Parallel World Game Developer

Chapter 47: Chapter #47: Hollow Knight

The launch officially began.

A winding, ethereal mist slowly rose against a completely black background. The dark, minimalist menu interface faded in, presenting the player with exactly two options.

[Classic Mode] | [Steel Soul Mode]

"Steel Soul Mode? And it says it only unlocks after you clear the campaign for the first time?" Silver mumbled, reading the on-screen text.

"No resurrections allowed, death is completely permanent. Oh, I get it. This is exactly like the core roguelike mechanics in Dead Cells. You have to clear the entire game on a single life. Yeah, I’m way too familiar with this exact routine," Silver laughed, entirely unbothered by the warning.

Clearing a punishing game on a single life? For the hardcore veterans who had survived the absolute meat grinder of Dead Cells, permadeath mechanics were basically second nature!

The moment Silver booted up the campaign, a deeply haunting, melodious background track began to drift through his headset. The hollow, continuous whistling of a cold wind echoed through the quiet darkness.

["In the wilds beyond they speak your name with reverence and regret,

For none could tame our savage souls yet you the challenge met,

Under palest watch, you taught, we changed, base instincts were redeemed,

A world you gave to bug and beast as they had never dreamed."

—From ’Elegy for Hallownest’ by Monomon the Teacher.]

A pale, flickering fluorescence glowed beneath a rusted streetlamp at the corner of a ruined road. A tiny, pale knight emerged from the deep dust, carrying a heavily cracked bone nail strapped to his back.

He stood alone on the edge of a jagged cliff, the freezing wind howling around him, staring down at a hazy, forgotten city faintly illuminated by the streetlamps cutting through the fog.

Without a single second of hesitation, the little knight leaped off the edge and plunged into the abyss!

Silver’s screen instantly cut to pitch black. It took nearly three seconds of freefall through the boundless dark before the color slowly bled back into the frame.

Deep within the subterranean dark, fragmentary, glowing spores and bioluminescent flora faintly illuminated the sprawling underground world.

BOOM! The little knight slammed heavily into the bedrock, the crushing impact echoing loudly through the caverns. The landing kicked up a cloud of debris and startled a massive swarm of glowing, underground insects into flight.

"Holy shit, the audio mixing on this game is actually giving me goosebumps!" Silver exclaimed, immediately reaching for his audio mixer to crank the master volume up. The ethereal, echoing orchestral track seemed to carry a profound sense of eternal, crushing sorrow.

"I remember seeing someone on Reddit asking how you actually judge if a game was made with genuine passion," Silver said, closing his eyes for a brief moment to just absorb the overwhelming loneliness bleeding out of the soundtrack.

"Usually, I’d say you have to look at the graphical fidelity, the narrative pacing, or the core gameplay loop. But honestly? Now, I’m just going to tell people to listen to the soundtrack." On screen, the little knight remained completely motionless, waiting for player input.

"If you look at the sadist’s catalog, you’ll realize he puts an insane amount of attention into his audio design," Silver laughed softly. "I mean, Getting Over It absolutely tortured my soul, but even the long-winded, philosophical narration playing in the background was carefully crafted. I actually memorized a bunch of those quotes."

"I’ve been ridiculously hyped for this game ever since that first piano key dropped," Silver said, taking a deep, steadying breath. He finally pushed his analog stick forward, moving the little knight into the caverns.

"Wait, there’s literally no mini-map?" Silver muttered. He had been walking for a few minutes, easily dispatching a few small, crawling bug enemies along the path.

The early mobs were incredibly stupid. A single strike from the bone nail would knock them backward, but they would stubbornly right themselves and continue crawling mindlessly in their established patrol routes.

Lost in the pitch-black underground, Silver naturally tried to open his map interface to see exactly where he was supposed to be going. But when he hit the button, he was greeted by absolute, empty darkness.

After repeatedly pressing the map hotkey and confirming the feature simply didn’t exist, the stream chat grew noticeably confused.

[nigh_Hawktuah: Did the sadist actually forget to code a map UI? ಠಿ_ಠ]

[i_am_Bill: Bro how is that even possible? How does a top-tier dev make a rookie mistake like that?]

[kov9413tam: just wander around blindly. you’ll eventually stumble into an exit zone.]

[TaylorC: The map layouts in Dead Cells were completely procedurally generated every single run. Didn’t we literally all play through that without a map?]

Perhaps because they were already intimately familiar with Ethan Vale’s sadistic design philosophy, the player base almost immediately accepted the terrifying reality of a mapless world.

"I honestly think you guys have severe Stockholm Syndrome from playing this guy’s games. Has any other developer in the history of the medium dared to release an exploration game without a map?" Silver asked.

