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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 21h

this implies the existence of a Yaoi Gagarin

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 21h

I’ve been doing some pre-work on it on and off all year.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 1d

In contrast even Lost Lace phase 4 or Karmelita phase 3, which are both completely cracked out, have reliable healing windows (assuming you can keep your chill long enough to take advantage of them)

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 1d

To compensate for that the bosses have zero chill. Most start with tight healing windows that just straight up vanish after they move to their phase 2 pattern.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 1d

Huge swaths of enemies can actually just be face-tanked: they die in 3-4 swings, during which you will take 1 damage, and then you will heal the one damage with the 3-4 soul you got killing them.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 1d

I do have to concede: the bulk of Hollow Knight is significantly easier than Silksong for the simple reason that 4/5 enemies are some variety of Goomba, just walking into your sword. The biggest risk on most screens is getting spooked and losing your chill.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 1d

Maybe I should swing by Cornifer's place, buy a map or two and maybe a quill.

Hollow Knight map with Dreamers and the Knight marked in a massive unfilled area surrounded by a few areas filled in with the NPC sketches

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

You can almost see the moment that they realized a vertical wall of spikes is basically an elevator.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

I would say they did borrow that, for the most part. I think Last Judge is the only critical path boss up to the spider queen ending that has any real notoriety, and even that is mostly the run back. But then because that's *an* ending they made Act 3 the "prove it" act full of "prove it" bosses.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

That sounds really good, I'm gonna put that on.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

Yeah, 'cus Souls games, by and large, start you off with a strange but definable top level objective: you're a weird zombie thing that feels compelled to go stick your hand in a fire for reasons you don't fully comprehend, something something end of the world.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

And this is part of what makes HK a compelling thing to break down for me, is that you can almost palpably feel the team getting more and more confident, more and more ambitious, as they went on.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

contact at folding ideas show dot com

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

Then once you get out past that, very literally in the game's geography, Queen's Station, Mantis Village, City of Tears, the game actually kicks into gear and things start ripping.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

So in my brain it maps out as Forgotten Crossroads as this proof of concept, can we mechanically build a satisfying Metroidvania world puzzle? Big center loop, optional boss off to the side. Then Greenpath is this teaser where you're chasing Hornet. That's your pitch package.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

Now the actual criticism: I don't think the flow of HK's early game is good. I think it's actually pretty weak. The Crossroads are almost *too* self-contained, the rest of the game is just kinda attached to them off side paths. There's also a lack of narrative purpose.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

Because when Ari and William sat down to found Team Cherry and make Hollow Knight their aspirations were basically "maybe we could be the next Braid or LIMBO", they did not know the end from the beginning.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

And to be clear this isn't like "oh, brah brah brah, this game sucks", it's just an observation, I find these manifestations of *how* games are made to be inherently interesting.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 2d

I got some heat in my original HK thread for saying "I can feel the early-access-crowd-funded-ness" but I feel like I can explain that better now. Forgotten Crossroads is basically a demo, a self-contained proof-of-concept loop that the rest of the game is attached to.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 3d

Started a fresh Hollow Knight save, and the first Hornet fight is like a child's crayon drawing of what would become the Lost Lace fight.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 3d

lol

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 3d

I still need 2 more eyes + I assume a kill w/ the spear + the final confrontation with Chronos, so I'll probably get around to that on Thursday.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 3d

I still haven't beat Sword Saint. Maybe that's what I need to pivot my Skong conditioning into, while I'm still in peak form.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 3d

It was messy AF, extremely sloppy transition just on the edge of what I'd consider for a reset, but when it came down to the wire my phase 4 play was a clinical exercise in applied violence.

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Dan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 3d

After a week on Hades 2 I decided to square this away and prove to myself that my True Ending victory wasn't just a statistical fluke.

Silksong 100% Game Completion screen with Steam achievement

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