Hollow Knight was one of the 2D Action/Metroidvania games that I enjoyed the most in the last couple of years. The weird and quirky underground bug world was fascinating. Other than the stunning art and graphic design in the game, the smooth battle and character development systems were the key elements that really drew me in. The game also offered great challenges for players. The following link is a video of beating all bosses with no damage in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE7kje3z9c8
Hollow Knights was a masterpiece built on the Unity Engine, one of the most popular and mature game engines on the market. The engine provided great 2D design tools for the developers and designers from Team cherry. The game was divided into many scenes which were the foundation of design flow in Unity. The sprite and animation system makes the organization of visual elements easy and intuitive. The game designers were able to use the layers in the scene editor to create a world of muted colors with a dream-like glow. The physics system was also pretty easy to manipulate and sufficient to support interactions between characters and their environment in Hollow Knight.
Game engines lay the foundation of internal systems for games that are built on them, such as physics, audio, and graphics (Lowood). Or, as Sean Murray claimed, “ engines dictate design decisions”(GDC). Compared to the powerhouse engines on the market right now, the Unity engine does not have much of an advantage in building glamorous real-time 3D models, high-resolution image output, and dazzling particle effects. However, the games built on Unity do not require much hardware capacity. Therefore, indie game studios and developers with limited budgets are able to use Unity to create decent games on as many platforms as they can.
Work Cited
Lowood, Henry. “Dugging game history: A critical lexicon.” ProQuest Ebook Central. 2016. <a onclick=window.open(‘http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href=’http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target=’_blank’ style=’cursor: pointer;’>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a>.
GDC. “Building Worlds in No Man’s Sky Using Math(s).” YouTube, Presentation by Sean Murray. 2017, April 17th. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9RyEiEzMiU.