How Hollow Knight Became The Face of Indie Games
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- čas přidán 7. 06. 2024
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Since its release, Hollow Knight has become the face of Iindie games. But it didn’t begin like this. When the developers made the first prototype, people hated him. It took years before the Knight became what it is today, and it only happened because the devs saw something that others didn’t.
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Huge thanks to Rob for helping out with this video
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📃 Research Links
Hungry Knight gets poor reviews
web.archive.org/web/201502110...
Hollow Knight on Steam
store.steampowered.com/app/36...
Hollow Knight Abilities
www.thegamer.com/hollow-knigh...
Hollow Knight price history
steampricehistory.com/app/367520
Samus Returns Sales
www.vgchartz.com/game/182673/...
Samus Returns price history
psprices.com/region-gb/game/1...
Metroid Game Sales
vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Metroid
Hollow Knight Sales
www.kotaku.com.au/2019/02/hol...
Kickstarter
www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
The Making of Hollow Knight
www.gameinformer.com/2018/10/...
Ludum Dare
ludumdare.com/
LD Jam #29
web.archive.org/web/201404240...
Nintendo Financial Results Briefing for Fiscal Year Ended March 2008
www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/200...
Dev Video Interviews
• Hollow Knight Team Che...
• Team Cherry interview ...
GATES OF HALLOWNEST [Hollow Knight Animation] @CybeR_
• GATES OF HALLOWNEST [H...
Fans reacting to Metroid Prime 4 Trailer
• Metroid Prime 4 E3 Rea...
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opera sells ur information but ok
@@justachillingcattrue and if only it was actually Norwegian instead Chinese it would be less of issue
Edit:ok I think “less of an issue” is an understatement and should have just not said it
@@justachillingcat theres no proof it does that anymore but it USED to do it, so yeah dont trust it
@@sourcream1671 not worth it for a chat gpt side bar lol
So does google chrome...@@justachillingcat
Now imagine Silksong, and also Crowsworn, which raised over a million dollars
Don't forget Nine Sols.
By the time Hollow Knight was released, metroidvanias had already begun to make a comeback, such as Axiom Verge and Ori and the Blind Forest. The niche was not empty. The low sales of Samus Return are due not so much to the fact that the game was just mediocre, but to the timing of its release. The game was announced not at E3, but at Treehouse and was released exclusively on 3DS six months after the release of Nintendo Switch. And also because of the drama surrounding AM2R. Symphony of the night, after which the term metroidvania came into being, was also never mentioned. Very superficial video.
Yeah that's youtubers for you ignore the other important facts to build a narrative.
I'd argue dead cells surpassed hollow knight in legacy with an actual castlevania collab
A good clone takes its own identity, surpassing its predecessor being a bonus consequence of that.
It's also a really important lesson in that passion and indies can produce better games than big companies, with a lot less budget. Makes you wonder if all that budget is well spent...
I bet the budget goes mostly into "ads" and marketing, as if shoving the thing on the eyes of the people were the only thing you needed to sell a game, not the game actually being fun to play
A lot goes into the packaging for sure yeah. Or luxury tech that costs a ton.@@monad_tcp
Budget also includes the payment to the employees.
Although still it depends how effectively they spend their budget.Forspoken and Elden Ring have similar budget, but still one of them turned out far superior.
Metroid is also fun to play@@monad_tcp
all your words apply to Metroid too.
It is also incorrect to compare the sales of Hollow Knight and Metroid, since Metroid was released only on Nintendo consoles, and was not a multi-format like Hollow, and some Nintendo consoles were failures
Hollow Knight's success has even inspired upcoming indie games like Crowsworn and Nine Sols. Both of which received some rather strong backing, the former especially.
Comparing the sales figures of Hollow Knight and Metroid games is really disingenous. Metroid games are limited to Nintendo systems and Nintendo makes a lot more than $15 per unit. Nearly all of those Metroid sales are at full price too. Plenty of those Hollow Knight sales were during heavy discounts too. I'm happy for Hollow Knight and Team Cherries success but this whole video is playing very fast and loose with the facts in order to make them fit a biased narrative.
Totally agreeing with you about his obvious manipulative narrative. I really don't like these kind of videos/youtubers.
Still, Hollow Knight was better than the last metroid
@@rmv9194 you mean samus returns for the 3ds not dread right.......right casue uh thoese games are pretty tied their both good games im not meatriding metroid or hating on hollow knight they are just balanced
@@rmv9194 No, it wasn't. Metroid Dread has a lot of really amazing play mechanics and most certainly has better level design than Hollow Knight which is actually kind of weak in some areas.