"If any other studio tried to pull this, they would be absolutely crucified in the Steam reviews!" Silver laughed, relying purely on the faint, glowing bioluminescence of the underground caverns to blindly grope his way through the first few zones.

As he continued playing, he realized the core mechanical loop was incredibly simplistic. Likely because it was a 2D side-scrolling platformer, there didn’t seem to be any complex inputs or massive combo strings.

At this early stage, his only mechanical options were a basic jump and a basic strike. Even the attack animation was completely stripped down; he just had to press a single button to swing the bone nail in front of his character’s hitbox.

There wasn’t even a dedicated block or parry mechanic.

"This is way too easy. I’m honestly telling the truth right now," Silver frowned, effortlessly cutting through the pathetic, crawling bugs.

Occasionally, he would encounter two small, flying insects buzzing in the air, but they were easily dispatched with two or three quick aerial slashes.

Aside from the mild annoyance of trying to navigate a sprawling maze without a map, he didn’t feel a single ounce of mechanical difficulty.

Hearing his streamer casually complain about the lack of a challenge, the chat absolutely lost their minds laughing.

[GamerDad88: The Sadist: The real psychological torture hasn’t even started yet!]

[go__er: Bro PLEASE stop taunting him. The last time you told him a game was easy, I literally lost my mind on the 5-Boss Cell run.]

[sweet_tears: ╥﹏╥ everyone else can call it simple, but please don’t say it’s easy in the tutorial zone! My poor casual hands can’t handle a difficulty spike!]

Silver hadn’t been exploring for long before he finally stumbled upon the official entrance to Hallownest.

The massive, towering gateway leading into the kingdom was engraved with intricate, ancient beetle patterns. The massive stone doors were incredibly old and heavy, but a sliver of bright, blinding white light bled through the cracked fissure in the center.

Gripping his bone nail, Silver repeatedly slashed at the crumbling gate until the heavy stone finally gave way, breaking open the passage into Hallownest.

Stepping through the shattered gateway, he found himself standing on a massive, cross-sectional stone bridge. The ancient, rusted iron railings lining the path were covered in intricate carvings, offering a faint, melancholic glimpse into the staggering prosperity of the kingdom’s past.

The sprawling abyss far beneath the bridge was entirely shrouded in a thick, hazy gray mist, completely obscuring the terrifying depths below.

It felt as though simply crossing this threshold meant stepping directly into the sovereign territory of the Pale King—a sacred place where players would bear witness to the final, eternal civilization of this world.

Hallownest.

The heavy, orchestral background music faded out entirely, leaving only the isolating, hollow whistle of the wind.

Silver leaped off the cliff face.

There were no more crawling reptiles or hostile monsters blocking the path forward. The only things illuminating the descent were a series of ancient, flickering streetlamps.

Passing through a stretch of desolate, ruined land, a quiet, decaying settlement finally appeared out of the gloom.

[Dirtmouth.]

The quiet, incredibly melancholic background track slowly began to swell again, as if the music itself was silently mourning the forgotten history of this dying world.

In the dead center of the ruined town sat an iron bench, glowing faintly with a soft, pulsing white light.

Standing right beside the bench was a hunched, elderly bug, leaning heavily on a walking stick. The entrance to a massive cave tunnel loomed directly behind him, sealed shut by heavy iron doors.

"Greetings, traveler. I’m afraid I’m the only one left to welcome you. As you can clearly see, our town is incredibly quiet these days," the NPC spoke.

"The others... they all eventually faded away. They journeyed down that well, one by one, descending into the caverns below." Elderbug slowly fed Silver a string of cryptic, sorrowful dialogue, detailing the ancient prosperity of Dirtmouth and the terrifying wonders hidden deep within the underground world.

Through his tired dialogue, Silver learned that a staggeringly massive, glorious kingdom was buried directly beneath the dirt of the town.

It had been a cursed ruin for a very long time, yet it still irresistibly drew adventurous bugs down into the crushing depths.

There was unimaginable wealth, eternal glory, and profound enlightenment hidden down there. That suffocating, endless darkness seemed to hold infinite possibilities.

But it was also crawling with frantic, disgusting creatures that had been violently stripped of their memories and their sanity.

"So I need to head down that deep well on the right?" Silver asked. Even though he was completely blind without a map, the carefully crafted NPC dialogue naturally guided him toward his next objective.

The massive, yawning well situated just a short walk to the right was lined with flickering, long-burning lanterns, illuminating the terrifying descent to the absolute bottom.

Compared to the muted, desolate surface world of Dirtmouth, the biome waiting at the bottom of the well possessed a vastly more detailed, intricate, and hauntingly beautiful art style.

The game labeled the zone: The Forgotten Crossroads.

And Silver immediately spent the next full hour completely, hopelessly lost in it.

— — — — —

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