Team Cherry's 2D Metroidvania Hollow Knight released in 2018 to great critical and commercial success. Garnering multiple games of the year awards, Hollow Knight slowly amassed a solid following thanks to its unique blend of ideas.
Hollow Knight finds itself among the best Metroidvania games in recent years. The game has a strong selection of systems and mechanics in play, which has managed to elevate the Metroidvania genre itself to another level.
Hollow Knight's Art Style
The art style and direction of a Metroidvania game is as important as all of its other mechanics. It's the lens through which players will see this lovingly crafted world and nudge them to explore more and more. Many Metroidvania games like Ori and the Will of the Wisps have sought to create a uniquely inviting and gorgeous look with a strong sense of detail. Every approach to art style is different, very few are bad (and certainly not Ori), but the simplistic art style of games like Hollow Knight is arguably better for two reasons: it's likely to age well, and it never prevents visibility.
Hollow Knight's unique art style looks playful on the surface, which come off as inviting, as even the bosses can look extremely charming. Ultimately, Hollow Knight manages to keep the whole experience interesting beyond this, as players uncover the deepest mysteries of the land by reading and piecing everything together in their head.
A Well Executed Mesh of Ideas
A lot of the ideas that Hollow Knight sports can be traced back to Dark Souls, such as losing all of the collected money as soon as the player dies. Subsequent runs require players to run back to the old spot to find a ghostly figure that, when killed, will give players back the loot. Also, the combat of Hollow Knight is absolutely vicious like Dark Souls with a bunch of unrelenting foes and a diverse roster of formidable bosses, bringing a lot of ideas to the table and meshing them together really well.
However, Hollow Knight never really "depresses" the player like Dark Souls and instead manages to keep the experience inviting and challenging at the same time, thanks in part due to its aforementioned art style. In addition to this, Hollow Knight's developer Team Cherry has a great sense of how often new content should be doled out to keep the prospect of exploring exciting, which is essential for a Metroidvania to nail down. Giving players new content around every corner makes them lose that anxious feeling of exploring a terrifying world and indirectly, inhibits a designer to explore the possibilities of a new mechanic to the fullest.
That being said, giving players too little can quickly turn off many players as they find the prospect of exploring the same ruthless world unrewarding and tedious. Hollow Knight treads a fine line in this regard and combines a lot of already successful ideas with a uniquely distinct and contrasting art style to create a truly exceptional experience. Hollow Knight: Silksong has a lot to live up to, but many fans believe that it will.
Hollow Knight is available on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.