Welcome to Hallownest
So first of all Hollow Knight by Team Cherry stands among the selected few I would consider my favourite games of all time. In terms of gameplay mechanics, visuals, sound, storytelling, pacing, and so on, mistakes and annoyances are few and far between for me.
The game features an adorable little insect boy who swings his little nail against other small (and sometimes not so small) insects, what’s not to love! The wonderfully executed parallaxing handdrawn style brings the mysterious world of Hollownest to life, and the deeply layered orchestral soundtrack perfects the setting (there’s a reason Christopher Larkin was my #1 artist on this year’s Spotify rewind). The game works as a metroidvania: you explore an open world, find environmental anti-affordances (barriers), gain new affordances (upgrades), overcome said barriers, and repeat. Within this formula you also fight bosses, tailor the character to your playstyle, encounter colourful NPCs, and perhaps discover a secret or two. The genre is not new, but the execution is perfect. The two main elements of the metroidvania is navigation and combat, which is what this post will try to digest the first of the two – though a few other aspect will creep in, I am quite smitten by this game after all.
//Spoiler Warning – mechanics of Hollow Knight and Ori and the Will of the Wisp will be discussed in the following sections //
Keeping it simple – Functional Movement
The Basics
The movement of The Knight is at first limited to running left/right, jumping, and the great pogo (slashing down on certain objects/enemies while airborne). Since The Knight is but a wee insect, his jumps are also very floaty, and, unless equipping a certain charm, he’ll get knocked back a bit every time his attacks connect with a target.
The move related upgrades consist of the dash (and it’s subsequent upgrade), the walljump, the long-range crystal dash, swimming, and the classic double-jump. Depending on how familiar you are with the genre, or with perhaps other platforming centric genres, this might seem like a lot or little, but with the level design of Hollowknight it feels perfect. Not too many movement options, making platform puzzles trivial, and not so few that these puzzles lack variance – not to mention their utility in combat.
I want to contrast this to another great metroidvania which I believe suffers a bit in this regard. Moon Studio’s Ori and the Will of the Wisp went in a slightly different direction (also compared to their first title Ori and the Blind Forest). In Will of the Wisp, the player may travel to complete four main objectives in whichever order they choose – one of the keystones of metroidvanias is explorative freedom after all. The issue that arises with this, however, is that the level design has to reflect that. With each area providing Ori with new upgrades, the other areas have to be completable without said upgrades. This leads to the player being given too many options to solve some puzzles and sometimes leaving you empty-handed. This inconsistency disrupts the flow of exploration, as you become unsure whether something is an anti-affordance or just a difficult puzzle.
Hollowknight spaces out when these upgrades are given to the player in a great way. First you get the dash – allowing quicker movement, (and upgraded allows you to dodge through enemies/attacks), and the ability to overcome greater gaps. By the time you get the second upgrade, the mantis claw, you’ve started to realise how deep Hollownest might just go. First of all: you start the game on the surface with most of the game underground, so a fair bit of vertical traversal has happened, and second of all: no, it’s much deeper than you think. But here we go, mantis claw – the wall jump. Once again allowing faster movement (vertical this time) as well as accessibility to new areas. On and on the game delivers the right tool at the right time.
For the Foolhardy
I will admit that the limitation in possible movement decreases the possible creativity in movement based puzzles, but here Team Cherry looked to another platforming classic for inspiration: Super Meat Boy!
Instead of brain melting labyrinthine conundrums, tight controls, deadly hazards and severe punishments for failure awaits those who seek a challenge. And sure, there are these sort of small kind of challenges around the world of Hollow Knight, but to gain access to the “true ending” you have complete the White Palace. Herein, much like Super Meat Boy, giant buzzsaws are looking to make you about a head shorter at every turn.
And for those enjoying the game a bit too much, there is also the Path of Pain, within the White Palace. Despite the wonderful juxtaposition of relaxing harp music, inspiring calmness, these areas are not ones for respite. The challenges are hard, the enemies few (no energy to heal), and the checkpoints far between, and just like spikes and similar hazards, the dangers here don’t just damage, they also send you back to the last sure footing you had.
The Flow of Movement
The pacing and increase in difficulty of movement throughout the game ensures you get very comfortable with the mechanics of it and the tight controls. In taking some of the screenshots for this post I started a new savefile, and even with only the basics available to me it still felt like I was flying through areas compared to my first playthrough. Pogoing off fallen stalactites, enemies, spikes, and background elements made me feel like I was dancing (and laying waste) through the early areas.
This familiarity with the movement is also what makes combat such a joy! I’ll talk more about combat in the next post, but I’ll still share a few thoughts. The reactive movement of combat really makes the multi-purpose functions of the movement apparent. Dodging through an attack, combing a double-jump with a couple of pogo down-slashes, a desolate dive (dive spell), and dashing out of the enemy hitbox before the invisibility frames run out, not only end up feeling fairly natural to combo, but also incredibly satisfying! Even the crystal dash can be used as it deals damage as you fly, or can be used to stay stuck to the wall, avoiding attacks or enemies (looking at you colosseum of fools!)
The Bug you Wish to be
Few adjustments can also be made to how the movement works. In your travels you also encounter charms, small stones to equip which alters The Knight in different ways.
The amount of charms which can be equipped at any time increases as the player progresses but it’s always only a limited few which are allowed at any given time. Some more powerful charms also take up more slots and some might break upon death. Lastly it should be noted that it is possible to equip a single charm more than you have space for at the cost of receiving double damage until you go below the limit again.
Some charms are more offensive, like making your attacks faster, deal more damage, or have longer slash range; they might be spell centric like increasing damage, decreasing spell cost, or increasing soul gain from attacks. There are a total of 45 charms (though you can only have 40 at any given time as some replace others as you progress through the game) so going through them all seems a lot.
Related to movement you can get faster running and faster dashing (plus downward dashing), as well as the ability to slowly move while healing. Just like before these alter how you might play the game, or change the game to be more like how you want to play, but in either case, they don’t break any of the movement mechanics – neither in combat, nor in puzzles.
Wrap-up
As you might have guessed, I could probably be considered a fan of Hollow Knight. Graphics, sounds, and all that aside, the game simply features such tight controls, combat, and movement. And it keeps the focus tight, not trying to expand in too many different directions, causing inconsistencies or oversaturating the amount of mechanics necessary to keep the world interesting. So those are also the take-away from this post: Find out what your main mechanics are, keep them in focus throughout, expand where possible but make sure you don’t over-extend so the options become trivial, and make them merge in a way where they compliment each other – classic sum greater than its parts kind of situation.
Thanks for reading