But Hollow Knight is the epitome of Metroidvania, and better than any 2D Metroid
8:56 Metroid Dread has also sold 3+ Million copies. I wonder if that is more or less the upper limit to people’s interest in metroidvanias
that makes zero sense, the game is much more than a metroidvania
@@matheuscabral9618 Mm, no. Both Hollowknight and Metroid are Metroidvanias and I have seen no evidence to the contrary
@@flightlesschicken7769 yeah I’m not saying that, but like, metroidvanias is just like, having unlockable skills that make you progress in the game, there ain’t no way that sets an upper limit to sales
@@matheuscabral9618 Well, I would hope not. I wonder what are the sales of the best selling castlevania, now that I think about it
@@flightlesschicken7769 searched for a bit and couldn't find a metroidvania that sold over 3M copies, maybe you're right lol
Behind the successes of Hollow Knight, Celeste, Cuphead, Undertale and such, I feel for all the great indie games that don't get attention from content creators and word of mouth. Dodgeball Academia, Levelhead, Freedom Planet, Chicory and CrossCode are all stellar examples of their genres and largely overshadowed not just by AAA games, but other indies. Half of success is being a great game, the other half is winning the exposure lottery.
Environmental Station Alpha also
please post more of this everywhere. It's impossible to search for this kind of thing
LEVELHEAD!!!! I saw content about that game years ago and completely forgot about it!
Tbf, Other M wasn't really hated because of its genre, but because of its narrative.
And Samus Returns released on 3ds months after the Switch came out, so sales aren't necessarily correlated to quality in that case.
To add to that Samus Returns selling only 30K in Japan doesn’t really correlate to quality because Metroid has historically never sold the best there.
Agree
Hollow Knight sold 3 million copies by 2020, VG Insights estimate 5.9 Million sales now and that is not counting the sales on the switch, back 2018, 20% of sales came from the Switch
My sister told me to play hollow knight now i cant stop replaying the game
From shovel knight to hollow knight
The indie knight will be forever vigilant
To keep in mind. First Hollow Knight uses 2D art and this is exponentially more economical than modeling 3D assets for a 2D game, while 2D art might even look better. Also Metroid is restricted to the Nintendo console, a console that has a different tarted audience, while Hollow Knight runs on ever mediocre PC and is also cheap. If you can make your game so that you can create great content fast you can make a giant yet good game. But if you spend all your resources on cumbersome things like 3D assets, then you are very limited.
I see Hollow Knight, I click. Amazing game!! 💙
Super Metroid is still my favorite Metroidvania
Same
1:39 the nostalgia I feel for StickRPG is unhealthy
Although hollow knight was a great game, your video suggests that it revived the MetroidVania genre. That is simply not the case at all, there were plenty of great metroidvania games between Metroid prime and hollow knight, like axiom verge, ori and the blind forest, and Guacamelee to name a few.
Also, the face of indie games is a bit of a stretch imo. It’s the most popular for casuals, for sure.
Nah, imo, someone who has played a lot of indies, Hollow knight IS the face of indie games, and it's definitely not for casuals
To each their own, however I respectfully disagree. Hollow knight is an amazing game dont get me wrong.
I think it all depends when someone started playing indie games, not so much how many games someone has played. For those who started exploring indie games earlier, titles like Shovel Knight, Terraria, Super Meat Boy, Binding of Isaac, and even Minecraft during its indie days might hold that status. @@sleeper6548
@@lofijedi I 1000% agree with this take
@@lofijedi You're reply
"To each their own, however I respectfully disagree. Hollow knight is an amazing game dont get me wrong.
I think it all depends when someone started playing indie games, not so much how many games someone has played. For those who started exploring indie games earlier, titles like Shovel Knight, Terraria, Super Meat Boy, Binding of Isaac, and even Minecraft during its indie days might hold that status. "
This is one of the most straight forward takes I have heard. I agree each person probably sees the face of indie games as the game they first fell in love with. or the one that got them into playing indie games to start with.💯
I like how my reply got deleted lmfao, thanks @jasonj7435 for reposting it.
Hollow knight is my favorite video game of all time. Team cherry made something incredible. Silksong I need your perfection in my life
something else that made hollow knight great was that u didnt need a super pc to run it
massive respects to the devs for eating a massive L only to then double down and go all in
3 million is an outdated number. It's from 2020. Total sales are much higher now, though nobody knows exactly how high.
