Hollow Knight incites a bit of debate around the site. As John brought up in his review last year: what do you do with a game that is genuinely good but rather unoriginal? It’s a Metroidvania game that a lot of us picked up because it was simply the most recent Metroidvania game, and that’s not the best excuse for buying a game. In the year since launch, Australian studio Team Cherry has met this criticism by consistently adding new, free DLC to the title, with each pack helping to define and improve on the base game. Today, Hollow Knight: Lifeblood is available, and if you already own the game the update is probably installed.
While the promised free Gods & Glory expansion for Team Cherry’s excellent Hollow Night is still in the works, porting the game to the Nintendo Switch has led to the creation of some tangential new content & features that we all get to enjoy in the interim.
While not completely finalized, they’ve rolled this little bundle of boss fights and gubbins out as a beta on Steam, and call it the Lifeblood update. While perhaps not worth a full playthrough to experience, it’s more of an already-good thing.
Despite friends repeatedly nudging me into playing it, I’ve still only played the first couple hours of Team Cherry’s excellent Dark Souls-ish metroidvania Hollow Knight. Normally a point to lament, but I’m not feeling so bad about it today.
Riding a wave of inertia from a very successful launch, the third and final free expansion for the game, Gods & Glory, is on its way. With it, we’ve got a teaser trailer and a feature list for those who don’t have quite enough bugs in their lives. Maybe once this comes out, I can begin playing it properly.
One of my greatest gaming regrets of this year is getting about halfway through Team Cherry’s excellent metroidvania Hollow Knight, then getting sidetracked by a pile of work. In order to get properly back up to speed, I reckon that I’ll have to start fresh, although with the rate at which they’re pumping out free DLC I might just wait a little while longer.
We have previously mentioned upcoming expansion The Grimm Troupe, but now it has an official release date: October 26th, and it’s bringing a lot of exciting new stuff to the already densely-packed game.
Hot on the heels of the Hidden Dreams free DLC, the Hollow Knight [official site] devs have announced the second in their trio of free-of-charge content packs for the gorgeous, insecty Metroidvania. This one is called The Grimm Troupe and will hit PC at Hallowe’entide, so the end of October. There’s a super cute movie poster-type promo image which I’ll pop after the jump along with the trailer: Read the rest of this entry »
When I first played Sunless Sea I didn’t click with it, then the Zubmariner expansion/DLC came out and I was hooked for weeks. When I first played the arthropoddy Metroidvania-with-hints-of-Dark-Souls, Hollow Knight [official site], I didn’t manage to click with it, but chatting with friends who adore it once it gets going and seeing that its first free DLC – Hidden Dreams – is out, I’m thinking I’ll try it again and hope for a Zubmariner-type revelation!
Hidden Dreams is the first of three free content packs for the game so it sounds like there’s a whole bunch to reinvigorate the game if you’ve been playing since release (i.e. the opposite to me) and are up for a new challenge/new things to see. Read the rest of this entry »
Hollow Knight [official site] presents a peculiar issue. What do you do with a game that is genuinely good, but rather unoriginal? A game that is so, so similar to others that have come recently before it, but is still a beautifully drawn, solidly built metroidvania? Do you say, “Get this one, because it’s the most recent?” That’s not a coherent argument. Unfortunately for Hollow Knight, I think the design decisions that narrowly define it are really its core weaknesses. Read the rest of this entry »
You might remember that Pip took a good look in 2015 at the art of Hollow Knight [official site], admiring its cute yet sinister hand-drawn world of insects. Pretty to look at, how does it play? You can see for yourself, as Hollow Knight finally came out this week. I’ve not had a crack yet myself but a fair few folks seem jolly pleased with the Metroidvania action-platformer. Here, have a gander in this trailer: Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve written before about Hollow Knight‘s [official site] beautiful art style but Team Cherry have released a new trailer so let’s have a bit more of the fantastical insect-y caves and lovely sombre palette:
Hollow Knight [official site] was a Kickstarter project I remember being captivated by because of the art style. It’s all bluey greys and underground exploration to solve a mystery – kinda elegiac. There’s a beta awaiting further exploration in my Steam library but I’ve only been able to dip in for small chunks of time thanks to a set of trips and other distractions. HOWEVER that didn’t stop me emailing the game devs about the artwork. As a result artistic lead, Ari Gibson, has opened his sketchbooks (at one point literally) for RPS.
Here is a whole bouquet of concept art along with Ari’s own comments and explanation.
N.B. Clicking the sketchbook images takes you to a slightly larger version but otherwise what you’ll see when you click through is the same picture, but it turns them into a clickable slideshow which can be a nicer way to look at concept art as it greys out the rest of the page and lets you concentrate :)
While John and I have a related argument over IM about the limits when defining the adventure gaming genre, you should have a look at Hollow Knight, a game about a platforming insect in a little cape.
