The speedrunning community has had a long history with Metroidvania titles, with classics like Super Metroid still getting new records made for it almost thirty years after launch. So, its no wonder that Hollow Knight, taking huge leads from the Metroidvania genre, has not only made a place for itself in the speedrunning community, but also encourages players to compete for better and better times.
Two achievements in Hollow Knight in particular might be all some fans need to start dipping a toe into speedrunning in general, having tight platforming and intense combat to test their skills on. It can look like a daunting task when a player is already fifteen hours into their initial playthrough with no end in sight, but eventually nailing those ten hour and five hour goals becomes a lot more feasible after mastering the game's systems.
To that degree, nailing these two trophies can be a better setup for the upcoming sequel Silksong than Hollow Knight's DLC campaigns and their brutally difficult boss fights can be. This is because of the two aspects that come with accelerating the speed at which a player burns through a playthrough, only one of which can be brought into the next game. Getting a low personal best, or PB, in Hollow Knight requires memorization of the world, but it also asks the player to familiarize themselves with and master the mechanics present in the game.
The Core Mechanics of Hollow Knight
At the top of the game, Hollow Knight only has three major mechanics for players to tool around with: run, jump, and attack. Almost everything else that players unlock throughout the game compounds on these three basic functions, and some of the actions that can be done from the beginning have more use than some players might realize. So, mastering how The Knight jumps, how he attacks, and how he moves along the ground are the keys to beating the game, and eventually the keys to landing a new PB on future speedruns.
Focusing on these mechanics in the beginning means that the player is that much more prepared when the game starts dropping gear like the Monarch Wings and the Mothwing Cloak. These two items specifically compound on the jumping mechanic, with the Monarch Wings adding a double jump and the Mothwing Cloak adding a dash that can be used on the ground or midair. This is how a lot of the upgrades and abilities in Hollow Knight work, by adding new layers onto the core mechanics that players are already familiar with.
Speedrunners Doing More with Less
In the case of the speedrunning community, these core mechanics can be all they are able to play with throughout the majority of the game, since taking the time to gather everything wastes precious time. This means that in order to beat a PB, or even shoot for the world record, players have to try to make the most out of the simple run, jump, and attack that are granted at the beginning of the game. Sometimes this comes to developing tech that was intended for the game like pogoing off spikes by attacking down onto them while in the air, or in unintended ways like using the Crystal Heart with pinpoint positioning for an Acid Skip.
The trick is always making the most out of the core mechanics of the game, something that takes precedent over even the memorization aspect of speedrunning. There's no point in known the position on a ledge a players needs to hit in order to perform a skip if they don't have the skill required to hit that point with repeated precision. While all this talk about mastering the game's mechanics is great for speedrunners, it can also have a startling effect on regular players when they finally get their hands on Hollow Knight: Silksong.
Mastering Hollow Knight: Silksong Through the Original
With Hollow Knight: Silksong acting as a standalone title, the game is likely to bring its own set of abilities and new features to the series, along with the new map and enemies. However, on its head, the game still looks like it has the same structural core as the original, with Hornet's abilities being variations on the run, jump, attack trifecta. So, even with new abilities coming at the hands of Hornet that The Knight never had access to, skill in one game could still transfer well over to the next.
This means that a familiarity with those core mechanics of Hollow Knight can mean that players have a leg up as they start exploring the new world of Silksong. There might still be a bit of a learning curve, as Hornet seems to move and attack in her own unique ways, especially when it comes to important techniques like downstrikes. That being said, having new abilities to learn and master is exactly what fans of Hollow Knight are so excited for in the new title, giving them a chance to experiment with a whole new set of tools.
Learning How to Experiment in Hollow Knight
One of the key features of speedrunning in any game is when player looks at an ability and asks either "What can this do?", "Can this do that?", or "How can I get there?" Finding the answers to these questions is how players find new skips in speedruns, but its also a major part of the nature of play in Hollow Knight and other Metroidvanias. Developers like Team Cherry, or even Nintendo and Konami when developing the genre with Metroid and Castlevania, leave little hints and out-of-reach ledges for players to eventually find a way to, only for players to find workarounds.
Whether a player is going for the world record speedrun, or even a PB that clocks in just under the five hour mark, striving for that type of timing requires experimenting with how to play in unconventional ways. Taking this same type of determination to arrive at those hard-to-reach areas and everything they know about Hollow Knight into Silksong can mean that new players have that much more to play with. Then when they've had their fun, players can start taking that experimentation and play back to the community, unlocking new skips and shaving off huge chunks of time for future speedruns.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is currently in development for PC and Switch.