Many Questions, Few Answers: The Buggy World of Hollow Knight
Upon starting a new game in Hollow Knight, the player finds themself controlling the nameless bug Knight in series of dark, barren tunnels with naught but a handful of bug enemies. As the Knight explores these tunnels, they come across just three glowing lore tablets inscribed with cryptic inscriptions. The last of these tablets beckons the Knight to break down the door at the end of the tunnels and enter:
Higher beings, these words are for you alone. Beyond this point you enter the land of King and Creator. Step across this threshold and obey our laws. Bear witness to the last and only civilisation, the eternal Kingdom. Hallownest
The Knight passes through the door and falls into Dirtmouth, a ghost town home to Elderbug, the first NPC the player comes across. Elderbug tells the Knight that Dirtmouth’s inhabitants all went down the town’s well into the kingdom of Hallownest, which has long since fallen into ruin. He cautions the Knight against following them down, warning that creatures go mad and lose their memories. With nothing else to do, of course, the Knight drops down the well and into the Forgotten Crossroads, where their journey truly begins.
Introduction
The 2017 adventure game Hollow Knight tells the story of the Knight, a nameless insect exploring and uncovering the secrets of the fallen kingdom of Hallownest. Hollow Knight was conceived of and developed by Team Cherry, an Australian indie studio that received much of its funding and hype from a highly successful Kickstarter campaign for the game. Its difficulty, PC-exclusive initial release, and indie status make Hollow Knight enticing primarily to experienced gamers. Hollow Knight’s emphasis on self-directed exploration and an interconnected world appeals to fans of of exploration-heavy games like Super Metroid and the original Legend of Zelda.
Hollow Knight’s insect kingdom of Hallownest consists of fifteen interconnected areas, each with its own enemies, scenery, and soundtrack. At the beginning of the game, only Dirtmouth and the Forgotten Crossroads are accessible to the player; all paths leaving the Crossroads are blocked by some sort of obstacle. The path from the Forgotten Crossroads to the aptly named Greenpath is blocked by a Baldur whose shell is invulnerable to the Knight’s Nail. The Knight must acquire the Vengeful Spirit, a ranged attack spell that can break through the Baldur’s shell. The other obstacles similarly require the Knight to acquire new abilities to overcome them. This system of locks that require keys to open them hearkens back to the structure of Metroid and Castlevania, placing Hollow Knight in the realm of the Metroidvania genre.
Most of the key items necessary to overcome the obstacles to new areas require the player to first defeat a boss. These boss battles range in difficulty from fun challenges to ragequit-worthy tests of the player’s skill and endurance. Exploring the world of Hallownest feels much like adventuring in the original Legend of Zelda or in Breath of the Wild, while the notoriously difficult boss battles are more reminiscent of games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne.
Hollow Knight has also influenced other video games, especially in the Metroidvania genre. In Hollow Knight, the Knight can equip items called Charms, which grant special abilities and bonuses. Each Charm costs between one and four Charm Notches, and the total cost of equipped Charms cannot exceed the number of Notches. The 2020 Metroidvania Ori and the Will of the Wisps incorporated a number of gameplay mechanics from Hollow Knight, including the Charm system.
Agency through Gameplay
In an interview with Kotaku’s Kirk Hamilton, Team Cherry’s William Pellen describes how Team Cherry set out to create a world that both gave players the freedom to explore and provided ample incentive to do so: > [W]e just tried to make sure that there was stuff in the world that people had the feeling that if they did find a breakable wall or whatever, or hunt down a secret, there could be anything behind it. It could be, you know, a stinky egg. Or it could be a whole new area with its own boss.
Team Cherry was especially inspired by Zelda II and Faxanadu, which both evoke a feeling of wonder and curiosity that encourage players to explore. Indeed, Hallownest provides the player with complete agency to explore Hallownest at their own pace.
The first part of Hollow Knight is relatively linear. From the Forgotten Crossroads, we obtain the Vengeful Spirit to access Greenpath and Fog Canyon. In Greenpath, we then defeat Hornet and obtain the Mothwing Cloak, allowing us to get to the Fungal Wastes. The Wastes are home to the Mantis Claw, which provides us with the ability to enter the City of Tears. From there, the we have the ability to access almost every area of Hallownest. At no point in the process, however, does Hollow Knight tell us where to go and what to do. Even when we finally get to the City of Tears, for example, Hornet simply tells us to go to the so-called Grave in Ash, with no indication of what or where it is, let alone how to get there.
Hollow Knight gives the player very little for free; every new ability or item hidden behind a boss, a tricky platforming section, or some other challenge. Providing such rewards for exploration provides players with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. And, as Mark Brown points out in the Game Maker’s Toolkit video about Hollow Knight, Team Cherry very intentionally provided numerous connections between the different areas on the map, allowing more than one way to get in and out of most places. This prevents players from feeling stuck: if you’re having trouble with a boss, you can go elsewhere to find new items that will make your next attempt at the boss easier.
