Hollow Knight

Release: 2017
Developer: Team Cherry
Genre: 2D, Action, Metroidvania
Gameplay Stats: 31 hours, 100% completion

I don't know that I can keep myself from gushing for too long, so just know that I backed this game on Kickstarter.

Visuals: This game is gorgeous. Literally everything about the visual appearance is great. All of the elements are hand drawn and the characters are cute. The characters are minimal looking, but animated very while, while the backgrounds are entirely stationary and incredibly detailed. I never had a hard time understanding what enemies would do, if a platform was in the fore or background, or if something was a friend or foe. This game is my jam.

Audio: The audio design is really good! You can tell what enemies or NPCs are present in most areas just by listening to the sound effects and audio queues. The faster the enemy, the farther away you can hear them. Additionally, the music is beautiful. It's fully orchestrated and fits for the most part each of the areas. My favorite is Fungal Wastes, but every track has it's own charm suited to the area where you hear it.

Plot: This is an interesting part... This game has some plot, but it's mostly given through dialogue with some characters and occasionally a ghost. The plot borrows pretty heavily from Dark Souls cyclic nature of the world. There are some aspects of eldritch horror that are blended into the end of the game, but they are entirely optional to find. It's a really interesting touch to leave the underpinnings of a plot in optional areas. The game kind of fills all of the space that you give it... You can finish the game in 10-15 hours, but you will only get the surface plot and explore maybe 60% of the world. The more you explore, the more there is to unravel in the terms of plot, challenges, and abilities.

Gameplay: This game is a joy to play. The controls are tight and the abilities cleverly expand your ability to explore. It takes a bit of getting used to that your character also recoils from your attacks that connect, but once you get used to it, it's not bad at all. There are badges that you can equip to compensate for this recoil, or the meager range. If something bothers you, it likely won't for long. There were a couple of blind-ish jumps down, but if you take your time they weren't really issues. I really like the ability to heal yourself based on the amount that you attack other enemies. This stood out to me as more elegant than Dark Souls's method of giving you Estus back every so many kills. I really like how it balanced depending on how much damage you were doing. You might be able to heal twice from a single enemy at the beginning of the game, but at the end you might need to kill 3 to heal once. Brilliant.

I can't really gush enough about this game! I really loved it and it caught me pretty well by surprise. I followed the Kickstarter updates, but they were really good to keep lots of things under wraps and I didn't realize how big and great this game would be until it was released and in my hands. They set out to make a 2D Dark Souls/Metroidvania and they absolutely accomplished that goal. [10/10]