Look, I like Hollow Knight and all but it definitely isn't as well put together as a Metroid game. I still don't even know where I'm supposed to go to complete the game because it has never even been made clear what the goal is. If you really analyze the design of a game like Super Metroid, for example, you realize it is always subtlely nudging you where you need to go and the end goal is made clear very early on in the game with the discovery of the statue of the main bosses in the game.
Hollow Knight does nudge you in the right direction for a while, such as having signs telling if the "Pilgrim's Way" leading down to the city, and things like the False Knight head in the middle of the Forgotten Crossroads map, or Hornet trying to lure you into her arena, and it does slowly hint at the goal of taking out the dreamers the further you go. Super Metroid I couldn't tell what I had to do, and got turned around constantly. Not to say it's bad, it truly is the best of the best when it comes to metroidvanias, but both games hint at their objectives and it only matters if you pick up on it. I always felt like I had an objective, big or small, when journeying Hallownest, but Planet Zebes had me losing my way almost constantly, whereas for you it was the opposite.
And we're still waiting for the sequel 5 years after its announcement.
Idk about BEAT Nintendo 😂 I would say equal cause Dread and Hollow Knight are both amazing titles!
Thats what im saying man isnt hollow knight like 5_3 years old at this point
Awesome video sending this to my gamedev friend!
I love how you show Ari Gibson and Matt Griffin instead of Will Pellen and Ari Gibson
I think the estimated sales for Hollow Knight are more than 22 million. 3 million is nothing and it's weird to keep bringing up that number.
22 million is highly unsubstantiated. The game was at 3 million in 2020, we're likely looking at a rough total of 6-7 million total sales across all platforms.
@@NicholasBouchard Is it though? Well maybe so, it's all speculation.
Will you ever talk about indie game fear and hunger
I found this game about 6 months ago and fell in love. And today i just found out it was released on my birthday. I really hope Silksong comes soon
Quite biased this video, don’t you think? Like, it conveniently ignores the fact that Metroid Dread also sold over 3 million copies without mentioning that, unlike Hollow Knight, the game is exclusive on the Switch.
Now, I don’t want to sound like a hater, but my experience with Hollow Knight wasn’t that smooth. During my first hours, I didn’t feel like the game was doing so much for me, which is interesting when I compare it with Ori and the Blind Forest, a metroidvania that I played just after I finished Hollow Knight and it hooked me literally in the first five minutes. Not to mention, reading the map was an awful experience.
I mean, metroid dread came out about 2 years later and demolished hollow knight in sales, but I even though Im not a hollow knight fan, I think it was really important to vitalize the whole genre
its still funny to me that the dev made a 2d dark souls and they had never played dark souls before
Can you please make a video like this for Dead Cells? The game has sold 10 million copies across various platforms and have one of the best 2d combat systems of all time. So yeah please try it!
based and beheaded-pilled
nah the shit is great and I came across it organically. Zero hype. Go play loot river too! @@Maskeroff.
Rare footage of Going Indie talking about an indie game:
I disagree, samus returns was great
Hollow Knght is the best metroidvania game ever and great video Going Indie :]
Been playing it recently, but even so I'd say Wario Land 3 beats it for a number of reasons. I did a video about it on my channel if you want to take a look.
@@wariodude128I can’t tell if this is a joke or not
@@matheuscabral9618 My channel does exist you know, and the video does too if you want to find out how much of a joke it is.
What is the outro music pls ?
I hope you make video about indie sensation shovel knight
While they're less famous and arguably include some genre-bending elements, I feel strongly that 20XX and 30XX do the same with the Mega Man X series. Those games are more fun to play and more replayable than any entry in the series that inspired them! (I say that as someone who adores those titles and still replays them fairly often.)
Stretching things a bit, since mobility feels very different between the main series and the X series: Mega Man 11 was great (I beat it, then immediately replayed it on the hardest difficulty and loved it both times), but at the end of the day I've spent more time and gotten more enjoyment with 20XX alone.
Hades did the same thing for the Diablo series. I played Diablo 3 for a long time and enjoyed it... but I remember almost nothing about it. I beat Hades dozens of times, then restarted with a new save in Hell Mode, and not only put in hundreds of hours, but remember the whole cast of characters and story very vividly.
