Hollow Knight

• 1. Introduction

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  Hollow Knight has sold more than 15 million copies as of August 2025, and it was built by Team Cherry, a small independent studio based in Adelaide, Australia. The player controls a nameless insectoid warrior, commonly called the Knight, who never speaks a word. This silent bug travels down into Hallownest, a fallen underground kingdom plagued by a supernatural disease. Along the way the Knight meets friendly and hostile insects, faces numerous bosses, and gathers new abilities. Scraps of lore and flavour text are hidden across the realm for anyone patient enough to find them. The game is a Metroidvania, a style of platformer built around exploring a large, interconnected map.

  A few questions run through everything that follows. How did a missed game jam deadline turn into a kingdom of ruined halls? What happened to Hallownest, and who is the Knight really? And why did critics call one game both ruthlessly hard and deeply rewarding?

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• 2. Making Hallownest

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  In 2013, Ari Gibson and William Pellen entered the Ludum Dare game jam with a small game called Hungry Knight. Its hero killed bugs to stave off starvation, and its character design eventually became the protagonist of Hollow Knight. The game itself was considered not very good, and it once held a 1/5 star rating on Newgrounds. That score has since climbed to 4/5. The developers then started a second jam entry around the theme Beneath the Surface, and they missed the deadline. The theme still planted an idea: an underground setting, a "deep, old kingdom", filled with insect characters.

  Faxanadu, Metroid, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and Mega Man X were the games Team Cherry looked back to. The team described Hallownest as, in some ways, the inverse of the world tree setting in Faxanadu. From the games of their childhood, they wanted to recapture a feeling of wonder, the sense that anywhere there "could be any crazy secret or weird creature."

  Mega Man X supplied the model for how the Knight moves, because the developers believed control mattered most for the player's enjoyment. The Knight has no acceleration when moving sideways, a large amount of control in the air, and the ability to interrupt a jump with a dash. The goal was to make every hit feel avoidable right up to the last second.

  Gibson's hand-drawn sketches were scanned directly into the game engine, which gave the world what the team called a "vivid sense of place." The developers chose to keep the art simple so that development time would not drag on. For the layout of the world they followed Metroid, which lets players become disoriented and lost and treats finding the way as the pleasure. Only basic signs point toward important locations. The largest design challenge was the mapping system, which had to avoid giving away the world's secrets without becoming unfriendly to the player.

  Hollow Knight was revealed on Kickstarter in November 2014, and the campaign passed its goal with 2,158 backers. That success widened the scope of the game and paid for new hires: technical director David Kazi, composer Christopher Larkin, and marketing and publishing manager Matthew Griffin. The game reached a beta state in September 2015, and stretch goals kept adding material after an engine switch from Stencyl to Unity.

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• 3. Soul And Shades

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  The Knight's health is counted in masks, and its weapon is a sword-like blade called the Nail. Striking enemies fills Soul, which is stored in a Soul Vessel. At first, Soul has only one use, a move called Focus that regenerates masks. As the game goes on, the player collects offensive spells that spend Soul, including attacks from long range.

  When the last mask is lost, the Knight dies, and a Shade appears near the spot of death, which is marked on the map. The player loses all Geo, the main currency, and can hold only a reduced amount of Soul. Defeating the Shade returns the Geo and restores the lost Soul capacity. Dying again before that is costly, because a new Shade replaces the old one and erases the Geo it carried.

  Bug-themed non-player characters fill the kingdom, and they share information about the plot, offer aid, and sell items or services. Some items grant movement abilities: an additional mid-air jump, clinging to and leaping off walls, and a dash. Charms, found in the world or bought from characters, let players customise the Knight. One might extend the Nail's range, and another might make Soul easier to collect. Each charm takes up some of a limited supply of slots called charm notches.

  Hallownest is made of several large, interconnected areas, each with its own theme, and the player is never forced down a single path. Some places can be missed entirely before the game is finished. Progress sometimes requires a particular movement ability, skill, or item. Fast travel comes from Stag Stations, which are unlocked gradually and are terminals linked by tunnels that giant stag beetles travel. Many areas hold tough enemies and bosses, and beating certain bosses grants new abilities.

