2D Game Playing Response

Hollow Knight 空洞骑士

1. Introduction

Hollow Knight, a 2017 Metroidvania video game, is developed and published by independent developer Team Cherry. The concept behind Hollow Knight was originally conceived in 2013 in the Ludum Dare game jam. Basically, it tells a story that happened in an underground kingdom – Hallownest. Different kinds of insects consist of this kingdom, but now most of them are influenced by a secret pandemic. The great kingdom fell. As a player, our task is to control the nameless insectoid warrior to find the secret behind this kingdom’s history.

The reason I choose this game to do the playing response is that, a long time ago, three best friends of mine had recommended this game to me. All of them play through the game and two of them get the All Achievement price. It makes me feel curious about this game. However, after I start to play it, it turns out that the game operation part needs high skill, and also the map system is hard for the beginner to find the right road to follow the game script. Obviously, my game skill is not that good, so I play it for 1 hour stuck in the very first boss, and then I give up this game.

With this assignment, I finally get the chance to know this game again. By watching the narrative video, I know about the basic storyline and understand why my friends would recommend it to me.

As I write in a previous post, I considered the game to consist of two parts: Learning the basic game operation and learning the storytelling back of the game. In the following paragraphs, I will follow this logic, to make my comment on this game.

2. Game Operation

Like most 2D platform games, the players can control the character to move left and right, and jump to get higher. And it also includes a flash function, so that the players can use this to avoid the attack or get to a farther place.

And, just like most 2D platform games, it also has the death and reborn function. However, you can choose where you want to be reborn before you died. And as the game progress, you can also gain more lives, which means the game allows you to make mistakes. You can fulfill your lost lives from the spring water.

I think the most interesting part of this game is that it creates different tools that you can buy to achieve a different effect. One mentioned in the narrative video I watched is a tool that can help the players to read other’s minds, which helps a lot of the players to learn about the background stories.

Overall, the game operation is as normal as other 2D platform games. In this case, I would say that it is the special story that makes this game can stand out from all the 2D platform games.

(Btw the required high-standard skills really stuck me out of this brilliant game 🙁

3. Storytelling

Everything starts with two kings’ fights. The first king build up this kingdom but was forgotten by the people. The second king builds strict rules and regulations to keep this kingdom under order. King arranged different kinds of insects properly and set up five knights to protect the kingdom’s safety. However, the first king didn’t willing to be forgotten easily, so she spread the pandemic to the kingdom. Rather than the normal virus, this pandemic is controlled by dreams and desire, which means if you have the desire, you will be affected and lose your mind, becoming a crazy strong worm. To fight back against this pandemic, the second king – Pale King used an ancient power named Void to create a knight without desire, so that he could suppress the first king, Radiance. However, being accompanied by the Pale King, the first hollow knight start having emotions, which makes him fail. Radiance’s pandemic controlled the whole kingdom. Until us, the players controlled the second hollow knight that appeared. We shouldered the task of finding the secret of this kingdom and at last, fighting with Radiance.

-Above is the storyline that I learn from that narrative video, and the whole story is far more complex than this. Even though I didn’t play this game myself, I can still feel the values that the author wants to spread to the players through the short video. There are two parts that impressed me: the first one is when the player found out the causation of the pandemic: desire. When the player uses tools that could read others’ minds, we can see that they are all obsessed with one dream or wish. The author of that narrative video quotes a sentence from Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams”: “Dreams are the fulfillment of wishes”. And what a coincidence, Radiance is the king that controlled the dream. Through this logical link, the players could reach the conclusion that Radiance is the one that caused this disaster. The gameplay method combined with the storytelling makes the story easier to be learned. The theory behind it also combined with scientific phycology, which makes this game more meaningful.

Another point is that at the game’s end our players, together with the second hollow knight who come from the Void, beat the bright side Radiance. This is the first time that I saw a game that let the dark side defeat the bright side (both on the color side and on the metaphor side). It makes me feel excited, that it spreads a concept: even if you are a tiny bug, even if you are a shadow that comes from the dark side, as long as you have the courage, you can always face the bright god and finally defeat them.

Above all, I would comment on this game as a successful game. Besides the brilliant story, the music and art side is also artwork. The artworks create an immersive environment for the player to get more involved in this game, and the full characterization also made this world a real existing one, making the players want to explore more. If I have time and energy, I would like to play through it on my own, rather than learn it only from videos.