Hollow Knight: Lifeblood now on public beta! Short Switch Update!

William | 24 March, 2018 | Uncategorized

Hey Everyone,

Quick one today! We’ll talk about the Switch port in a bit (scroll down if you like!), but first we’re going to announce…

Hollow Knight: Lifeblood Update!

As part of our work on porting Hollow Knight to Switch, we’ve made a lot of changes to the guts of the game and a lot of tweaks to things like game balance, sound, and visual effects. And in true TC style, we couldn’t resist adding a liiiittle bit of extra content too. Bundled all together, we’re now calling this the ‘Lifeblood Update.’

Today we’re doing a soft-launch of Lifeblood in public beta for PC players on Steam.

Lifeblood Update Features:

One boss has been seriously upgraded. A true challenge awaits!

A brand new boss with a new music track by Chris Larkin (sample below)!

Map Markers are here! Cartographers rejoice!

Extras added to the Extras menu!

Numerous game balances and tweaks (Heavy Blow is now good… just kidding)

Various bug fixes

Additional sound effects and voices

Optimisations and performance enhancements

Sample of new music by Christopher Larkin:

Can you guess who you’ll be fighting?

Releasing this update to PC players will allow us to identify and fix up any lingering bugs as we approach Switch final submission. Once we’re confident we’ve squashed the major bugs, we’ll be doing a proper launch, for PC, Mac & Linux across all the current storefronts (GOG, Humble & Steam).

Accessing Lifeblood Update:

For info on how to access the Lifeblood Update and some other details, check the Steam discussion thread here.

Switch Update

Status report! Everyone here at Team Cherry HQ, including our buds from Shark Jump, has been working furiously on the Switch port. It’s all looking and playing great, but we’ve still got some stuff to iron out.

Performance: Our aim has always been minimal load times and a steady 60fps for Switch. Over the last month we’ve smoothed out the last couple of problem spots and we’re all locked in on this stuff now! Hollow Knight is looking great on that Switch screen!

Languages: As of Lifeblood, HK’s is now in 10 Languages! And for Switch release these have to be in great shape. Getting the localisations cleaned up, with all their unique alphabets and spacings, has been a big undertaking, though one that goes largely unseen by players. We’re close on this, and we’re using the Lifeblood beta to iron out any last issues.

Bugs: The game is more solid than ever, however there are still a few niggling crash bugs and other odd behaviours that need some special attention. This is the pointy end, and that short-list is constantly shrinking, but to be launch ready, we need to get it completely clear!

Release: Given the current status of the build, we’re not yet ready to give an update on release window. We know that can be frustrating to hear, but like we’ve said before, we don’t want to set a concrete target until we’re sure we can hit it, and the game is rock-solid. We’re close, but there are a lot of small bits to tie up and plenty of testing to do. We’ll keep working at it and we’ll keep everyone updated as we approach the big day!

That’s all for now! We’ve got plenty of work still to do so we’ll get back to it. We hope you enjoy revisiting Hallownest in the Lifeblood Update. If you’re waiting for the Switch release, then we hope you enjoy playing Celeste, Night in the Woods and all the other great indie games on the system until we get Hollow Knight out to you!