  Defeating the final boss opens a mode called Steel Soul. In that mode death is permanent, and losing every mask resets the save slot.

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• 4. The Infection

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  The Knight arrives in Dirtmouth, a quiet town that sits just above the remains of Hallownest. Down in the ruins, the player learns that Hallownest was once a flourishing kingdom of insects. It fell after being overrun by the Infection, a supernatural disease that enters the dreams of bugs and drives them to madness and undeath. Hallownest's ruler, the Pale King, had tried to lock the Infection away in the Temple of the Black Egg. Despite the temple's magical seals, the disease escaped.

  Three bugs called the Dreamers act as living seals on the temple door, and the Knight's mission is to find and kill them. With the seals removed, the Knight can confront the Radiance, the source of the Infection. Hornet, the daughter of the Pale King and one of the Dreamers, repeatedly crosses the Knight's path. She tests the Knight's combat skill in two battles.

  The origins of the Infection are pieced together from dialogue, environmental imagery, and writings scattered across the kingdom. In ancient times, a tribe of moths in Hallownest worshipped the Radiance, a primordial being able to control the minds of other bugs. Then the Pale King arrived from afar and used his powers to give sapience and knowledge to the creatures of the realm. The moths joined the other bugs in worshipping him, and the Radiance faded into obscurity. Some worship continued beneath the king's notice, which kept the Radiance alive inside the Dream Realm.

  Hallownest prospered until the Radiance began appearing in the dreams of its people and poisoned their minds. The Pale King used a living substance called Void to create the Vessels, creatures meant to hold the Infection inside their own bodies. He chose the most fit, the Hollow Knight, to trap the Radiance, and he left the others locked in a pit called the Abyss. Yet the Radiance persisted inside that Vessel and weakened the temple's seals, which let the Infection escape.

  The Knight turns out to be a Vessel that managed to escape the Abyss. After the Dreamers and their guardians fall, the Knight faces the infected Hollow Knight inside the temple. Several endings are possible, depending on the player's actions. The Knight can defeat the Hollow Knight and take its place as the container of the Radiance. Or the Knight can defeat it with Hornet's help. A third path leads to a direct fight with the Radiance inside the Dream Realm.

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• 5. Four Free Expansions

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  On the 3rd of August 2017, Team Cherry released Hidden Dreams, the first of four free downloadable expansions. It added two optional boss encounters, two songs, a new fast travel system, and a Stag Station to discover.

  The Grimm Troupe followed on the 26th of October 2017. It added major quests, boss fights, charms, and enemies, along with support for Russian, Portuguese, and Japanese. Its story begins with a Nightmare Lantern in the Howling Cliffs. Striking a masked bug there with the Dream Nail summons circus performers to Dirtmouth, who call themselves the Grimm Troupe. Their leader, Troupe Master Grimm, sets the player a quest to collect magic flames across Hallownest. The flames feed a twisted ritual that draws on the nightmares of the dying kingdom to keep the Nightmare Heart alive.

  Grimm hands over the Grimmchild charm, which equips a small creature resembling him. When the creature absorbs flames, the ritual advances and the Grimmchild learns to attack the player's enemies. In the end, the player must choose a side. One path completes the ritual by fighting Grimm in his powerful Nightmare King form. The other banishes the Troupe with help from Brumm, a traitorous troupe member.

  On the 20th of April 2018, Lifeblood arrived with optimisations, colour palette changes, bug fixes, minor additions, and a new boss fight.

  Godmaster came on the 23rd of August 2018 as the final expansion. It was renamed from its earlier title, Gods and Glory, because of trademark concerns. It added characters, boss fights, music, and a game mode called Godseeker. The update unlocks a new area, Godhome, which holds several boss rushes and the Hall of Gods, a hallway of statues of the game's bosses. Selecting a statue allows a rematch.

  The Godseekers are a tribe of bugs from a faraway land who were abandoned by their gods. After obtaining the Godtuner, the Knight helps them attune to the gods of Hallownest by completing five pantheons. Each pantheon is a set of bosses that must be beaten back to back without dying. The last, the Pantheon of Hallownest, contains every boss in the game or an alternate form of one. Finishing it summons the Absolute Radiance, a more powerful version of the Radiance. Defeating her leads to two unique endings, in which the Knight morphs into a powerful Void entity and destroys Godhome.

