel (and the Knight into the nearest spike pit) to start from scratch at the nearest checkpoint fully replenished, it’s an incentive to push forward, and play smarter. And it’s not without risk: if you flub your timing, aborting a heal early to avoid incoming attack, you can waste Soul. Still, it makes for a markedly friendlier experience than most of its kind. And it’s appreciated as Hallownest becomes increasingly hostile, doling out abilities with meticulous pacing that makes each feel like a godsend – a fireball, a dash and a wall jump among the first few.
Team Cherry’s impeccably constructed world gives off the convincing illusion of freedom while deftly funnelling you onwards, surprises at every turn feeling like true discoveries as a result. We’ve followed laughter expecting a friendly chap selling something useful, only to be locked into a boss fight against a marauding dung beetle; the first time we meet the Hunter, we resign ourselves to being eaten alive before creeping forward to strike up a conversation. Each character you meet offers something, whether it’s an essential map of the area, access to nail, health or Soul upgrades, or simply a new tale to enjoy. Their charming designs and distinctive personalities make them worth revisiting often. Even the first method of fast travel, a giant stag beetle, has a character arc that you’ll want to see through to its beautiful conclusion – and you should spare Zote from his doom, and rescue damsel-in-distress Bretta, lest you miss out on one of the funniest sidequests around.
Some levity is welcome in a place populated with parasites that burst into multiple forms, like horrifying matryoshka dolls, or chittering spiders whose legs erupt from within corpses to scuttle after you. Hallownest will also gleefully lure you into traps. Its cruellest practical joke is a collapsible floor in an early area that spits you out into a place that’s essentially Blighttown with a functional framerate and some evil twists.
Surprisingly, it’s not Deepnest that’s the sticking point in Hollow Knight. Instead, it’s the platforming. More often than not, challenges are fiendish, but fair. An overemphasis on using the Knight’s downward strike to bounce on spikes, however, is annoying. The timing and input is overly precise at first, dropping to wearyingly unreliable once you’ve upgraded your nail’s range. The health system is moot, as you only get Soul for hitting enemies: we often find ourselves halfway through a gauntlet with a single health point, no Soul, and the nearest bench miles away from another attempt.
It’s a rare flaw in some otherwise consistently masterful design. What an achievement Hallownest is: its insect-themed design letting it dance either side of the line between adorable and unsettling, a place that tucks its tales away without guarding them too jealously, that prints its twisting tunnels and lamplit tableaus behind the eyelids and upon the memory. It wants to be found, and remembered, and every piece of its unified whole leads you deeper still, until there you remain. In fact, we’re not sure why we’re so taken aback. If the kinds of story Hollow Knight and its predecessors tell have taught us anything, it’s that the things we need most always come back around, reborn in new and glorious form.
Insect-themed design lets it dance either side of the line between adorable and unsettling