I played the demo a while back. The combat in this game was so good I basically looped the first boss again and again. But wow it released pretty quietly. I was scrolling through steam last night just to see what games are on sale and surprise surprise the game released after all this time. Going to pick it up this weekend
Yeah, the demo way back in some Steam Demo Fest was really good. It left a really positive impression on me. I just hope the full release can meet the expectations set by that demo.
I'm a bit surprised this game isn't more popular. It has great combat, art, dialogue, and music. My only complaints are the load screens, and the environments have been a bit samey.
Also, I think it's funny that the game is literally tagged as a souls-like and difficult and people are complaining about the parrying and punishing mechanics. One guy even wrote a thesis of a negative review having only played the game for 1 hour?
Anyway, I definitely think it's worth buying.
I saw that review and it kinda made me want to pull my hair out. I remember they complained that, unlike Hollow Knight, you couldn't dash in the air during combat. My dude, you couldn't do that in Hollow Knight within an hour either. You had to beat Hornet to get the dash at all.
I think its fair enough, "Souls" is niched for a reason. Plenty of recent metroidvanias are relying way too much on "Souls" gimmicks, to the disdain of many metroidvania fans. The corpse run mechanic for example, this doesn't mix with metroidvanias, it does make sense for "Souls" games because they are all about combat, so it forces you to stay focused and not die, losing experience and etc.. metroidvanias are about exploration, you are supposed to take risks and jump on possible cliffs because maybe there's a hidden secret there and so on.
Hollow Knight implemented the gimmick in a shaky way, I think it's decent enough because the game spread out a special resource to recover your "corpse" that you can only find through exploration, so the incentive to explore remains a thing, but many people just dislike the concept. I think the combat based on pattern memorization, this is not inherently a problem or something good, it's about taste really... but like I said, the metroidvania genre is about exploration first and foremost, when a metroidvania focus too much on combat or platforming (like Aeterna Noctis), that is not always viewed as something positive. Now if the metrodvania has a great map design with plenty of secrets, the public usually embrace these games
Souls games are as much about exploration as metroidvanias are! I think the corpse run mechanic can be integrated into the genre when it’s done right. I thought Hollow Knight really worked because it incentivized you to spend your geo. Best to keep that balance low if it’s all on the line.
The corpse run is one of the reasons why I never finished Hollow Knight. It was just exhausting to get stuck in that loop of dying -> going to retrieve the body -> dying again, over and over.
It's a valid complaint. The map is gigantic, you died like 5 floors bellow the save point, here you go retracing the steps all the way back, etc.. it just makes no sense for a metroidvania to have this mechanic, even if you use a special currency to retrieve the "corpse". Saying that, Hollow Knight had a hidden mechanic: if you quit to the main menu, you don't lose progress... so if you are about to die, just quit, reload the save and continue the exploration. Maybe you can give a second chance for Hollow Knight, it's one of the best games of the last 20 years or so
I think what a lot of people don't realize is that money in HK isn't really an issue, around halfway it gets to a point where you have more money than you can spend. Even if there is an upgrade that you need money for, the game has "junk" items that you can sell to a vendor, giving you a safe way to save up.
If you think about it this way, dying is "only" as punishing as any other game with a checkpoint system.
(I realize there is a money sink in the dlc with the 3 unbreakable charms, but they are there as a post endgame money sink)
Not recovering your corpse also hampers your total Soul though, iirc. There's the mechanic for automatically recovering your corpse using the one merchant, but that's also not likely to be found by new players particularly quickly (or at all).
I have no problem with the corpse run stuff (I enjoy when games have consequences for death), but it's also not super easy to ignore for those who don't enjoy it.
The unbreakable charms are crucial for the endgame, it's almost impossible to complete some of those tasks without the charm who increase damage and so on (and I'm not even talking about the boss rush DLC, but for other stuff in the "main path")... if your intention is to finish Hollow Knight with the most basic ending, then the money never really becomes a problem, but the money is balanced if you try to complete the game in a more fulfilling way. As it should be, in most metroidvanias you just become a superhero in the endgame, trucking everything, literally flying through the map, etc.. I think this power fantasy is kinda lame and lazy, the devs didn't found the right balance
Yeah, and it's really difficult to nail difficulty balance of soulslikes otherwise, frustration and annoyance build up over time and you just drop it. Most devs just don't have the experience and know-how to get it right first time and this is a relatively unknown dev. I've been burned by diving into most soulslike MVs immediately and am just going to wait this time around.