I'd love to see this channel look at 20XX/30XX. :)
Oddly, I bought Hollow Knight after being disappointed by yet another delay in Castlevania creator IGA's Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, so in April 2017 I searched for 'Metroidvania' in the Steam store and Hollow Knight was at the top of the list. It looked amazing and was cheap so I bought it and then shouted its name from every rooftop. By the end of the year it was beginning to take hold among streamers and influencers and really took off.
Hungry Knight fell so that Hollow Knight can run
whats up with that conclusion... A genra left dormant!? where have you been last decade? where flodded by it!
Very inspiring. Such a good story. Good game too.
Since its release, Hollow Knight has become the face of Iindie games. But it didn’t begin like this. When the developers made the first prototype, people hated him. It took years before the Knight became what it is today, and it only happened because the devs saw something that others didn’t.
where you get 3 mil from its like 9 mil
People really waiting for dormant genres. As for myself and many others, we're waiting for good RTS games. But despite so many RTS games came out, they're not as grand as back in the time of C&C Red Alert 2 or Warcraft 3. Though Starcraft 2 is still operating just fine, it's getting old because we need something more varied. As for Hollow Knight, they're talented people that I won't try to challenge myself with their standard. I'm a solo indie dev, it's better to go with my own pace than trying to get better than someone else. I mean even fellow solo like Concerned Ape that made Stardew Valley and Thomas Brush are someone that I wouldn't try to be better than them. I'll just walk my own path, do my best, and hope for the best.
how exactly did it beat nintendo? metroi dread sold 3million + as well.
we all are wating for a video of lethal company
Good video, I’m suprised you haven’t talked about lethal company yet, considering it outsold cod.
Weirdly I could never get into hollow knight but absolutely love smaller indie games
One of my most beloved games and i'm not even close to beating it yet.
7:18 "Would Hollow Knight become revolutionary or just another Indie Game on Steam?" -> Proceeds to show a screenshot including Stardew Valley, Terraria and Disco Elysium 🤣😅
Fantastic game one of the best i have ever played
Yes
3 mln copies were in 2020, not it's over 6.5 mln
PalWorld is doing something similar
Somewhat similar. Hollow Knight was really innovative within the same genre as Metroid. Palworld isn't really in the same genre as Pokemon at all it more of a fast paced and easier to understand version of survival crafting genre. It turned the more niche player base of ARK and Vallheim and turned it into a game that everyone in the mainstream can enjoy. Very impressive just in a different way to Hollow Knight.
Sort of, but the opposite. Palworld took an aesthetic and made a really weird genre with it. Hollow Knight took a genre and gave it a new aesthetic.
amazing video
yes
Metroidvania was not really dormant, even if a lot of it are roguelike now. And this video's title is not enough explained ?
is this game going to be on pc gamepass?
the Microsoft game pass thing
Super Metroid > hollow knight
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night > hollow knight
Those are the facts, deal with it.
People who played exactly two games back in 1993:
@@looniemoonie5955 Neither of these games existed in 1993.
I dunno man, I’m a huge Metroid fan but HK really did take it to the next level, such a rich and challenging experience. Metroid Dread was fantastic but I think HK was so much deeper for exploration, lore etc.
I swear that I've seen this video before
what no song does to a silk
I find this title misleading. Hollow Knight didn't fail, Hungry Knight did.
Also this is just a nitpick, but it bugs me that when castlevania was mentioned you used footage of the NES game. THAT'S NOT THE CASTLEVANIA WHICH DEFINED THE GENRE, SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT IS.
Slight caveat with comparing Hollow Knight sales with Metroid, HK has the advantage of being cross platform and being surprisingly cheap for it's quality. Makes HK much more accessible and able to reach a wider audience. Excellent video!
Not to mention that Samus Returns came out after the switch launched... on the 3ds.
pls shoutout Enshrouded
It helps that you can play HK on anything, but the Metroid games require Nintendo hardware.
Its bugging me that when you say "Ari and William" you keep showing footage of Ari and Mathew Griffin (Marketing & Publishing for team cherry) instead of actually showing Ari and William
Metroid is also 3x more expensive than Hollow Knight.. so that helps
Nope, Metroid games are still a lot better than hollow knight. Dread completely stomps on it
new video lets gooo
Talk about gacha game sometime and success of hoyoverse
Fuck genshin, give me c6 furina
Amd this suckces will never end a new hollow knight game relases maybe in this year
I wish i could understand this game like u guys, i'll keep trying to beat it
Maybe metroidvania is just not for me, so if HK is one of the best ones, it makes me ignore many others.
HK is not representative of metroidvanias at all. It is more like I wanna be super hard game like dark souls.
