top of page
Search
milesmichell30
Nov 25, 20227 min read

Game Design Critique - Hollow Knight Dash: Mechanic Critique

Critique #1 written for my Master Level Game Design Course. Written in October 2022

Miles Michell

IGME 602 - Game Design


Hollow Knight Dash: Game Mechanic Critique

Team Cherry’s indie Metroidvania sensation Hollow Knight pushes the capabilities of its designed cores. Exploration of an evolving open world setting littered with unending potential for reward and challenging bosses is a premise that is often explored in gaming. However, the execution of differing cores in concept has seemingly never been pulled off as effectively as Hollow Knight. The unique to the genre player affordance that meshes the game together is ability to dash.

Quick dashes, dodge rolls, and evasions are common terms for a type of control granted to the player that provides rapid forward momentum in a horizontal direction. The maneuver comes at the cost of the player giving up direct control over the game's controls until the dash is completed. The quick dash is a powerful affordance to the player but is difficult to master given that there is a level of foresight the player needs to account for, making it a popular high-risk reward feature to implement into games. Combat-heavy games such as Ocarina of Time and Dark Souls give the ability to dodge roll as a means of avoiding devastating attacks, with failure of the tactic leading to an even greater punishment. Platforming games such as Celeste and Mega Man X require precise timing of their quick dashes in order to overcome their obstacle challenges. No matter the game or genre, the quick dash can be used to give the player an upper hand in overcoming the current challenge or as a reactionary defense tactic. However, depending on the game’s objective only one of those affordances of the dash mechanic may be fully capitalized by the designers. Expect Hollow Knight which is fully showcased through its level and encounter design.

Hollow Knights’s dash is a commonly utilized tactic for traversal of the game’s Metroidvania-like overworld, as the platforming and combat affordances of the dash heavily play into the world’s level design. The map’s interconnective areas allow for a great sense of discovery for the player as they are able to engage with nearly any desired section of the game. This freedom to explore and partake in every area of the map is possible even with a minimal amount of unlocked abilities, as effective use of the dash is a designed option for overcoming overworld traversal challenges. Even if the exploration blocks to zones, the sheer amount of unexplored indents in the unfamiliar grayed-out zones suggests that there’s at least one way to a destination if the player chooses to find it. The game's core level design caters to one of the characteristics of Play, outlined by Peter Gray, of playing without much of an end goal (Gray 2013). The game’s intentionally hidden narrative, and exploitation being rewarded through hidden power-ups found in both new and unexplored zones, kindles further play without the push of a looming boss or constantly being forced to move right. While many open-world games present the option to traverse freely through their zones, they often face unwinnable challenges for the sake of instilling linear game and player progression. Hollow Knight does present at least one of these types of obstacles through its overworld at nearly every point of the game, seemingly unmovable blocks can be overcome with proper uses of the dash. The developers intended for the dash to provide the affordance of free traversal, as it feeds into the importance of proper use of the tactic for progression-altering boss encounters. What balances discovery in the overworld to keep it engaging throughout a playthrough is the dash mechanic.



Zoomed-out map view of all the Zones

An example of the game's omnipresent design around the dash mechanic, one of the first major roadblocks when the game opens up after acquiring the quick dash is a wall of black void that blocks the western progression of the seemingly short Fog Canyon Area. The player character's inability to affect the wall with their limited abilities suggests that this obstacle is impossible to overcome until the player progresses and acquires the MacGuffin to phase through black walls. However, the map and platform layout beyond the wall level suggest that dealing with the obstacle is not the only solution to further explore the zone. Through this curiosity, the player can traverse south through Deepnest, east through Kingdom's Edge, and circle back west through the City of Tears. While there is no apparent hint that this free traversal path is possible, especially since players naturally encounter this obstacle immediately after linear constraints are lifted, playing with the capabilities of the dash will quickly increase the mental possibility of the destination. Dashing allows the player to make these longer map-trotting explorations achievable as not only can the player move rapidly through these areas, but they can also avoid the complicated challenges that await in each of the increasingly threatening zones. As the difficulty of the zones advance, so does the player’s mastery of their controlled abilities. The strike and soul offensive capabilities increase in damage to make the progression bosses more manageable and, the additions to the base jump such as the mid-air hop are largely just to hide a few unlocks scattered in the Metroviana-like overworld. The dash is the only base affordance that remains largely the same in power for the majority of gameplay as such it’s designed to be forever present and impactful to the game’s progression. This emphasis on use will lead to eventual mastery of dashing as an advantageous tool and becomes reliable in overcoming a single zone’s obstacles, leading to the next. This repeats throughout the entire experience, always increasing the skill ceiling, challenge, and engagement of use for the dash.