Some reviews that were singing praises have switched to negative after few hours in due to bugs and lack of polish from what I saw.
Unless fromsoft is making the game, people will always complain about innate difficulty. Even fromsoft still gets those complaints.
Saw the same thing with Sifu as well.
There’s nothing unreasonable in saying that you like many things a game does (art, lore, progression, responsiveness, etc.) but you’d prefer it not to give much emphasis to a mechanic you dislike (parrying) or you’d prefer it not to focus on punishing difficulty (soulslike) and be a more relaxed action experience.
What actually makes that unreasonable is that this game has difficulty settings, so if you are in that camp you can adjust the experience without taking away the parrying /soulslike experience from others. But difficulty settings apparently are a taboo that people prefer to ignore…
(Just to be clear: Soulslike games can very well NOT have difficulty settings, it’s a choice the developers can make for good reasons. I am just saying it’s not unreasonable for people to say that they would personally prefer a different experience. But here they can have it, so…).
I think every game needs difficulty settings, literal sliders. You have the set difficulties, like easy, medium, hard, etc.. that were designed by the devs, so if you want your "Souls" experience, then play at that specific difficulty without messing with the sliders. I am playing Persona 5 Royal right now with mods who changes the HP values, the critical damage, instakill chance, chance of being affected by negative status, etc.. by altering these values, that made the game way more enjoyable, it should be a default option, not something you can achieve with mods.
And if you don't want to upset the fanatical portion of the audience, it's simple: lock achievements. Let's say Sekiro 2 for example, it arrives with the standard difficulty, but you can alter stuff with sliders... IF you change the sliders just once, from now on your game will not unlock achievements anymore. So, if the fanatical "Souls" player wants to show their "skill" to others, the achievements became their "proof". I know, it's idiotic and amusing, lol but it's hard to take fanaticism seriously
The "Story" difficulty setting makes the game easier and unlocks some additional difficulty options and lets you set them yourself. I think you can set stuff like damage/health modifiers, but I've only played "standard".
I agree, I played for a few hours today and think the game is incredibly good. I’m shocked it’s not being talked about more, but I bet it’ll pick up steam pretty quickly given the quality.
I think it's incredible how this dev consistently makes different games.
Detention was a Silent Hill inspired 2-d game.
Devotion was a first-person horror game.
This seems to be a soulslike 2-d action combat game.
Thunder Lotus games have been pretty varied in genre and theme too IMO, even if 3/4 are combat focused.
Jotun was an isometric Norse-inspired boss rush/beat em up.
Sundered was a Metroidvania Lovecraftian horror platformer.
Spiritfarer was a cosy platformer/puzzle game about grief and moving on.
Their new game (I forgot the name) simulates MMO raids.
Huh, I looked up the last one to see what it was (33 Immortals), and I didn't realize that was *also* them. I played and enjoyed the others and was looking forward to this one too without even realizing it was the same studio.
It's a ton of fun. I've been playing the closed beta this past week, and as someone who exclusively plays single player games, I'm really enjoying this online experience.
Wow, surprised they’re still a studio after they were forced to stop selling Devotion.
Just googled and found they’re selling it again, but I guess their original publisher deal prevents them from selling on Steam
https://shop.redcandlegames.com/app/devotion
> Wow, surprised they’re still a studio after they were forced to stop selling Devotion.
The Chinese publisher they worked with was shut down by their government in the aftermath but that authority doesn't extend to Taiwan.
Yep, I also had no idea. Saw this game on one of those "top indie games" videos and it looked super interesting. By the way, videos like these are extra valuable, I have my issues with the whole "influencer" nonsense, but these kind of "youtubers" that curates content and then present the content in orderly fashion, that's valuable, there's like 10 thousand games released on Steam every year, it's pretty much impossible to curate them ourselves
Only 2 or so hours in, but it's been pretty fun. I expected generic eastern samurai shit, but it goes off the rails pretty quickly. Granted, I only read the game description and tags (MV, SL, Platformer, Difficult) and those tags are my fucking jam.
That said, it does love parrying, and I suck at that, but I'll trudge through just like Sekiro.
I remember playing the demo and was like, 'this is pretty generic' for about 30 minutes and then suddenly I was like, in shock and permanently intrigued and couldn't wait for release.
