2017 Begins with a Switch!

William | 21 January, 2017 | Uncategorized

Get ready everyone! Team Cherry’s huge New Year 2017 Update is landing now. So much news for you all. Settle in and let’s get to it!

First up, we’re gonna deal with the big one. There’s just one major question we keep being asked ‘Is Hollow Knight coming to the Nintendo Switch?’

We’ve had a long conversation with Nintendo and given their recent reveals, we can now announce: Hollow Knight is making the switch to Nintendo’s new portable/home/hybrid platform!

That’s both sad and happy news for us. Though we can confirm the Switch as a release platform, we also have to confirm that Hollow Knight will no longer make its way to the Wii U. That’s not a step we’ve taken lightly. Our Wii U release has recently been hampered by several technical challenges and though we’d love to see Hollow Knight on our favourite console, we feel the quality difference would end up such that Wii U players will be experiencing a lesser version of the game.

We’re aiming to release the Switch version of Hollow Knight not too long after the platform’s launch.

Release schedule

A few people have been asking us about the platform schedule for release and given how close we are, we want to clear it all up. Initial release will be on Windows, and fingers crossed, on Mac at the same time. Linux will follow shortly after (We’re aiming for just a few weeks later, no waiting for months!).

Translations are Underway

Hollow Knight’s dialogue, descriptions and lore are getting the translation treatment. All 37,000 words of Hollow Knight’s scripts are currently being converted into both German and French, and we’re starting to look at possibilities for a Spanish translation as we speak.

We’re hoping to have several languages available at launch and to keep expanding the language options as we’re able.

Testing goes Next-Level!

Here at the pointy end, testing is starting to get serious. We’re beyond the ‘game crashing’ phase and into hard-core polish and refinement. The biggest change now is the number of people testing and the diversity of player experience. We’re bringing everyone together using great free software like Slack and Trello. Testers can talk to one another, post bugs and yell at us for making things too confusing! Here’s what our Trello board looks like right now:

Check out all those bugs! And that’s after a tonne have already been dealt with.

Though a few bugs are still getting sorted (and more are being discovered), balancing is currently the greatest area of challenge and our major focus. Our testers run the gamut and we’ve had several describe the game’s difficulty as ‘pitch perfect’ whilst others still say ‘punishingly difficult.’ Our constant internal direction has been to make Hollow Knight a little easier. That doesn’t just mean difficulty though, it also means guiding players clearly, offering help through characters in the world, and the general flow of the game. Here’s one cool (and simple) way we’ve adjusted game difficulty across the builds:

Early in development your slash size was this big:

So tiny! So difficult.

Now it’s this big!

The slash has been growing through all of development, and it just keeps going. It’s grown to the point where you can sometimes wack enemies through walls and ceilings, and that’s great! We’re huge fans of small game-breaks that allow players to cheat their way towards victory.

More Enemies than SOTN!

What the what?? As crazy as this sounds, in two years, with a team of three people, we’ve somehow managed to create a game with more enemies than Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the figurehead of the whole genre. Did we set out to do this? No! But once we hit over 120 enemies, we knew we had a chance. Now with the game so achingly close to release, we can confirm a final tally of 149 enemies! That’s a huge personal feat for us. All of our enemies are traditionally 2D animated and many are incredibly intelligent, able to run, jump, fly, parry attacks and pursue the player. Over 30 of those enemies are Bosses! So get ready for some huge encounters.

Phew! That’s it! Things are ramping up, and we’re super close to calling this game ready. Keep an eye on our twitter @teamcherrygames. There’ll be lots of news flying about and we’ll be shooting quick things up there. Also, hit us up with any questions or queries: info@teamcherry.com.au for anything specific about the game, development, etc. press@teamcherry.com.au for content creators (Twitch, Youtube, etc) and press enquiries.

Thanks all, Team Cherry Out!!