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• 6. Ports And Platforms

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  Hollow Knight reached Windows on the 24th of February 2017, and the Linux and macOS versions followed on the 11th of April of the same year.

  The Nintendo Switch version was announced in January 2017 and released on the 12th of June 2018, but it began as a Wii U project. Development for that console started in 2016, alongside the PC version. It shifted to the Switch after the Wii U was discontinued. Team Cherry worked with another Australian developer, Shark Jump Studios, to speed up the porting process. The team first hoped to release the Switch version not too long after the platform's launch, and then delayed it to early 2018. A date arrived only at the Nintendo Direct presentation at E3 2018 on the 12th of June 2018, when the game went on sale that same day through the Nintendo eShop.

  On the 25th of September 2018, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players received Hollow Knight: Voidheart Edition. In 2019, the video game music label Materia Collective released Hollow Knight Piano Collections, a sheet music book and album. David Peacock arranged the music, and Augustine Mayuga Gonzales performed it.

  A Nintendo Switch 2 edition was announced in December 2025, promising higher frame rates and resolutions for a 2026 release. It arrived after a Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase on the 5th of February 2026, alongside versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. The same update gave the PC version support for ultrawide monitors.

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• 7. Critics And Awards

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  On the review aggregator Metacritic, the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One versions earned "generally favorable" reviews, while the Nintendo Switch version earned "universal acclaim." OpenCritic found that 97% of critics recommended the game. Jed Whitaker of Destructoid called it a "masterpiece of gaming," and Tom Marks of PC Gamer called it a "new classic." IGN praised the visuals, sound, and music, along with "a million other details" that build atmosphere.

  Critics described the combat as simple but nuanced, and they praised its responsiveness, which they called tightness, along with the movement. Writing for IGN, Marks said the combat was "relatively straightforward, but starts out tricky" and that it "rewards patience and skill massively." In PC Gamer, he called the charm system "brilliant." Of the charms he wrote, "There were no wrong choices." Adam Abou-Nasr of Nintendo World Report said that removing a charm felt like trading away a part of himself for a better chance in an upcoming battle.

  The difficulty drew the most debate. Vikki Blake of Eurogamer called the game "ruthlessly tough, even occasionally unfair." Abou-Nasr found it so frustrating at first that he scrawled an angry note saying he could not recommend it. Then, in his words, "it eventually clicked." Whitaker never found any of the bosses to be unfair. Reviewers at both Destructoid and Nintendo World Report described a sense of accomplishment after hard fights.

  Comparisons to the Dark Souls series centred on losing currency at death and having to defeat a Shade to get it back. Destructoid praised that rule, and the hold-a-button healing, as ways around two old problems: fair punishment for failure and a real risk-reward balance.

  Destructoid nominated the game for Best PC Game in its Game of the Year Awards 2017, and IGN nominated it for Best Platformer in its Best of 2017 Awards. PC Gamer gave it Best Platformer in its 2017 Game of the Year Awards. Polygon later named it among the best games of the decade.

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• 8. Sales And Sequel

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  By November 2017, Hollow Knight had sold over 500,000 copies. On the 11th of June 2018, it passed 1 million sales on PC platforms, one day before its release on Nintendo Switch. On the Switch it sold over 250,000 copies in the first two weeks. By July 2018 sales exceeded 1.2 million, and by February 2019 they topped 2.8 million.

  A 14-page prequel comic, Hollow Knight First Chapter: Quirrel, was released in 2017. It follows the supporting character Quirrel on his journey to Hallownest, setting up his role in the game itself. In 2019 came Wanderer's Journal, a book of coloured art showing the game's characters and environments. Kari Fry and Ryan Novak created it in collaboration with Team Cherry, and Fangamer sells it.

  Hollow Knight: Silksong was announced in February 2019 and released on the 4th of September 2025. Set after the events of the original, it follows Hornet as she explores the kingdom of Pharloom. The combat style is similar, but Hornet is more mobile than the Knight, and an elaborate Tool and Crest system replaces Charms. Silksong was once planned as DLC for the original game, but it became a separate title when its material grew too large. It will receive its own DLC, beginning with Sea of Sorrow in 2026.

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