Sometimes you got to go underground to find purpose with the Hollow Knight

HOLLOW KNIGHT

INDIE GAME REVIEW 

WRITTEN BY JD ESTRADA

1st Released: 24 February 2017

Publishers: Team Cherry, Popeach

Designers: William Pellen, Ari Gibson

Developer: Team Cherry

There’s something magical about a game that has a moment where you can’t help but audibly say “wow.” 

Imagine an entire game that captures that feeling. 

Enter Hollow Knight.

I’ve been playing video games for 37 years and I can honestly say this is one of the best I’ve ever encountered. Tell me an aspect of this game and I’ll tell you how they blew my mind, because there’s nothing in this game that isn’t pristine.

The Story – it is mysterious, dark, fantastical, and you are essentially a vessel that is tasked with digging DEEP beneath the town of Dirtmouth to make sense of a tragedy that’s taken this entire area. The lore is deep and the storytelling is cryptic, but never in a way that bothers. You’re always compelled to search more, go deeper, jump higher, search, re-search, re-think, and talk to everyone and do every task to get any and every nugget of information available to you. 

The Music – Absolutely stunning Hollywood level score that I WANT to see played live by an orchestra. It is rich, layered, nuanced, memorable, and most importantly unique...you listen to one track from the game, and you go, that’s from Hollow Knight...and again, all done tastefully, never overdone. 

The Graphics – Pick a frame and take a screenshot and odds are this game will reward you with something word printing. The hand drawn beauty of this game, the lines, and curves, and subtle organic touches any and everywhere is truly remarkable. I love how each area tells you which area it is without having to say the name of the sector. You could play on mute and you’d know. Also, it’s not the craziest most colorful color palate, there is restraint, and STILL they make each section live and breathe in the most amazing ways. 

The Controls – I shall ALWAYS love a game where if I die, it’s my fault. Not faulty, floaty, glitchy controls. It is a human error and it’s up to you to get back up to where you failed and try and try and try again. But the controls for the Knight and the vast majority of power ups really take your platforming to new heights and depths, etc. I can only think of Celeste being more challenging in terms of platforming, which is high praise. 

Enemies and Bosses – blessed be the variety. This game includes a variety of baddies and you can never let your guard down. Period. And when it comes to bosses, I’m reminded of Mega Man but with less cheap one kill tactics. Still, this game will bust your chops and occasionally demand perfection to succeed...and when you do, it is such a sweet sweet feeling.

Bang for your buck...This game need not be bought when it’s on sale. It delivers on the price of admission,

and I even left a couple of quests without doing, the appropriately named Path of Pain, the flower quest, and the hardest part of the Nightmare Troupe. All of these are pretty intense and I had already clocked in 60-70 hours, plus the ending was satisfying and I know I could grind those out, but didn’t want to mar my experience, which to that point was absolutely stunning. 

Why should you champion this game? Because AAA companies look at this game with envy, and rightfully so. It’s a masterclass in Metroidvania style games and is beyond the full package. Enigmatic, poetic, haunting, beautiful. Those are just some words I can share about the experience but I’ll add one more tidbit...you can tackle this game in different ways and it isn’t necessarily linear...meaning that you might find yourself grinding something crazy difficult instead of something that could have been easier...but you CAN do it...and the game is an invitation to explore, test yourself, push yourself, see if you can pass it, and then keep going for more. And that, dear friends, means that this game is built around the core values of many video games: easy to learn, hard to master, but ALWAYS rewarding. 

So dive in...the water is dark, but it’s beautiful. 

YOU CAN PLAY THIS GAME OVER ON STEAM HERE