Hollow Knight presents a metroidvania experience that’s so grossly captivating and jam packed full of stuff to do that you’ll find yourself terribly engrossed in the world of Hallownest. With combat that’s deceptively simple that promises a severe degree of mastery you’ll find yourself looking back at your earlier struggles in the game and simply laugh. Filled with fun and engaging characters, you’ll be driven to explore ever further into the caverns below to try and get to the end of their respective stories.

It’s another one of those games. One of those games that I mentioned in my video on Hyper Light Drifter, an indie game that when you state you’ve not played it everyone erupts in a chorus of praise as they beg you to play the game that they love more than their own family. Hollow Knight originally came out way back when in early 2017, and while that may feel like seven life times ago, it’s since been released on the Nintendo Switch and is even being released on Xbox One and Playstation 4 come the end of September (2018). Turns out it’s an incredible game and everyone should definitely play it, because it’s just kind of wonderful.

The game follows you, the Knight, as you walk into the near abandoned town of Dirtmouth, where all the bugs used to live. Below Dirtmouth lies a veritable maze of caverns and a world that once was, but now is filled with the former denizens, now having been driven mad by an unknown cause. As the little Knight your goal is to simply explore these caverns and slowly work out the cause of the whole issue, and maybe even slay three dreaming lords to open a mysterious egg. Your goal is constantly kept vaguely mysterious and stems primarily from the exploring of these underground caves, uncovering more areas to scuttle down the more you explore.

Hollow Knight is a metroidvania game, meaning it’s a game with a general maze of a map but also involves returning to previously explored areas to re-explore once you’ve unlocked a new ability that normally increases your mobility. Due to this, Hollow Knight starts out fairly linear as you explore and search through the areas that your limited mobility can reach, but before too long you’ll find yourself inundated with various and diverse areas, all of which feel like they’re where you’re meant to be going to progress forward but also feel like a side area. Ferreting down little corridors and hidden areas is the name of the game in Hollow Knight – well, it’s not, the name of the game is Hollow Knight – and being exposed to the constant rush of discovering a new hidden location or thinking back to a previously unassailable gap that can now be bridged is great as you feel like you’re working out some great puzzle. The puzzle of exploring.

This drip feed of new abilities also keeps you on the constant edge of mastery. Just as you’ve got the hang of jumping around and swiping at foes you’ll gain a new dash ability and suddenly all future exploration relies heavily on that very dash. This provides a wonderful feeling as you return to previously explored areas and find yourself bewildered by how much of a hardened professional you’ve apparently become. What was once a tricky jumping section now seems like child’s play as you have to deal with significantly worse in your day to day exploring at the edge of the world. This looping back in your adventure just creates a wonderful moment to boost your self confidence in your own abilities. You may be struggling in one area and decide to explore elsewhere, and as you loop back to reach a new and exciting area you find yourself blitzing entire regions that gave you nothing but grief. There are still some areas that are just inherently quite weird that involve bouncing off of flowers in a way that involves very limited amounts of control and lead to enough deaths and angry screams at the screen that I lost several thousand geodes (The in game currency) and it was majorly a bad time all round. Also another region has what can only be described as “too many bees” that’s just the worst.

You see, Hollow Knight also has a vaguely Souls-like style to it. When you die, you don’t simply lose everything you worked so hard to get and cry in a corner, instead you’ve got a chance to get back to your corpse and kill your own ghost to regain all your lost geodes and replenish your soul orb to it’s full amount. The only issue is that your ghost fights back, also it’s normally in the area you just died at, which means there’s the risk of dying again. And you’ll die. A lot. Even though combat in Hollow Knight is a simple process of swiping at foes in all four cardinal directions with your nail, there’s a hidden complexity that comes from avoiding the various attacks thrown by other enemies, in what’s very reminiscent of a bullet hell at times, as well as trying to get past the guard of larger foes and even bouncing off the head’s of others with well timed downward strikes. The simplicity of the combat means you’ll find your fingers dancing across the buttons in a flurry of panicked movements that can require split second reactions to try and avoid the latest incoming onslaught.