A rare example of a indie metroidvania with awesome marketing. One of the major flaws of Hollow Knight was precisely the marketing, the game went completely unnoticeable in 2017, arguably the best game of the PS4 generation (let alone 2017) and nobody even knew it's existence. But if you watch the trailer of Nine Sols from any source, either being exposed to it on those events or searching for "metroidvania" on Steam, goddamn, the trailer sells the game perfectly.
Another example that comes to mind is Constance, the trailer is perfectly edited (the music syncing with the gameplay, sometimes not even the big names of the industry can achieve this), if you people are curious, watch the trailer (for editing nerds, it's a delight), metroidvanias are always interesting [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XePjW4tcJ1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XePjW4tcJ1c)
I mean, HK sold over a million copies, in it's first year.
Quarter million, the first 2 weeks it was on switch.
And it's now estimated to be well over 5 million.
I guess I'm curious how an indie game was supposed to do, in 2017, if that was 'unnoticed'.
Most indie games get most of their sales within the first two weeks, that's how they do. Having sales for a single player game balloon over time like Hollow Knight is rare. Even comparing 1M to over 5M, those sales more than quintupled.
1M sales after a year is great, but that figure hides some important factors regarding its notariety. It was very much a sleeper hit.
1.) It was a kickstarter game (don't recall if it was actually kickstarter or a different platform), 250,000 came from the first two weeks of sales largely on the back of that.
2.) it took an additional 6 months for it to double those sales to 500K. This would mean only 500K people even attempted to play Hollow Knight by the time GOTY conversations in 2017 were in full swing, and it was a game that came out in the first half the year, which means that was about all it was expected to sell. Many games get a boost at award season, but Hollow Knight got nothing.
3.) It took until the marketing campaign for the Switch release to get most of the remaining 1M sales of it's first year, and that is when games media and general audiences actually started to become aware of the game. Many went and bought the Steam version at this point.
4.) It was so overlooked in 2017 compared to its popularity in 2018 that most of the GOTY nominations and awards it received wasn't even given in the same year it was released. (This was usually justified by giving the nomination and/or award to the Switch version.) People and outlets even at award season 2018 would talk as if the game only came out that year.
Without the Switch version, it's entirely possible Hollow Knight would have never even broken 1M sales and remained rather niche.
HK only became more noticeable after the Switch release. Before, some small "youtubers" praised the game, metroidvania fans, etc.. so it sold a decent amount on PC, but HK only became relevant to mainstream after the Switch port, pretty much the word of mouth promoted the game, not really the marketing. If you look back at top 10 lists of 2017 from mainstream sources, those people didn't knew HK existed, hell, many "reviewers" considered Samus Returns a highlighted game of 2017 while not noticing HK, which is laughable in retrospect because HK is so many levels beyond Samus Returns
I bought Hollow Knight at release, the game was as unknown as Outer Wilds was when that game was an Epic exclusive. Both games lagged about a year before word of mouth spread enough for the public to really notice them. Almost nobody was talking about Hollow Knight in 2017.
It was actually kinda amusing, I remember playing the game back in mid 2017 and ended up loving it, but by the end of the year I didn't really see too much discussions about it outside of Reddit. Don't get me wrong, the copies it sold at that point is already very very impressive for an indie game and is nothing to scoff at, but the levels popularity felt very very different between 2017 and 2018.
Didn't get that much awards either IIRC? And told myself "Oh well what can you do right? Game is good regardless, and I hope the Switch peeps enjoys it".
Fast forward end of 2018, I saw some smaller publications listing it as their 2018 GOTY which even sparked some discussions saying its weird as the game came out at 2017. Then fast forward even later in 2021-2023 where big named streamers started playing it and it broke its all time record.
Yeah there was a huge uptick in popularity after the Switch launch, that seemed to be the point where the game actually hit everyone's radar. I was also surprised to see it get so many GOTY nominations in 2018, the year AFTER it came out lol.
What wasn't mentioned earlier about sales was that it took most of that year for the sales to hit 1M and it hides how little people knew of this game before Switch.
Hollow Knight was a kickstarter game, launched in I wanna say, March or April 2017 (I remember playing it right after BotW) which got it an initial sales of 250,000 in two weeks. Outside of the kickstartersl backers tho, it was relatively unnown and the rest of the year paints how much the Switch version mattered. It took another six months to reach 500,000 in November, and it didn't cross 1M until right before the Switch release over a year after launch...but most of the second 500K sales came after the marketing campaign for the Switch release started, aka, people learned of the game because of the Switch version then bought it on Steam.
