What I Learnt From Hollow Knight
Caption: Hollow Knight page on my Steam Deck
Recently I've been quite into Hollow Knight, a pretty difficult video game by most standards. Engaging deeply with the game has taught me a life lesson that I thought was worth sharing.
What's Hollow Knight?
Hollow Knight, for those of you unaware, is classified under the Metroidvania and souls-like tags on Steam. I've played a few other games with a similar style in the past but have never been as captivated by any of them.
I would describe the core gameplay loop of Hollow Knight as, "Fight, Fight-harder, fight EVEN harder!!". You are let loose in a world that you need to navigate, littered with various enemy that:
- don't fight back (minions);
- put on a good fight (super minions); and
- try to kill you with every fibre of their being (bosses).
You start the game on a bench which acts as your base to heal up and equipt various badges that give you unique powers. Once you leave the base, you need to make your way to the next bench anywhere in the world. You are only granted a limited number of lives to make it between two benches, and so it becomes quite important to be very careful.
Beat that boss!
For the most part, my first instinct was to just focus my energy on fighting the big bosses. These are the fights that are most satisfying to win, as they can take anywhere between a single try to multiple sittings consisting of dozens of tries.
What was becoming apparent to me was that my skill of using more powerful moves known as spells and abilities were lacking. This was because I was only using them in the big boss fights, which were few and far between.
This was becoming particularly apparent in my attempt at beating the Soul Master, a fight with a mage who wielded honing-missile like spells. Despite a dozen attempts in spread across multiple sittings, I did not manage to beat him.
I seeked the wise council of Hollow Knight YouTubers to try and workout how to beat the boss. I was adviced to use a combination of moves, abilities and spells to beat him.
It quickly became apparent that I was not familiar with executing the moves. I concluded that I was unable to do the moves because I only attempted them for the bosses and never on any of the minions. Therefore, my skill were rusty by the time I rocked up to fight the boss.
After some perseverance and many many failed attempts, I finally managed to beat the boss! And as a reward, I received yet another spell that I now needed to learn to use!
Caption: Proudly standing next to the Soul Master after defeating him
A parallel with my personal struggles
As of late, I've been struggling with the usual challenges of adult life: a demanding job, difficulties in my relationships, bills and other responsibilities.
Much like in Hollow Knight, some of these challenges were like the minions, barely an inconvenience. Others were like the super-minions, making me work harder to overcome them. Rarely but consistently, I would come across the boss battles of life that took a great deal of effort and skill to get through. One wrong move and you lose and need to try again.
After playing Hollow Knight, I realised that it wasn't possible to expect that I'll overcome great 'boss-like' difficulties in life if I don't keep honing my skills on easier 'minion-like' situations.
As described in a previous post, my chosen strategy to deal with life's challenges is through discipline. Therefore, I need to practice discipline in my everyday life if I expect to deal with the bigger challenges that life throws my way.
When I picked up the game for the first time, I did not expect it would be teaching me life lessons! I might soon write a Tony Recommends Stuff on it as I think it truly deserves another post to capture the depth of the game.
Until next time,
Tony