However, the death mechanic of Hollow Knight can discourage players from exploring unfamiliar areas. In exploration games like Breath of the Wild, dying simply sends you back to the last save point without any penalty. As such, players who find a certain area too difficult can explore another area and return when they feel stronger. In Hollow Knight, however, the Knight respawns at the last bench they rested at, loses all their money, and has their spell-casting gauge cut by a third. To recover their currency and restore their spell gauge, the Knight must return to the place they died and defeat their Shade. This can force the player to enter an area that is too difficult with their current gear over and over in a cycle of death, respawning, going to get resources back, and dying again in the same place. To some players, this death mechanic means that traveling into unknown areas is simply too risky, limiting their exploration to areas they have already ventured to. Death in Hollow Knight can thus feel incredibly frustrating, as evidenced by this wonderful edit (CW: gratuitous profanity, flashing lights):
It’s important to note, however, that the penalty-free death mechanic in Breath of the Wild and other games is not without its critics. In this Reddit post, a Breath of the Wild player suggests that the lack of consequences for death breaks the feeling of having to prepare for a fight:
You are taking on fights that you should run from, because the save system has your back all the time… Everything in the game points to, that it’s hard to survive in Hyrule, anything can kill you, even the weather. So if you are not well prepared, you will die… Only now, dying doesn’t matter, cause you can just try again, and only [lose] 20 seconds of your progress.
From such a perspective, Hollow Knight thus encourages the player to account for the risk associated with exploring each area when they choose where to go next in their adventure.
Storytelling through Exploration
Items and abilities are not the only aspect of Hollow Knight that the player must find through exploration. For nearly the entire game, the player has many questions and few answers: Who is the titular Hollow Knight? Are they the player character? Why are they in Hallownest? Why did Hallownest fall? Is there even an antagonist in this game? Like Dark Souls and other games with rather opaque storytelling, the Hollow Knight’s lore is hidden in cryptic lore tablets, NPC dialogue, the few cutscenes, and the Hunter’s Journal, which has an entry for each enemy in the game.
It’s entirely possible to play Hollow Knight without caring about the worldbuilding and narrative, focusing only on exploring and making your way to the final boss. But much of the magic of the game comes from piecing together the disparate fragments of information about Hallownest to form a more complete picture of kingdom and its history. For example, a player of Hollow Knight will likely ask themself why some of the insects in the game are sentient, while others are basically mindless husks that seemingly do nothing but lumber around and attack the Knight should they get close. The player’s first hint towards an answer comes from dialogue with Elderbug in Dirtmouth, where he references the fallen Kingdom of Hallownest.
Supposedly the greatest kingdom there ever was, full of treasures and secrets. Hm. Now it’s nothing more than a poisonous tomb full of monsters and madness.
Once the player acquires the Hunter’s Journal, they find more hints in Journal entries about the enemies they come across:
The remains of a bug, animated by a strange force.
The infection that passes from creature to creature grants strength and courage, but it also seems to enslave the will.
The bugs of Hallownest were twisted out of shape by that ancient sickness. First they fell into deep slumber, then they awoke with broken minds, and then their bodies started to deform…
These entries thus suggest that some Infection spread among the bugs of Hallownest, taking from them their free will but granting them great strength. Later in the game, the player discovers that the Pale King, the ruler of Hallownest before its downfall, sought to fight against this Infection, but his efforts proved futile. Players who don’t read the Hunter’s Journal entries or speak to NPCs may miss this information, and even the most attentive players will inevitable miss some pieces of lore. In the aforementioned Kotaku interview, Team Cherry’s Ari Gibson remarks that the development team didn’t try to make every part of the game’s content easily accessible:
It’s probably obvious from the game, but we didn’t build something [where] we expect people to see everything as they go through. As we’re making content, all we think is that someone will probably see this stuff. And if people come upon it and uncover something new, and feel like maybe this is something that not everyone has discovered, that makes it more special for that person. That makes the experience a lot more impactful than feeling like, oh, I found this thing, but everyone’s probably seen this because the director’s hands have nudged me to see it.
Indeed, this wealth of worldbuilding and lore has spawned YouTube lore channels like mossbag, whose hour-long Hollow Knight lore video has garnered nearly three million views, as well as the Hollow Knight Wiki. The Hollow Knight Discord server and subreddit are host to numerous discussions (and flamewars) about such controversial topics as whether Hornet is made of a substance called Void or the role/lore of the NPC Mister Mushroom. The existence of this thriving online fandom that still debates about an indie game’s lore years after its release is a testament to the spirit of curiosity that the game sparks in so many of its players.
For many players, including myself, Hollow Knight evokes this sense of agency and freedom that few games in its genre can match. Its nonlinear progression with secrets to discover behind every corner encourages players to comb through every nook and cranny as they fight bosses and navigate beautiful, hand-drawn landscapes, all while vibing to Christopher Larkin’s killer soundtrack. Though its difficulty makes it most suitable for experienced gamers used to challenging platforming and combat, gamers of any experience level can take advantage of the helpful guides available online to enjoy this masterpiece of the Metroidvania genre. Once you’ve beaten the game, the abundance of content both within the game and created by fans will keep you hooked (at least until the sequel comes out).