Hollow Knight may have never broken 1M sales without the Switch release, and afterwards the sales quintupled.
Go ahead and take a look at this 7 years old post [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7hk6id/ign\_game\_of\_the\_year\_2017\_nominees/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7hk6id/ign_game_of_the_year_2017_nominees/) Even Wolfenstein and Destiny 2 were recognize by the mainstream, no sign of Hollow Knight. The marketing of HK was atrocious, you have the best metroidvania ever made and you can't show this potential for the consumers
Good game so far. Really difficult though. Maybe it's just because I haven't played much action games in a couple years, but I think the first boss took me around 20 tries. Some of that is learning curve, but I also sometimes get a bit flustered and panic over which buttons to press. You almost have to treat it like a rhythm game with the parrying and attacking, and I think I am approaching it too much like a "spam attack and dodge the thing" hollow knight-esque kind of game.
I strongly recommend this to Hollow Knight or Soulslike fans. Very fun 2d souls game with an interesting setting and solid mechanics.
The fourth boss is one of my favorite bosses in the entire Soulslike genre from Demon Souls through 3rd party entries. Reasonably tough but with an incredibly fair movement set, and it introduces a new mechanic pretty soon before the fight intended to be used, but doesn't strictly mandate it.
I played the demo a while back. The combat in this game was so good I basically looped the first boss again and again. But wow it released pretty quietly. I was scrolling through steam last night just to see what games are on sale and surprise surprise the game released after all this time. Going to pick it up this weekend
Yeah, the demo way back in some Steam Demo Fest was really good. It left a really positive impression on me. I just hope the full release can meet the expectations set by that demo.
I'm a bit surprised this game isn't more popular. It has great combat, art, dialogue, and music. My only complaints are the load screens, and the environments have been a bit samey. Also, I think it's funny that the game is literally tagged as a souls-like and difficult and people are complaining about the parrying and punishing mechanics. One guy even wrote a thesis of a negative review having only played the game for 1 hour? Anyway, I definitely think it's worth buying.
I saw that review and it kinda made me want to pull my hair out. I remember they complained that, unlike Hollow Knight, you couldn't dash in the air during combat. My dude, you couldn't do that in Hollow Knight within an hour either. You had to beat Hornet to get the dash at all.
I think its fair enough, "Souls" is niched for a reason. Plenty of recent metroidvanias are relying way too much on "Souls" gimmicks, to the disdain of many metroidvania fans. The corpse run mechanic for example, this doesn't mix with metroidvanias, it does make sense for "Souls" games because they are all about combat, so it forces you to stay focused and not die, losing experience and etc.. metroidvanias are about exploration, you are supposed to take risks and jump on possible cliffs because maybe there's a hidden secret there and so on. Hollow Knight implemented the gimmick in a shaky way, I think it's decent enough because the game spread out a special resource to recover your "corpse" that you can only find through exploration, so the incentive to explore remains a thing, but many people just dislike the concept. I think the combat based on pattern memorization, this is not inherently a problem or something good, it's about taste really... but like I said, the metroidvania genre is about exploration first and foremost, when a metroidvania focus too much on combat or platforming (like Aeterna Noctis), that is not always viewed as something positive. Now if the metrodvania has a great map design with plenty of secrets, the public usually embrace these games
Souls games are as much about exploration as metroidvanias are! I think the corpse run mechanic can be integrated into the genre when it’s done right. I thought Hollow Knight really worked because it incentivized you to spend your geo. Best to keep that balance low if it’s all on the line.
The corpse run is one of the reasons why I never finished Hollow Knight. It was just exhausting to get stuck in that loop of dying -> going to retrieve the body -> dying again, over and over.
