HK DONE QUICK! OVER 100,000 SOLD! ART! PIZZA! THUMBS UP!
Buckle in Gang! This is a big one.
Over 100,000 sold!
Yowza! Earlier this month HK crossed the 100,000 line, and it keeps on going! That’s just a crazy number of people playing Hollow Knight, and we’re constantly blown away by the game’s continued support. So many little Hollow Knights out there in the world. So many people to delight in Hallownest’s mysteries, and rage at its challenges!
Hollow Knight has legit, serious, fans! With full fan translations (All major asian languages!), endless fan art (see below!), an insanely skilled speed-running community, and giant wikis popping up around our strange-insect-game.
Speedrunning
Actually, let’s just quickly follow up on this speed-running thing because it’s nuts. Hollow Knight on average takes players about 25 hours to complete, or 40 hours for 100% completion.
Speedrunners are eviscerating those times! Normal completion is now possible in under 1 hour! 100% is possible in under 4 hours! HK’s being run at the upcoming SGDQ2017 by runner (and boyish heartthrob) Ourolen. A huge congrats and thank you to the whole running community for making HK such a blast to watch!
Watercolours
We’ve been teasing these for a while, and they’re starting to come together. Over 60 watercolour artworks are being prepped for our higher tier backers. No two are the same! Each NPC backer receives an additional watercolour of their character, which helps keep Ari from going mad painting endless Hollow Knights. Once the set’s complete, we’ll be sending these out in one big batch, along with the second physical item, Screenprints!
Screenprints
Check out a few of the snazzy final designs. They’ll be hand-printed on archival paper, with one sent to all backers from tiers $45 and above. Prints will be delivered alongside the watercolours, which are planned to be wrapped and delivered in the coming months. Expect more exact delivery dates for both once Ari gets them done!
Launch Party
Team Cherry Reunited: David Kazi, Ari Gibson, William Pellen and Chris Larkin
For one night only, Team Cherry stopped working to fit in Hollow Knight’s official (though very late) Launch Party! You may not know this, but there’s a wood-oven pizza restaurant in the bottom of Team Cherry’s office building. ‘How greats that!’ you say? It’s fantastic, and super convenient, unless! You make a pact, as Team Cherry did, to only visit once your game is complete. After two years of agonising self-restraint, the wait is over and the pizza bar’s doors are now open to us! A big thank you to all of our testers, voice actors, interns and the fellow game developers that attended the event.
Hollow Knight cake by master baker (and voice of Hornet) Makoto Koji.
Switch
This is the next big thing for Team Cherry. We’re working our hardest to get the game ready for Nintendo’s sleek new console. But as hard as we work, Team Cherry is only two people (Plus Leth!) so we’ve taken a big step to speed things up!
Please welcome Shark Jump Studios. They’re an Adelaide based coding/development team, and we’ve brought them on-board specifically to help us get Hollow Knight’s Switch version tested, polished and ready for it’s console debut. Between the two teams, expect Hollow Knight to land on Switch in a not crazy (though still unspecified!) period of time.
Don’t be concerned by that half-hearted thumbs up. His fingers are no doubt tired from all the high-level coding!
Kickstarter Corner
Today we’re spotlighting a game by one of our local game developer friends, Jay Weston. It’s called Exo One, and it’s all about the joy of rolling on alien planets! Everyone knows rolling about on earth can be kinda dull, so Jay’s creating 12 giant new planets to live out your spheroid fantasies. And if you’ve ever thought ‘I wish I could flatten myself into a disc-like shape and surf across clouds,’ then Jay’s got you covered on that as well! Jump on over; back it; and get rolling! EXO ONE
Fan Art
Hollow Knight’s proven an insecty inspiration to so many talented folks, and the art just keeps coming! We love these all so much, so we’re gonna share some of the latest.
Talented sculptor and brave knight, Dung Defender hard at work
HK’s goin all Pixelly by artist Arcade Hero over on tumblr
Midwife’s loving embrace. She’s looking as cute as ever! Pic by Koviry
And More!
If all that Switch dev wasn’t enough, there’s even more happening behind the doors at Cherry HQ. We’re gonna have to enter list mode just to keep track of it all! Let’s get started:
William’s finishing off the last bits and pieces for “Free content pack 01.” Don’t be fooled by it’s generic working title! There’s a bunch of cool stuff in this one! Expect the full reveal in our next KS Update.
More languages! German is fully translated and has moved into the testing phase. Simplified Chinese is so so close. Several other languages are just now getting underway.
HK merchandise is coming from all corners! Some we’ve teased (Check our twitter!). Much is still under-wraps. Expect some of the coolest, classiest goods in gaming to drop through the coming months.
“Free content pack 02” is being prepped to follow a few months after the first. This one’s a bit different from pack 01, though equally exciting! More to reveal as we get close.
“Free content pack 03” is landing later in the year. 03 is a really big one! And no, it’s not playable Hornet, but holy hoy are we excited for it!
Other consoles? We’ve heard the calls, and we’re doing our best to make things happen. Nothing to announce yet, but watch this space.
Playable Hornet is happening! And wow is she cool. We’re so excited for this, and for the very special form it’s taking. Ari’s just finished up on Hornet’s additional animations, but there are still many things left before she’s ready for her big reveal. Hornet’s the biggest update we have planned for Hollow Knight’s future, and you’ll be hearing lots more about it as we go. For now, here’s a tiny tease:
That’s it for today gang! We can barely keep track of it all. It’s all exciting, all crazy, all the time, here at Team Cherry. Thanks again for the wonderful, continued support. We’ll be checking in again soon! ;)