THE GRIMM TROUPE DESCENDS!
Huge update today and we’re leading with the biggest news of all: Hollow Knight’s second Free Content Pack, The Grimm Troupe!
This Halloween, Grimm and his Troupe arrive, free for all players. What’s packed in for this chilling expansion? Let’s jump into the details:
New Major Quest – Light the Nightmare Lantern and summon the Grimm Troupe to Hallownest, if you dare! Take part in a twisted ritual that stretches the breadth of the kingdom and bestows the player with a powerful new ally.
New Boss Fights – What epic quest is complete without epic show-downs? Get ready to face off against a dark new foe and a twisted scarlet spectre. Who are they? What brings them to Hallownest? We won’t spoil the surprise!
4 New Charms – We’re going all out with the quest, but that’s not enough! Your charm range is also expanding, granting unique new aids and abilities. You’ll have to discover their powers for yourself, but their appearance may give a few hints.
New Enemies – The arrival of the Troupe doesn’t just mean enormous boss encounters, it also brings new smaller (but challenging!) foes to test your nail and spells against. Your Hunter’s Journal is going to be overflowing by the time your done!
New Friends – Grimm’s clan may appear scary but they aren’t all bad. Get ready to befriend a new bunch of weirdos, including one who offers a very special service for players flush with Geo!
New Music – Tying this whole cavalcade together are all new spooky and spine tingling tracks by Christopher Larkin. Get ready to feel the fear!
Map Markers
In a world as big as Hallownest finding your way is the greatest challenge of all, and you’ll now have an extra tool in your cartographic journeys with custom Map Markers! Place them anywhere on your maps to remember a point of interest, a difficult foe or an item just out of reach.
Grimm’s quest, and all other new features can be accessed at any point in your Hollow Knight journey. Muster your courage and summon the Troupe! Descending this Halloween.
More Languages
Alongside the arrival of the Grimm Troupe, we’ll be launching Hollow Knight in 3 new languages: Russian, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese! Thank you to our fantastic translators for making it through HK’s enormous script without dying, and thanks to fans for all the language requests.
GOG Galaxy
The final item on the list of Halloween updates: The full suite of GOG Galaxy features will be made available with this expansion’s debut. Expect cloud saves, achievements, and swifter updates. Thanks to the fantastic folks at GOG for all their help along the way.
Phew! That’s the huge one. Now let’s get into all the other big news! There’s just so much here.
BACKER REWARDS SHIPPING NOW
Amidst our content updates, porting and con scheduling, we’ve also begun to ship physical backer rewards! Pulling these together took us a while, but we wanted to make sure we did them right.
A backer pack with 2 unique watercolour artworks and 2 limited screenprints.
Just check these things out! The screen-prints ended up even classier than we could have hoped (Thanks in huge part to the expertise of The Yetee!) and the watercolours provided a much needed break from the computer screen.
It’s been awhile since the Kickstarter, so to confirm if your due physical rewards, and what to expect, here’s a quick reference list:
All $75 and above backers receive a limited screen print.
All $200 and above backers also receive watercolour artworks
Extra watercolours and prints were available during the Kickstarter campaign as add-ons. If you selected these, they’ll arrive in the same bundle with the above rewards.
As of this update, all but 16 backer packs have been sent out. Our crazy schedule led to bad mathematics and we ran out of prints! Ari’s prepared a new design to cover the remaining backers and we’re aiming to have all physical goods on there way by the end of this month. Here’s a sneak peek of the final, super limited, design:
Our big take-away from doing physical goods: Wow is that stuff fun to make! We’re so glad to have had the opportunity to do so, and thanks to every backer that allowed it to happen.
SWITCH
So many of you are eager for Switch news, and we want so badly to drop that release date, but we can’t do it quite yet!
As agonising as that is, we can say that things are pulling together (frame-rate is getting the thumbs up!), but there’re still a few more hurdles to clear before we can give you a release date that we’re 100% confident we’ll hit.
As stretched we are across everything at once (Content Packs + Backer Rewards + Porting + Support = Intense!), we really appreciate all the excitement for the Switch version. We just want to ensure it’s as great as it can be when it lands in your hands.
And of course, The Grimm Troupe will be included in Hollow Knight’s Switch version at launch. Cheers for being patient with us and keeping up the energy!
HK SALES UPDATE
We don’t normally post about sales figures, but HK just recently crossed a major milestone: Over Half a Million Copies Sold! Holy woah!
Hollow Knight has now been played by over 555,000 players across PC, Mac and Linux! For two people sitting in a tiny office in Adelaide, that’s beyond humbling. To all of you who’ve played, purchased or championed the game: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
And remember, there’s plenty more Hollow Knight coming even after the Grimm Troupe. We can’t stop ourselves. Creating insecty stories; surreal worlds; crazy boss fights. It’s all far too much fun!
TGS
Thanks to the folks at TGS and Kakehashi games, Hollow Knight managed to score a complimentary booth for this enormous show. Matt, Ari and (voice of Hornet) Makoto are dashing over to Japan for the whole 4 day event and have all sorts of meetings lined up, alongside demoing the game to a whole new audience. If you’re in Tokyo and attending the event, please stop by and say hi!
Sadly, while the trio blast over to the East, William has to hang back at Cherry HQ to manage all the Grimm Troupe beta testing, getting it all polished up for its big October Debut!
PAX WEST
While Ari and William were grounded in OZ, PAX West just happened and Matt was there hanging out with some of our favourite teams at Fangamer, Humble and Indiebox. But that’s only half of it! Just check out some of the other curious folk he ran into during his time at the show:
Sales numbers are one thing, but what better sign of a game’s success is there than cosplay! To inspire this sort of support, HK’s really made it!
FAN MUSIC
Last up, we’re holding off the fan art this update to showcase something equally impressive: Lazy Moonkin’s Hollow Knight Songs! These odes come complete with full lyrical verse, and some unique lore interpretation. Be warned! Though the lyrics are interpretations of HK’s story, there are some spoilery things contained within.
The Fading Realm
Myla’s Song
That’s it gang! Cosplay, Fan art, Songs! HK’s proving an inspiration beyond our wildest dreams. Thanks to all the fans for their talent and creativity, and for getting behind this weird world of cute/creepy insects! Lots more details soon. Grimm descends next month, then Switch, then more free content! Hornet (She’s already playing great!), more stunning merch, secret grand plans for 2018. It’s all exhausting; all entertaining; all fun!
Team Cherry out!