@@cherubin7th It's not easy for me, but it doesn't seem like Dark souls tier of difficulty
I just hate getting lost in HK
Click bait the channel
This game broke the misconception in my mind that the AAA industry had planted - "If a game has good graphics then the game is good."
It's currently sits at #2 in my best games of all-time, #1 being BotW.
...but it literally has amazing graphics, the game is beautiful
i think he means realism@@jaxon3186
@@jaxon3186 I'm not sure anyone knows what good graphics means. Personally, give me an appealing art-style and I'm all in.
@@MachuPichucp11 Graphics:
1. the products of the graphic arts, especially commercial design or illustration.
2. visual images produced by computer processing.
yes, but how do you then determine *good* graphics, and how did you conclude HK has bad graphics?@@hubblebublumbubwub5215
Weird how I just talked about this game with my friends about this game
Opera GX is close Chinese spyware get promotion from someone who is not spying on users.
Metroid fucked up by going 3D. The 2D formula is perfect.
Your ad looks too much like the rest of the video. I might have skipped half the video but can't turn back. This isn't a metroidvania
what😂😂😂
Yeah, it is. Do you know what a metroidvania is?
What
Not really
what
I've seen videos about Hollow Knight's development, but I've never seen anyone talk about how the gap of good Metroid games led to HK's success. Well done!
You know nothing jon snow
Man, those are some crazy conclusions you're jumping to. Hope I never see this channel in my recommends.
nice!
Let's not beat around the bush here, souls games is what got many to pick hollow knight.
Not only having such great sale numbers, but also becoming the NEW standard bearer for Metroidvania formula, besting even Super Metroid in my honest opinions (and I even loved Metroid series more than anything else!) Hollow Knight is a simply sublime experience that's not going to be easy replicating all over again. Even HK: Silksong (whenever it's coming out) would have a tall order capturing the lightning in the bottle for second time.
the fact that hollow knight is more technically more popular than any metroid game is wild
Note that it's sold 3 million copies as of February 2019 seeing as the community has grown like 780% it's most likely 10-15million copies now or more I don't know how to find the count in 2024 but ya it's been 5 years since we got an official number
LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO😊
W video
Why do you have to spoil this for me 😭
Stop promoting AI theftware
I love hollow Knight but it is bad metroidvania
that's not how it works
@@hubblebublumbubwub5215 Hollow knight is like dark souls than a metroidvania like do you have played metroidvania with only 4 ability necessary for beating the game i am not saying hollow knight is bad game i love hollow knight i 112% the game
@@mhndxd7362 Genres aren't checklists. Hollow Knight is a metroidvania and it's good, thus it's a good metroidvania. I know what you mean, we're basically arguing semantics. I'm just not a fan of checklist-thinking. Games should just be the best they can be, in no particular predetermined way.
@@hubblebublumbubwub5215 what i meant that in end of super metroid Samus will be killing machine if you just touch the enemy he will die and the whole game was building for this moment but in hollow knight you will be strong not because the abilitys but because you upgrade your health or your nail and that's okay hollow knight focus on hard fun bosses or exploreing.
Hollow Knight owns the genre now.
The most overrated game in history. Come on guys, there is no flow in that game. So arrogant. Better than any Metroid? Are you serious? Since when did you start to play games, yesterday? Go back to school then, always ready to scream "A miracle!" as you are, paid to do so. It seems to see "Blair Witch Project", a massive mediocre movie transformed into a phenomenon to evolve into nothing. HK does not deserve to be judged so poorly as BWP, but your biased judgment is exactly the same.
Hollow Knight is a great product (40hrs of gameplay for $15) but is a flawed game.
Hollow Knight has decent level design but does not communicate objectives very well. The progression is also paced very poorly and the worst part is that the game has too much backtracking.
Hollow Knight takes inspiration from Dark Souls but takes the most frustrating aspect of the Souls games. Pointless boss runs, too much back tracking, a needlessly punishing currency system etc
@@theelectricprince8231Exactly!
In short, Hollow Knight is NOT the face of indie and is NOT better than the Metroid franchise. This guy is just being biased with loose facts to fit a biased narrative. These CZcamsrs are ones you shouldn’t take word for. Hollow Knight is a great game and its music is fantastic but it is not Metroid Dread for example or is not the face of indie and will never be. Don’t listen to these dorks
Palworld is to Pokemon as Hollow Night is to Metroid. We're seeing history repeat itself right now.
nahhhh soul knight is better