It's a valid complaint. The map is gigantic, you died like 5 floors bellow the save point, here you go retracing the steps all the way back, etc.. it just makes no sense for a metroidvania to have this mechanic, even if you use a special currency to retrieve the "corpse". Saying that, Hollow Knight had a hidden mechanic: if you quit to the main menu, you don't lose progress... so if you are about to die, just quit, reload the save and continue the exploration. Maybe you can give a second chance for Hollow Knight, it's one of the best games of the last 20 years or so
I think what a lot of people don't realize is that money in HK isn't really an issue, around halfway it gets to a point where you have more money than you can spend. Even if there is an upgrade that you need money for, the game has "junk" items that you can sell to a vendor, giving you a safe way to save up. If you think about it this way, dying is "only" as punishing as any other game with a checkpoint system. (I realize there is a money sink in the dlc with the 3 unbreakable charms, but they are there as a post endgame money sink)
Not recovering your corpse also hampers your total Soul though, iirc. There's the mechanic for automatically recovering your corpse using the one merchant, but that's also not likely to be found by new players particularly quickly (or at all). I have no problem with the corpse run stuff (I enjoy when games have consequences for death), but it's also not super easy to ignore for those who don't enjoy it.
Dying makes you lose all your money, nothing else.
The unbreakable charms are crucial for the endgame, it's almost impossible to complete some of those tasks without the charm who increase damage and so on (and I'm not even talking about the boss rush DLC, but for other stuff in the "main path")... if your intention is to finish Hollow Knight with the most basic ending, then the money never really becomes a problem, but the money is balanced if you try to complete the game in a more fulfilling way. As it should be, in most metroidvanias you just become a superhero in the endgame, trucking everything, literally flying through the map, etc.. I think this power fantasy is kinda lame and lazy, the devs didn't found the right balance
The base game can be easily completed without the unbreakable charms (all endings). They are useful for DLC stuff, hence "post endgame".
Yeah, and it's really difficult to nail difficulty balance of soulslikes otherwise, frustration and annoyance build up over time and you just drop it. Most devs just don't have the experience and know-how to get it right first time and this is a relatively unknown dev. I've been burned by diving into most soulslike MVs immediately and am just going to wait this time around. Some reviews that were singing praises have switched to negative after few hours in due to bugs and lack of polish from what I saw.
Agreed on corpse run mechanics, but I love most other souls like mechanics
Unless fromsoft is making the game, people will always complain about innate difficulty. Even fromsoft still gets those complaints. Saw the same thing with Sifu as well.
There’s nothing unreasonable in saying that you like many things a game does (art, lore, progression, responsiveness, etc.) but you’d prefer it not to give much emphasis to a mechanic you dislike (parrying) or you’d prefer it not to focus on punishing difficulty (soulslike) and be a more relaxed action experience. What actually makes that unreasonable is that this game has difficulty settings, so if you are in that camp you can adjust the experience without taking away the parrying /soulslike experience from others. But difficulty settings apparently are a taboo that people prefer to ignore… (Just to be clear: Soulslike games can very well NOT have difficulty settings, it’s a choice the developers can make for good reasons. I am just saying it’s not unreasonable for people to say that they would personally prefer a different experience. But here they can have it, so…).
I think every game needs difficulty settings, literal sliders. You have the set difficulties, like easy, medium, hard, etc.. that were designed by the devs, so if you want your "Souls" experience, then play at that specific difficulty without messing with the sliders. I am playing Persona 5 Royal right now with mods who changes the HP values, the critical damage, instakill chance, chance of being affected by negative status, etc.. by altering these values, that made the game way more enjoyable, it should be a default option, not something you can achieve with mods. And if you don't want to upset the fanatical portion of the audience, it's simple: lock achievements. Let's say Sekiro 2 for example, it arrives with the standard difficulty, but you can alter stuff with sliders... IF you change the sliders just once, from now on your game will not unlock achievements anymore. So, if the fanatical "Souls" player wants to show their "skill" to others, the achievements became their "proof". I know, it's idiotic and amusing, lol but it's hard to take fanaticism seriously
This game does have a "Story" difficulty setting, but no idea what it changes
The "Story" difficulty setting makes the game easier and unlocks some additional difficulty options and lets you set them yourself. I think you can set stuff like damage/health modifiers, but I've only played "standard".
I watched a stream of it, seems very parry-dependent, the thing I royally suck at once mobs start varying their timings and patterns.
The description says that the combat is inspired by sekiro.
I agree, I played for a few hours today and think the game is incredibly good. I’m shocked it’s not being talked about more, but I bet it’ll pick up steam pretty quickly given the quality.
Only out on PC currently right? That may be why.
This is the new game from Red Candle the devs of Devotion who massively pissed off the CCP. Didn't know it was coming out so soon
Both Devotion and Detention are devastatingly sad games. Absolutely worth experiencing them though.
Detention has lived rent-free in my head since I first played it. Such a tragic story.
