GuideMetroidvania

Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight drops you at the mouth of a well outside Dirtmouth and doesn't explain much else. Below is Hallownest, a buried kingdom of bugs sealed in on itself, and you cut through it with a Nail, a slow trickle of Charms bought and found along the way, and whatever map you've bought off Cornifer for that region, because none of it comes free. Team Cherry shipped it in 2017 and then kept building on it for free: Hidden Dreams, The Grimm Troupe, Lifeblood, and Godmaster all layered new areas, bosses, and endings onto the base game at no extra cost. It's unforgiving in the way old-school platformers were unforgiving, and it expects you to draw your own map, quite literally.

Steam Store

Contains affiliate links — purchases made through them may earn JustGameGuides a commission at no extra cost to you.

Data from build 22529139, updated 2 Sep 2026

Overview

Notches are the one resource every build here fights over: charms cost between 1 notch and the 5 that Kingsoul and its White Fragment form demand (Void Heart, the last upgrade in that chain, costs nothing), and the cap only grows from 3 up to 11 as you find or buy the rest, so you're always dropping one charm to fit another. Abilities don't compete for space the same way. Once you've got the Mantis Claw or the Crystal Heart it's permanent, and it usually doubles as the key that turns a dead end on the map into a shortcut you'll use for the rest of the game. The Hunter's Journal fills itself in from kills, not from exploration, so an entry can sit blank long after you've already walked past the bug a dozen times. Keys and relics skip notches entirely; a City Crest or Tram Pass rides in your pocket until it opens the one door it's built for, and relics like the Hallownest Seal exist purely to be sold to Lemm. Achievements sit outside all of that, tracking completion from the menu screen, and four of its hidden entries are just this game's endings in disguise.