Woah! So Halloween just happened and it was huge for HK!

Grimm and his Troupe arrived for players, and everywhere we looked the little knight was out taking part in the event, from art to pumpkins to trick or treating. We’ve a whole bunch of news to share this update, but we have to highlight some of this spooky stuff first!

COSTUMES

These were the coolest thing ever! Hallownest’s buggy characters spilled out into the real world thanks to a horde of talented costume makers and brave trick-or-treaters! Here are some highlights:

FAN ART

The fan art keeps on appearing, and for Halloween it starting taking on a particularly grim style. Let’s get into it!

PUMPKINS

Other fans were showing off their talents by immortalising Hollow Knight in carved, vegetable perfection!

To everyone who made this Halloween such a joy for Team Cherry, thank you so much!

GRIMM ON OSX & LINUX

We also have to issue an apology here to our Mac and Linux players. Team Cherry hit some very odd bugs around Grimm Troupe time that caused delays and some glitchiness with its launch on OSX and Linux. We’re glad to say we’re past that now, and we wanted to take a moment to say thanks for your patience as we worked to resolve the problems. An extra huge thanks go out to the Mac and Linux users that participated in the public betas on Steam and GOG, with many going out of their way to thoroughly test builds and notify us of any remaining issues.

GRIMM STREAM

Team Cherry may have worked through the spooky season, but we did manage to keep an eye on a very special stream by hyper-energetic, vape-happy streamer BitterBits!

If you’d like to see the Grimm content from a more passive perspective, then you can watch all 6 and ½ hours as Nic works his way through the new content. Share in his highs! Wince at his lows (That Path of Pain is murder!)! We love him. You should watch him!

One warning: There’s quite a bit of adult language in there. Also, probably obvious, but this stream is a huge spoiler of the entire Grimm adventure. Also, he vapes an awful lot. Nic! We worry about you. That stuff cannot be healthy!

Watch: https://go.twitch.tv/videos/186919049

SPEEDRUNNING

PAX Aus just finished, and though Team Cherry couldn’t attend (Curse you OSX/Linux-Grimm!), we did take the moment to watch SimoZX blast through the game.

You can watch the run, complete with full commentary by Simo, Benji and lead tester Hari, right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNP1N-AuiWs

Team HK at PAX – Makoto (Voice of Hornet), Simo, Hari & Benji – Photo by @Frostickle

And if you didn’t know, Simo isn’t just a sultry-voiced speedrunning talent. Along with Benji, he’s the founder of the Hollow Knight Discord! We’ve mentioned it before, and we’re gonna keep mentioning it: There’s a huge HK community on Discord, artists, players, lore-hunters, speedrunners. If you ever want to talk HK, or get into running yourself, head straight over!

Jump in: https://discord.me/hollowknight

Speaking of running, the Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 schedule was just announced, with Mickely3 scheduled to perform a glitched run of Hollow Knight. If you’re eager to see HK pulled apart and broken in amazing, agonising ways, all for the sake of speed (and charity), then this’ll be the run for you! Monday, Jan 8th. https://gamesdonequick.com/

VINYL

We’ve kept this lid on this one for a while now, and our friends at Ghost Ramp have gone and unveiled this stunning, limited Vinyl set. It features all of Christopher Larkin’s award winning (Has it won awards? It certainly deserves to!) HK music across 2 very large discs. The LPs are all packaged up in a snazzy black & white sleeve with art by Ari, who can barely remember drawing it amidst all our Grimm/Hornet/Switch craziness. As merch goes, we think it’s really cool! And it’s $40! Which seems like a super good price? Just go pre-order it, okay!

Link: https://ghost-ramp.myshopify.com/products/hollowknight

SWITCHING TO 2018

Amongst all our Holloween festivities, this one’s the tough news to deliver. Despite our best efforts we’ve recently made the difficult decision to push HK’s Switch release to early 2018.

Everyday, we hear the passion for the Switch version, on twitter and in our inboxes, and no-one’s keener to see Hollow Knight out on the Switch than us! We know we’ve been quiet on this front for a while, but we wanted to come to a more concrete decision before making an announcement. We’ve jumped the gun in the past with this stuff!

We’ve been working hard to get it all polished up and ready (while working on the new content in the meantime), but last week, we took a moment to do a proper assess and decided that we should give it a bit more time. We both (Ari & William) want to ensure this version isn’t just an okay port, but a great one, and our partners at Shark Jump agreed.

Why is it taking us longer than we thought to get the port fully polished? Honestly, it’s just that as first-time developers we built the game in some strange, unoptimised ways and to get things running smoothly and consistently we need to sweep back through and rewrite or fix bits and pieces. It’s an involved process, but we’ve learnt a lot for the next project and it’s a big relief to get everything cleaned up nicely! The good news is that it’s steadily coming together, and believe us when we say it looks fantastic on the Switch’s screen! That might be a bit of a tease, but hopefully it’s not too much longer before you all get to see it for yourself. Plus, a side-bonus to all this is that all of the optimisations happening for the Switch version will be making their way into versions for other platforms (PC/Mac/Linux).

With Grimm now out in the world for PC, Mac & Linux, our giant, singular target is Switch, and we’re fully-focused on getting this version all tied up and into your hands.

A final note: We receive frequent queries about release on other consoles. Though we can’t announce anything official at the moment, we can say we’ve been talking with the other platform holders, and they’ve been fantastic to deal with. They’ve also been really receptive to Hollow Knight. Once the Switch version is in the hands of all those backers who’ve been waiting so patiently for it, we’ll be properly exploring those options. Expect to hear more then!

KICKSTARTER CORNER

HK exists thanks to 2158 backers on Kickstarter, and we just recently backed a another cool platformer by the wonderful Lukas Stobie! We met Lukas last year at a con and he’s about the swellest dev we know. Now he’s jumping to Kickstarter with his super cool game, full of colourful, slightly-spooky critters!

Rising Dusk is a 2D platformer packed full with cute Japanese monsters. It’s giving off some crazy Goemon nostalgia vibes, which gets the thumbs up from Team Cherry. It also has some of the most beautiful pixel-art water we’ve ever seen. We could stare at those serene pixel lakes all day (If we weren’t so darn busy!). If you like pixel-lakes, pixel-rivers, pixel-oceans and/or cute-pixel-monsters, then jump over to his Kickstarter page and back him!

Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/studiostobie/risingdusk

Phwoar! Gang. That’s it! So much keeps happening here. It never stops! Maybe go and Back that spooky-ghosty-Kickstarter? Or pre-order the Vinyl? Or click one of the links that won’t impact your wallet? Whatever you choose, thanks for making this a wonderful Halloween for Team Cherry, and for getting into Hollow Knight in such passionate, surprising and creative ways.

Happy Holloween!

Team Cherry ;)

HOLLOWEEN WRAP-UP! SWITCH NEWS!