[Playing…] Hollow Night

When a specific playstyle joins a aesthetics with personality and identity, great video games are born that evolve what is seen by other sagas to turn it into a reference for the new generation, this is the case of  hollow night, a metroidvania that has the characteristics to become a true cult game.

After having sold more than 500 thousand units, winning the best platform game in the English-speaking magazine Pc Gamer's, and its next release on the Nintendo Switch console, here at ComboGamer we give you reasons to play it and replay it.

This game begins with our character arriving from nowhere and from that moment our adventure takes shape. It won't take a few moves before we know what its action and platform mechanics are like, at the same time, we also take from the first moment our story as a hero, a hero who is formed with adventure, a hero who even his shadow wants to kill him.

The first city we visit is Dirtmouth, a lonely city, empty, devastated. The first NCP tells us a small introduction to the devastation that occurred long ago, not only in that town but throughout Hallownest. It is therefore this way of narrating the game that attracts, there are only dialogues, there are few things that they tell us and each NCP will tell us part of the story of the destruction from your point of view. It is a implied story, which the player must discover through the dialogues, of course. As we explore the depths of Hallownest we will see that we will not only be the primary enemy of the bugs that attack us, but in turn we will be an inspiration for the inhabitants in this crusade, over time we will have allies, followers, and enemies, many enemies.

The enemies of Hollow Night They are many and varied, but they are not there to finish us off, they are there to make us grow Because Hallownest in its collective unconscious is dominated by competition, by battle, by violence. Our character is not governed by it, from our first power, we can notice that we are different, superior, different, above all peaceful. We attack out of the need to defend ourselves, to advance, the enemies will go towards us in our exploration, not us towards them.

The shadow, the alter ego, our mirror, the one that appears when we lose our lives in our adventures reflects what was said in the previous paragraph, she will appear at the point where we fell, but attacking with all our powers and perhaps at some moments be the one who destroys us, and we will lose half of the magical orb, which is very helpful to us in recovering health points. Another characteristic of the set world is the ability to lose ourselves, we do not have a map from the beginning, this does not mean that we have it, because over time we can buy by getting the right bug, even so without the right shell at some point in the game we will feel that feeling of walk into the unknown.

Adding all these characteristics of the game, we can know that Hollow Night It is a specific universe where everything is for a reason, nothing is left over. Are you the hollow knight who Improved interaction with your environmentIn fact, there are three endings, and it is very unlikely that we will understand the story the first time, or save Halloween the first time since this game is destiny, It's life that repeats itself, is the library of Babel that has concentric circles, in which all the variations of all interactions have, and if the stars are not aligned in the correct way, the story of the hollow knight will repeat itself towards infinity.

Hollow night It is fascinating, but above all it is alive, the desolation linked to the ambient music, the destruction linked to the sounds, the enemies linked to their combat style, make this game a complete game. Ari Gibson Its artistic director in his sketchbook proposed a total aesthetic moment, the game in its visuals no pixel is too much.

Hallownest is herbal, it is technological, it is artistically beautiful. The enemies that appear before us are all bugs, the entire city is inside an anthill, its places deserve and are worth exploring, playing and replaying, for this very reason we are playing Hollow Night, and at the same time we patch up playing because, it is an entire experience of a video game, which does not lie in its playability, but surprises in its universe because nothing is placed at random and like fractals, within each enemy, location, and story, its universe is sealed in each pixel of our screen.