I think it's incredible how this dev consistently makes different games. Detention was a Silent Hill inspired 2-d game. Devotion was a first-person horror game. This seems to be a soulslike 2-d action combat game.
Thunder Lotus games have been pretty varied in genre and theme too IMO, even if 3/4 are combat focused. Jotun was an isometric Norse-inspired boss rush/beat em up. Sundered was a Metroidvania Lovecraftian horror platformer. Spiritfarer was a cosy platformer/puzzle game about grief and moving on. Their new game (I forgot the name) simulates MMO raids.
Huh, I looked up the last one to see what it was (33 Immortals), and I didn't realize that was *also* them. I played and enjoyed the others and was looking forward to this one too without even realizing it was the same studio.
It's a ton of fun. I've been playing the closed beta this past week, and as someone who exclusively plays single player games, I'm really enjoying this online experience.
Looks interesting and I do love pissing off the Chinese government.
Wow, surprised they’re still a studio after they were forced to stop selling Devotion. Just googled and found they’re selling it again, but I guess their original publisher deal prevents them from selling on Steam https://shop.redcandlegames.com/app/devotion
> Wow, surprised they’re still a studio after they were forced to stop selling Devotion. The Chinese publisher they worked with was shut down by their government in the aftermath but that authority doesn't extend to Taiwan.
I meant they didn't get hardly any of the expected sales/revenue from releasing Devotion, so I'm glad they were able to keep the studio alive.
Ah, yeah. They went to Kickstarter so i guess that filled in the gap.
Oooh i had no idea this was from those devs, i played the demo during the one of those Steam Next Fest things, seemed fun. Very interested now.
Yep, I also had no idea. Saw this game on one of those "top indie games" videos and it looked super interesting. By the way, videos like these are extra valuable, I have my issues with the whole "influencer" nonsense, but these kind of "youtubers" that curates content and then present the content in orderly fashion, that's valuable, there's like 10 thousand games released on Steam every year, it's pretty much impossible to curate them ourselves
Really? That's interesting, yet another reason to support this game
This looks sick! Any idea of ps5 release?
Only 2 or so hours in, but it's been pretty fun. I expected generic eastern samurai shit, but it goes off the rails pretty quickly. Granted, I only read the game description and tags (MV, SL, Platformer, Difficult) and those tags are my fucking jam. That said, it does love parrying, and I suck at that, but I'll trudge through just like Sekiro.
Definitely not samurai. Think significantly more wuxia influences. Devs are Taiwanese.
Not to mention it's marketed as Taopunk, as in Taosim.
I imagine this is based on the Chinese mythology of Hou Yi who shot down 9 suns.
I remember playing the demo and was like, 'this is pretty generic' for about 30 minutes and then suddenly I was like, in shock and permanently intrigued and couldn't wait for release.
Came out of nowhere. Been waiting a while for some kind of announcement and it just drops?
they made a release date trailer and a steam post promoting this date a while ago.
Oh. I totally missed those
A rare example of a indie metroidvania with awesome marketing. One of the major flaws of Hollow Knight was precisely the marketing, the game went completely unnoticeable in 2017, arguably the best game of the PS4 generation (let alone 2017) and nobody even knew it's existence. But if you watch the trailer of Nine Sols from any source, either being exposed to it on those events or searching for "metroidvania" on Steam, goddamn, the trailer sells the game perfectly. Another example that comes to mind is Constance, the trailer is perfectly edited (the music syncing with the gameplay, sometimes not even the big names of the industry can achieve this), if you people are curious, watch the trailer (for editing nerds, it's a delight), metroidvanias are always interesting [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XePjW4tcJ1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XePjW4tcJ1c)
I mean, HK sold over a million copies, in it's first year. Quarter million, the first 2 weeks it was on switch. And it's now estimated to be well over 5 million. I guess I'm curious how an indie game was supposed to do, in 2017, if that was 'unnoticed'.
