For this assignment, I chose Hollow Knight as the game that I intended to experience. When I first logged into this game, I was fascinated by its craftsmanship and artistic style. This kind of craftsmanship was going to be one of the key factor that drove me to keep playing this game. After I actually started to play this game, I found out that there wasn’t any tutorial session for rookies, so I was quite confused by the skills that my character had and those key that according to them.
Nevertheless, I began my journey of this game. I think the healing method is designed quite brilliantly. It requires players to kill more NPCs, therefore, players can gain more coins or money for purchasing more items. However, for me, a guy that can never remember the way, I struggled a lot for finding my way and redirecting my way to encounter bosses or NPCs. While I was getting into this game, I realized it was actually a kind of puzzle game that required players to find their own way and their own ending, like those soul-like games, rather than being a easy exploring game that contains different challenges. Also, I liked the dark environment inserted in this game. Because, the lighting area was limited, players actually needed to move around and truly explore all the spots of the terrain. I believe, it was one of the key factor that drove me to explore the map. Because it was a little creepy, my natural instinct made me move.
This was the first little boss that I bumped into, the way to defeat it was shocking. My stereotype of 2D games was still about easily conquering different challenges. However, the way I can utilize the terrain to defeat the boss was intriguing. After having this experience, I also realized the map and terrain of this game was designed quite deliberately. I guess, the way how different NPCs was located might contained different meanings. But still, I haven’t finished this game, so I could not conclude a solid statement for this idea. Nevertheless, I believe the terrain design maximized the gameplay of defeating each bosses or NPCs under the limitation of 2D games.
This flying bug was another little boss that I encountered. Surprisingly, I found out that when I defeated this boss, the game mechanism has some kind of delay, so when those tiny flies appeared, I was actually shocked. I believe this kind of surprises would continue appearing during my later game experience.
All in all, I believe Hollow Knight was am amazing 2D soul-like game. It contains so many surprises for players to discover. Although I still haven’t figure out the plot and the concept that hidden behind this game, I believe it will be a great one.
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