Something I immediately noticed is that, instead of a "talk" action to interact with NPCs, you have a "listen" action. This is marvelous, and makes far more sense, given the silent protagonist we seem to be playing.

“I can’t afford any of it...goodbye”
I’ve never heard a more relatable sentence lol

Minor tip: You can talk to the shopkeepers and the stag by going right up to them. They have interesting dialogue!

Higher Beings, these words are for you alone:
There are many endings to reach in Hallownest, but you needn't despair. Once you reach an ending, you can load your save back before the final boss, and try to reach a different one without starting over from the beggining.
That's it, that's all I dare to advise. Most everything else you'll come to naturally. :)

Brushes off the death counter Welcome back old friend...

3 People from Australia made this game with programming, art, animation and such.

Wow.
This game is full of bugs.
I can't believe the devs missed ALL of them.

Higher being, these words are for you alone:

-Welcome to Hollow Knight!  The bastard child of Metroid and Dark Souls in an entomologist office. I am your bug friend Font, and I will be your guide.

-As will Cornifer, since he gives you maps, and he is best bug. You will learn to love hearing that humming.

- First gameplay tip!  You saw you can bounce off of enemies with a downward strike.  But you can do it multiple times in a row.  Learn to pogo, it will serve you well.  You can even pogo off of certain pieces of the environment...

- A full soul meter will heal 3 masks of damage, just in case you didn't notice.

- Just like in SoulsSekiBourne, when you die, you lose all your money, and lose 1/3 of your max soul meter until you get back to where you died (marked on your map by the black shade with glowing eyes).  Die without getting there and all that money is gone.

- If you think any walls might be suspicious, give then a smack.  If they give a bit, it's a fake wall you can bust down.

Little knight, you venture into a place full of peril.  Steel your soul, for even the beginning of a journey is fraught with danger.

I love the way the game shows the knight filling in their map when sitting at a bench, and looking at the map behind the map when you've got it up. So much attention to detail on the spritework that's entirely unnecessary but absolutely gorgeous.


HK is one of the few games that when I say the game is full of bugs, I do not mean it as a criticism of the game more of a... Description of the character design, world design, and aesthetic overtones.

I imagine this game was quite cheap to buy nowadays. But to be honest, it's such a good game that there would be No Cost Too Great.

I believe that the initial team was like 3 people plus the composer.

Also, you are correct, Cornifer is amazing.

The most important piece of advice for this game:


Listen To The Music!

Not only because it's brilliant, but it's practically required to understand the story.

out of all the "it's darksouls" game hollow knight is one that's fair because it's not just hard but has a similar tone and way of presenting the lore

The death shade holds your last 3rd of Soul energy, and the money you had on the last death. The game is actually very generous with it, in that it doesn't place the shade right where you died, so most boss arenas will let you get back your stuff without having to attempt the boss again.

"Dignified Gloom" is a good description. I can't believe they managed to make a game about bugs so cute and macabre at the same time.

"Let's knock"

And this is why I love Dan.

Couple of very minor points that I wouldn't consider spoilers - You can get dialogue from rather than buy from shop keepers by walking past where they're buy prompt is, and if you get down from the station he'll give you info about locations. The prompt will change to listen, iirc, in both cases. Both are cool if you care about lore (and the backstories of npcs), and ignorable if you don't.

I am here to tell everyone to buy this game because I bought it at full price and still feel guilty about it.
I SHOULD HAVE PAID TRIPLE FOR IT. HOW COULD I BE SO STINGY?

Experiencing Hollow Knight for the first time is something I’ll never experience again, but this is the closest thing to it. Thank you!

Okay, I love this game to death, so I'm going to answer some questions not answered in the video.

The game was developed by 3 people.


This game is not merely metroidvania-y, it has since become the very standard of the genre. You just can't see a review of any metroidvania game nowadays without at least a brief mention of Hollow Knight.


Speaking of Metroidvania, please make sure to note all the areas you can't reach. You'll spend quite a few hours scouring through your map trying to figure out where all you need to revisit to use a new powerup.  I actually took screenshots of both the location and its place on the map and that alone has abbreviated much of the wandering when I ran out of things to do.


Speaking of map, you'll eventually figure this out naturally, but sitting on the bench will update your map according to where you all visited, but not before then!


Sitting on the bench is also how you create a checkpoint for yourself if and when you die, but it is not how the game is saved. The game saves automatically no matter where you are, so you can beat a boss, never sit on a bench, exit and reload the game, and the boss will remain dead.


When you die, you need to go back to your death spot to regain your geo (the currency) as well as the ability to contain the normal amount of soul. As it is, you can only heal 2 points of health instead of the usual 3, and it will stay that way until you regain your soul. The cracked soul container visual on the top left is to indicate that you just can't heal as much as you normally can, but you can heal whenever you have enough soul.


The challenge of this game is figuring out those pockets of time you can use to heal up. All of the bosses in this game have these pockets of time, even the hardest ones available. But the timing gets very tight the harder they become.


And speaking of bosses, if you can reach it, you can beat it. You don't have to wait to pick up additional tools or better weaponry, even if it's recommended to you. There are no boss fights with cheap killing mechanics to insinuate the fight is impossible at this stage. They're all fair and some of them brutally difficult, but as soon as you come across a boss, you can rest assured that you have all the tools you need to beat it at that moment.


I'm so excited to see you run through this game and I can't wait to see how you uncover the rest of this world!

whose here in 2025 when silksong just came out