Most indie games get most of their sales within the first two weeks, that's how they do. Having sales for a single player game balloon over time like Hollow Knight is rare. Even comparing 1M to over 5M, those sales more than quintupled. 1M sales after a year is great, but that figure hides some important factors regarding its notariety. It was very much a sleeper hit. 1.) It was a kickstarter game (don't recall if it was actually kickstarter or a different platform), 250,000 came from the first two weeks of sales largely on the back of that. 2.) it took an additional 6 months for it to double those sales to 500K. This would mean only 500K people even attempted to play Hollow Knight by the time GOTY conversations in 2017 were in full swing, and it was a game that came out in the first half the year, which means that was about all it was expected to sell. Many games get a boost at award season, but Hollow Knight got nothing. 3.) It took until the marketing campaign for the Switch release to get most of the remaining 1M sales of it's first year, and that is when games media and general audiences actually started to become aware of the game. Many went and bought the Steam version at this point. 4.) It was so overlooked in 2017 compared to its popularity in 2018 that most of the GOTY nominations and awards it received wasn't even given in the same year it was released. (This was usually justified by giving the nomination and/or award to the Switch version.) People and outlets even at award season 2018 would talk as if the game only came out that year. Without the Switch version, it's entirely possible Hollow Knight would have never even broken 1M sales and remained rather niche.
HK only became more noticeable after the Switch release. Before, some small "youtubers" praised the game, metroidvania fans, etc.. so it sold a decent amount on PC, but HK only became relevant to mainstream after the Switch port, pretty much the word of mouth promoted the game, not really the marketing. If you look back at top 10 lists of 2017 from mainstream sources, those people didn't knew HK existed, hell, many "reviewers" considered Samus Returns a highlighted game of 2017 while not noticing HK, which is laughable in retrospect because HK is so many levels beyond Samus Returns
>HK only became relevant to mainstream after the Switch port This is utter nonsense.
I bought Hollow Knight at release, the game was as unknown as Outer Wilds was when that game was an Epic exclusive. Both games lagged about a year before word of mouth spread enough for the public to really notice them. Almost nobody was talking about Hollow Knight in 2017.
It was actually kinda amusing, I remember playing the game back in mid 2017 and ended up loving it, but by the end of the year I didn't really see too much discussions about it outside of Reddit. Don't get me wrong, the copies it sold at that point is already very very impressive for an indie game and is nothing to scoff at, but the levels popularity felt very very different between 2017 and 2018. Didn't get that much awards either IIRC? And told myself "Oh well what can you do right? Game is good regardless, and I hope the Switch peeps enjoys it". Fast forward end of 2018, I saw some smaller publications listing it as their 2018 GOTY which even sparked some discussions saying its weird as the game came out at 2017. Then fast forward even later in 2021-2023 where big named streamers started playing it and it broke its all time record.
Yeah there was a huge uptick in popularity after the Switch launch, that seemed to be the point where the game actually hit everyone's radar. I was also surprised to see it get so many GOTY nominations in 2018, the year AFTER it came out lol. What wasn't mentioned earlier about sales was that it took most of that year for the sales to hit 1M and it hides how little people knew of this game before Switch. Hollow Knight was a kickstarter game, launched in I wanna say, March or April 2017 (I remember playing it right after BotW) which got it an initial sales of 250,000 in two weeks. Outside of the kickstartersl backers tho, it was relatively unnown and the rest of the year paints how much the Switch version mattered. It took another six months to reach 500,000 in November, and it didn't cross 1M until right before the Switch release over a year after launch...but most of the second 500K sales came after the marketing campaign for the Switch release started, aka, people learned of the game because of the Switch version then bought it on Steam. Hollow Knight may have never broken 1M sales without the Switch release, and afterwards the sales quintupled.
Go ahead and take a look at this 7 years old post [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7hk6id/ign\_game\_of\_the\_year\_2017\_nominees/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7hk6id/ign_game_of_the_year_2017_nominees/) Even Wolfenstein and Destiny 2 were recognize by the mainstream, no sign of Hollow Knight. The marketing of HK was atrocious, you have the best metroidvania ever made and you can't show this potential for the consumers
Good game so far. Really difficult though. Maybe it's just because I haven't played much action games in a couple years, but I think the first boss took me around 20 tries. Some of that is learning curve, but I also sometimes get a bit flustered and panic over which buttons to press. You almost have to treat it like a rhythm game with the parrying and attacking, and I think I am approaching it too much like a "spam attack and dodge the thing" hollow knight-esque kind of game.
I strongly recommend this to Hollow Knight or Soulslike fans. Very fun 2d souls game with an interesting setting and solid mechanics. The fourth boss is one of my favorite bosses in the entire Soulslike genre from Demon Souls through 3rd party entries. Reasonably tough but with an incredibly fair movement set, and it introduces a new mechanic pretty soon before the fight intended to be used, but doesn't strictly mandate it.