Void Wall from the Fog Canyon

Circling back to the mechanics of the dash and its affordances and consequences on encounters, it’s instantaneous to activate and covers about 1.5 times distance compared to walking, with a 0.6-second cooldown rate. This cooldown rate is short enough to get a clear horizontal boost as opposed to walking, however it’s long enough to incentivize careful use, since the player forgoes direct agency during the dash itself. However, two of the few scenarios that can reset the dash cooldown are touching the ground and after landing a sword strike. The strike itself has a hitbox duration and cooldown that equates to roughly 0.76 seconds. This is similar to the total duration of the dash itself, making the dash feel like an extension of the player’s melee strike abilities. This makes the flow of transitioning the tactic of the dash as an exploration tool to an encounter asset seamless. It’s simplistic to only have to keep track of two tactics for melee combat, yet as mentioned previously it invites a high skill level to use effectively in overcoming nearly every enemy and boss behavior. This method of combat is similar to what David Freeman pointed out in that pulling off satisfying multi-step moves is good and exciting design (Freeman Pg. 467, 2004). While a vast quantity of steps are not present, the quick evaluation and succession to pull off are both often the most rewarding aspect of combat. Take the enemies in Green Path, for example, the area players first acquire the dash ability. The player is forced to learn the combat flow as a result of the changing tactics of enemies' behavior compared to previous starting game enemies. Moss Knights will start lobbing projectiles at the player if players try to bait out their acts, Moss Chargers charge head-on and have a huge hit box but run away when confronted, and Volatile Mosskin shoot a long duration AOE if the players try to wail on them. All three of the enemies have exploitable weaknesses but they can only be capitalized for if an effective dash strike combat was pulled off. If the player evades an attack that one of these enemies is on cooldown for they might be able to hit them two or three times in succession making for fast-paced fun gameplay. Failure to make use of the dash-attack combo might result in taking damage, which has the screen temporarily black and frozen. It reminds the player that they need to calm down. It also shows why they were hit, and even implies that core skills ought to be expanded on. The importance of learning all the potential tactical uses of the dash is highlighted through nearly every encounter present.



The Player Dashing towards a Moss Knight to close the distance against the arched attack

Hollow Knight’s dash ability is subtly one of the most impactful player-controlled affordances to the game. It allows effective traversal among the different paths, platforms, and cave systems over the map zones of varying difficulty. Players that reach the skill ceiling of the dash mechanic not only to access but overcome the more difficult zones will be rewarded special upgrades and to even more challenging areas. Further increasing the skill cap and engagement for the few simple yet adaptable base movement options given to players. Through the game’s seamless flow of striking and dashing, the game's combat becomes a series of quick time puzzles in which the player must figure out when to capitalize on the advantageous yet vulnerable state the player is put in for making use of the dash. The game will remind the player to make use of the dash by often pitting them against enemies and attacks that are unavoidable without proper execution. The game’s combat design allows for players to acknowledge this important mechanic early on. This is evident by both IGN’s and GameRant’s guides stressing the importance of learning the dodge mechanic for one of the first major bosses encountered after acquiring the dash, the Mantis Lords. The boss employs a variety of quick screen covering attacks in rapid succession leaving the recently unlocked dash as the only advantageous tool for the encounter. Hollow Kight’s dash mechanic is heavily interwoven with some of the game's most impactful dynamics, those being traversing through a sprawling labyrinth of varying challenges and rewards, and being able to learn and overcome bosses of epic proportions. The design consideration of a single objectively secondary mechanic is commendable and a true testament to the game's design of how every player's affordance strengthens its core of exploration and achievement.




Works Cited

Alisha Raj. (2022). Hollow Knight: How to Defeat the Mantis Lords. Game Rant. https://gamerant.com/hollow-knight-how-to-defeat-mantis-lords-battle-guide/

Celeste (Windows PC version) [Video game]. (2018). Maddy Makes Games.

Dark Souls (Windows PC version) [Video game]. (2011). From Software.

Freeman, D. (2004). Creating emotion in games: The craft and art of emotioneering. New Riders.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64 version) [Video game]. (1998). Nintendo.

Mega Man X (SNES version) [Video game]. (1993). Capcom.



2 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments

bottom of page