Remember when I mentioned that re-exploring old areas makes you feel like some kind of divine unstoppable jumping machine? Well, it’s not quite that simple. Unlike other games with RPG elements to it, in Hollow Knight your health doesn’t increase all that much. At best you can double it, but there’s also no “defence” stat in the game, so those very first slow moving enemies that do one piece of damage at the start of the game will still do one piece of damage at the end of the game. Normally the only difference is that it’s no longer a fifth of your health and instead a tenth, but that still means you can find yourself suffering from a moment of stupid hands and dying on the first screen of the dungeon, despite having just slain some massive imposing end game boss. This is both wonderful and also a tad annoying. Never being able to let your guard down means that even back tracking is a fun and challenging prospect as you can still die at any moment, but at the same time it means that if you come up against a particular boss that you just can’t seem to best your only solution is to “become better”, as the kids say. But you’re old, you’re in the final years of your life. You’re 25. Your hands no longer act as they once did so sometimes the late stage bosses become more frustrating than anything else as it feels like you’re smashing your face into a wall, which isn’t actually that fun.

To add a hint of spice to the combat you can equip a variety of badges, these can be anything from a compass which allows you to actually see where you are on the map, something to make your swings longer and many others going all the way to changing an energy blast spell into a flurry of flying worms, gross. This does mean that if you find yourself struggling with a particular area it can sometimes be fixed by changing up your badge load-out and swapping out that health regeneration one, that requires you to not be hit while it comes back, to one that allows you to use your cure spell faster. It’s surprising how much of an effect just changing a couple of badges can make, but at the end of the day besting your foes will still come down to your own two hands being able to press buttons in a sensible manner.

Hollow Knight is also filled with ample supply of character and style. Starting out with a generally monochromatic colour palette, there’s a harsh juxtaposition between this dreary mood and the cartoonish and smooth designs of all the characters, but the world springs to life as you explore more areas and are hit with verdant greens and striking purples. The subtle use of colour throughout each region in the game manages to create a strong and unique feeling to each area, of which some are infinitely more noticeable than others. Alongside the varied and colourful maps to explore, you’ll stumble across a whole number of characters on your journey. There’s Cornifer the map maker with a wanderlust that’ll see him pop up all over the place, or the friendly and stoic Quirrel who just seems to be a friendly wondering knight on their own journey. There’s bound to be at least one character who you become attached to, even if it’s the rude Zote the Mighty, and you’ll feel the need to explore each region in the hopes of stumbling across your dear wandering friend once more.

Hollow Knight’s charm extends in all directions and even permeates through to the bosses themselves. Yes, a lot of these are giant hell beasts that would fill your darkest bug related nightmares, but they can often end up including some delightful quirks to their demeanour that the character of the bosses themselves become somehow enjoyable. At least, when they’re not repeatedly introducing you to a brutal and sudden death. From quick traveling atop the back of a giant stag beetle to relaxing in the various hot springs across the land, there’s plenty of moments that are sure to see a subtle smile crawl across your face.

Hollow Knight is a wonderful metroidvania game, and honestly one of the best ones I’ve played in recent memory. The exploration is consistently rewarding, and the number of skills you get manage to come into play at just the right moment to add a layer of complexity to things just as you feel like you’re getting the hang of it all. The quiet weaving of the story that happens throughout the game builds into this gripping tale that can leave you spellbound and speechless as major revelations transpire and that worm of information wiggles around in your brain as you dive deeper and deeper below ground to discover what’s going on. There are times when the platforming becomes an annoying struggle, but almost all of these areas are entirely optional and act as a challenge to prove yourself in your deftness.

The few annoyances that arise from moments of monumentous challenge can be all but forgiven for the rich world you’ll be burrowing your face deep into. Like a bug. Everyone is a bug. Probably should’ve been mentioned. An experience that’ll blow you away and pull you back in, deeper and deeper, all at once. I cannot recommend Hollow Knight enough it even has a whole bunch of extra chunks to the gameplay that have been released for free since release. It’s a wonderful game, especially if you’re familiar with metroidvania games and looking for your latest crumb to rub into your gums.