This was the equivalent of seeing a tweet from 2013 from your favorite celebrity.
I'm only exaggerating of course, Hungry Knight isn't as disgusting as a famous person's twitter feed, but it was still pretty painful if you ask me.
But don't be mistaken, the games does have certain value, especially when seen as a historical piece of sorts. It's kinda cute and even cool to play a kind of ''preview'' of what would eventually be one of the most popular indie games and even Metroidvanias of the past decade, and it a lot of ways there already showings of mechanics that we would see on the final product: both the base attack and dash, a round shape meter that fills when you kill enemies, the 2D animation style, the enemy design and the bug-like features, even the three Dreamers masks!.. seeing all these elements in a flash game with music that at this point has been ingrained into my memory after playing so many flash games is kinda surreal.
It's also really funny to me that the Knight, later to be a stoic and void of emotion protagonist, is just really fucking hungry on this one, and in retrospect it makes me wonder if when he encounters food in Hollow Knight he's just thinking this.
Aaaaaaaaand... that's where the good stuff and the funny pretty much end. The premise is kind of cool, having to defeat three big enemies while making sure you hunger bar doesn't deplete, but this task is performed in a barren wasteland with only three types of enemies, with a really unresponsive dash that seems to let you decide if you can attack or not at random and with hitboxes that seem to be different depending the way you look at.
But I mean, of course is not that good, it's just a quick, simple flash game that was made for a game jam and wasn't given that much thought or polish, by all accounts it should only be a mediocre game with not much to tell and show...
...BUT THEN THERE'S STARVATION MODE.
It's amazing how such a simple change, reducing the amount of time you have before the hunger bar depletes from 10 seconds to 5, can make the problems even more prominent, showing just how barren the stage is, how clunky the hitboxes and collission are and how the big enemy spawn being random is just so ANNOYING. This mode does make the experience harder, but only artificially, and it just results its flaws being left open for everyone to see. I really do mus hate myself for subjecting myself at these 20 minutes of pure nothingess, I have no clue why this was added, but it only helps at making the whole thing even worse... at least I can say I mastered.
The fact this is just as boring and bland as it is makes what would come later even more interesting all things considered; now, would I recommend it?... no, not unless you are really curious or LOVE Hollow Knight as much as I do, and you want to see from where it came. As I said, it has interesting stuff on its bones, and the meat and skin would come later, 'cause this... this is only a skeleton...
Speaking of that the final game should have had skeleton bugs, that's the only aspect where this one shines over its successor .
I'm only exaggerating of course, Hungry Knight isn't as disgusting as a famous person's twitter feed, but it was still pretty painful if you ask me.
But don't be mistaken, the games does have certain value, especially when seen as a historical piece of sorts. It's kinda cute and even cool to play a kind of ''preview'' of what would eventually be one of the most popular indie games and even Metroidvanias of the past decade, and it a lot of ways there already showings of mechanics that we would see on the final product: both the base attack and dash, a round shape meter that fills when you kill enemies, the 2D animation style, the enemy design and the bug-like features, even the three Dreamers masks!.. seeing all these elements in a flash game with music that at this point has been ingrained into my memory after playing so many flash games is kinda surreal.
It's also really funny to me that the Knight, later to be a stoic and void of emotion protagonist, is just really fucking hungry on this one, and in retrospect it makes me wonder if when he encounters food in Hollow Knight he's just thinking this.
Aaaaaaaaand... that's where the good stuff and the funny pretty much end. The premise is kind of cool, having to defeat three big enemies while making sure you hunger bar doesn't deplete, but this task is performed in a barren wasteland with only three types of enemies, with a really unresponsive dash that seems to let you decide if you can attack or not at random and with hitboxes that seem to be different depending the way you look at.
But I mean, of course is not that good, it's just a quick, simple flash game that was made for a game jam and wasn't given that much thought or polish, by all accounts it should only be a mediocre game with not much to tell and show...
...BUT THEN THERE'S STARVATION MODE.
It's amazing how such a simple change, reducing the amount of time you have before the hunger bar depletes from 10 seconds to 5, can make the problems even more prominent, showing just how barren the stage is, how clunky the hitboxes and collission are and how the big enemy spawn being random is just so ANNOYING. This mode does make the experience harder, but only artificially, and it just results its flaws being left open for everyone to see. I really do mus hate myself for subjecting myself at these 20 minutes of pure nothingess, I have no clue why this was added, but it only helps at making the whole thing even worse... at least I can say I mastered.
The fact this is just as boring and bland as it is makes what would come later even more interesting all things considered; now, would I recommend it?... no, not unless you are really curious or LOVE Hollow Knight as much as I do, and you want to see from where it came. As I said, it has interesting stuff on its bones, and the meat and skin would come later, 'cause this... this is only a skeleton...
Speaking of that the final game should have had skeleton bugs, that's the only aspect where this one shines over its successor .
2 Comments
@cdmcgwire That's honestly the perfect way to describe Hungry Knight: a lost chapter that shows what would later come.
A lot of people seem to be unaware at this thing's existence, and I thought It would be fun to finally play it and review so more would know about it (even if it's.... Not good, to say the least) and I'm glad people new to the genre can learn more and more about what this would later spawn, and I hope you get to play more incredible titles! :D
A lot of people seem to be unaware at this thing's existence, and I thought It would be fun to finally play it and review so more would know about it (even if it's.... Not good, to say the least) and I'm glad people new to the genre can learn more and more about what this would later spawn, and I hope you get to play more incredible titles! :D
cdmcgwire
10 months ago
I'm pretty new to the Metroidvania space, but between this, Axiom Verge, Momodora, etc. it's interesting seeing how much history these indie titles have.