Now that Hollow Knight: Silksong is out and has made me eat a very big sandwich stuffed with my own words, my thoughts have turned once more to its predecessor and the qualities that made it such a special experience. There’s no one thing that makes Hollow Knight great, but, since we’re in the midst of Sneaky Secrets in September, I thought it’d be fun to look at the contributions of its very secret-laden kingdom of Hallownest. Practically every screen had something to find, that’s no small thing for any game to pull off, don’t you think?

Even though providing players with secrets and alternate paths to root out is something that’s practically synonymous with the metroidvania genre, I still find it rare for its members to really run with the idea. Hollow Knight Silksong aside, the only recent examples I can think of that did so are Animal Well and Metroid Dread, and I don’t recall actually finding secrets to be all that much of a focus in the latter. Alternate paths, yes, but real secrets not so much. Hollow Knight though? In Hollow Knight you never knew what you were going to find no matter where you werre looking!

Well, okay. When it was still early in the game and you were still wandering around in the areas around Dirtmouth, you probably weren’t going to find anything too crazy. Even then, though, there were still lots of little hidden nooks, out of the way passages, shortcuts and blocked spaces to stumble upon while getting used to the situation in Hallow Nest. Coming across dead bugs holding Wanderer’s Journals and just happening to run into the likes of the Grubfather and the Hunter were a couple of highlights for me, the best part each and every time was the sudden realization that a secret space was near and that little tone that would sound once you finally uncovered it!

The best secrets, though, were the ones you could find near the end of the game after getting all geared up. There’s finding Unn behind the far wall at the Lake of Unn in Greenpath, which was really cool because not only do you get to meet Unn, a diminished higher being of Hallownest and get its charm, but it’s entirely missable. It has to actually occur to you to go back and check out that wall later on. The game does almost nothing to point you to it.

There’s also the King’s Lab and the Nursery in the White Palace, both of which grant insight into what the Pale King was trying to do and the methods he was using. It’s also curious that the nursery is the more hidden of the two, almost as if it represents the greater portion of the shame born between the Pale King and the White Lady. There are also the hidden rooms hiddin within other hidden rooms, which either provide great resources or some bit of chilling lore.

There’s also the likes of Nosk, the beast hidden in the depths of Deepnest. The Maskmaker, who apparently supplies the bugs of Hallownest with their “faces,” the dream fights, which require the player to put two and two together and Dream Nail all the defeated warrior bugs and bosses with bodies still lying around, and even the trigger events for The Grimm Troupe and Godmaster. All of them tucked away in little out of the way places for players to either find or do without.

Secrets don’t make the Hollow Knight games, but I’d argure that they’re the lifeblood fueling the exploration aspect of them. Hallownest and now Pharloom are just so packed with fun little out of the way discoveries that they turn the metroidvania genre’s historical weakness, backtracking, into one of its greatest joys. For an indication of how big this is in the sequel, I’ve already poured several hours into deliberately looking for stuff in Hollow Knight: Silksong this past week, and I still managed to just stumble into it sometimes!

If any game series does secrets right, it’s gotta be Hollow Knight! Here’s looking forward to finding even more crazy stuff in Silksong, and more fun later on this month as Sneaky Secrets in September continues!

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What were some of your favorite secrets in Hollow Knight? How about in another metroidvania?

Image captured by Hatmonster