This article is part of a new experimental series, Backlog Club. In this series, we (Nintendo Life!) pick a game that is likely to be on our “must play” list, then (NL + you!) spend the next month playing that game. . Read Part 1 of the Hollow Knight playthrough here!
This is the finale of the Hollow Knight playthrough. Kate really enjoys the peace and quiet (when he’s not fighting tough bug bosses)…
I haven’t particularly enjoyed the platformer, but I can appreciate the excellent jumping skills.
Like a really good burger, the perfect jump is an art of simplicity: height, pitch, speed, and a little trick known as “coyote time.” Everything on the shelf is lettuce, tomato and onion from video game burgers.Once people started messing around with that formula, their burgers were look Good, but always too wet, too big, or overwhelming.
But most of the time a jump is just a jump. This is a separate unit, pressing one button results in one jump. There are wall jumps, double jumps, triple jumps, etc., but a single button single jump (in the absence of external factors such as the player’s forward momentum or the presence of obstacles) is usually the same height, Same pitch, same speed. Developers need a solid foundation on which to build everything else, including platform positioning. Players need to know that the world can change, but they can always rely on their abilities.
Hollow Knight’s jump is not. Instead of “Press A To Jump” being a separate unit, the game offers a “Hold A To Jump Higher” jump. Suddenly you are in charge of your positioning. At first, I hated it, especially because I hated platformers.
But like any game, after a while it becomes second nature. You don’t even realize you’re tweaking your jumps. I can’t imagine how much confidence a developer would have to have to make a basic decision like a jump.Hollow Knight certainly isn’t the first game to do that, but it’s a long way from the mechanics. Most notable usage.
Floating jumps are just the first of many things that Hollow Knight does differently. But it’s not my favorite.My favorite is that I love Hollow Knight silence.
If you look at most audio designer show reels these days, or watch one Marvel movie, you’ll see that soundscapes are very important to the atmosphere of the media. Ambient noise, like audio design in general, is something that most people only notice when they actually do it. imperfectly. take look Listen to different ambient sounds in Minecraft. Most of them are layered on top of each other to create the overall soundscape.
Not that Hollow Knight isn’t Have environmental sound. In fact, there are many. But together they weave a soundscape about emptiness.
All areas have a fair amount of echo, making it sound like you’re in a cave at all times. Sometimes it rains, sometimes the wind blows, and most of the time you hear haunting piano music, bass throbs, or ethereal choral drones in the background. All noise that belongs to existence, be it friendly or threatening, becomes more willful when everything else is quiet. Be sensitive to sound. squeak Grab in trouble, or threaten scree One of those bastard Aspids.
The game is always 2D, but each area has tremendous depth achieved through a combination of bright colors, blur, parallax and silhouette foreground elements.you always felt It’s like being in a huge network of caverns and underground arenas.
And that stillness exists not only in the sounds and backgrounds, but also in Hollow Knight’s traversable areas. Most of the game is a lonely empty space that is beautiful, ominous, and sometimes both. Even the save spots tie into Hollow Knight’s themes of rest and reflective moments. benchgive your little bug a chance to breathe.
Most games give you a sense of purpose and belonging, but Hollow Knight seems to be set in a ruined civilization. Corpses litter the ground. An ornate tombstone had fallen. The ancient battlefield looks like a snow-covered hill, but you can see that there are helmets and spears on the hill. This is a desolate land and you are just a worm.
Obviously, that’s the point.You are Have You showed up after a lot of things happened (I’m not done yet, so don’t spoil it! I don’t know what they all are!) and you’re alone. you are unaccompanied you are speechless there is no help for you. Man Bugs seem to believe and have no hope. That’s what makes this work so exciting. Silence, emptiness is unnatural. Also, what should I do if I have a problem with a video game? we fix themMost of the time you hit things with other things until they explode.
I’m not a game designer, but if I am (and there’s probably a reason why I’m not), I’m too scared to make half of the decisions Team Cherry made in Hollow Knight. Why not stick to things as usual? A world full of stuff, full of noise, full of side quests, full of jumps completed in 1985? Why reinvent the wheel?
Because wheels aren’t always fun. Wheels are something we take for granted. Some, if not most, of the best games of our generation aren’t afraid to break the rulebook. Hollow Knight is in many ways a very typical Metroidvania — but what Team Cherry chose to iterate on was game-changing for future developers.
And if there is a message to get from here? Maybe we have to be brave like Team Cherry. You have the choice to stick to your path and prove that you are as good as others, or to forge your own path and become the best in the world by doing something different.
thank you for reading! It’s your last chance to pick next month’s game before August begins. It could be Portal, but Baba Is You is a close second!
Did Hollow Night end this month? Let us know in the comments!
