One character you’ll constantly run into is a cartographer, who can always be located by following pieces of paper found on the ground and the song he hums.

Even the general sound design is great, as every enemy has different realistic scuttling sounds, and many characters speak in seemingly made-up languages I found myself quoting by the end of the game. There are tracks here that I’d rank beside the music of Zelda and Star Wars. On top of that, the soundtrack is one of the most memorable and whimsical scores I’ve heard in a long time. After only seeing videos and screenshots of the game’s first area, a dreary cave where everything is a shade of blue, I had my breath taken away the moment I got to the second area, a jungle.

One area has ghosts floating in the foreground, while others have sprawling jungles or caves with layers that move independently of each other to create much livelier levels than most 2D games can offer. All of the 100-plus characters are animated to be adorable and/or hideous, and the different areas of the humongous map each have their own art styles with some of the best use of parallax I’ve ever seen. Hollow Knight is a beautifully hand-drawn metroidvania that is equal parts fun, difficult, cute, and horrifying. Released: Febru(PC), TBA (Nintendo Switch) In a year that has been absolutely filled to the brim with great games, I can say Hollow Knight is hands down without a doubt in my mind my favorite and surely an early contender for game of the year.

Not because I don’t love it, but because I’ve been obsessed with Hollow Knight. I got my Nintendo Switch day one and I’ve put around 10 hours into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the latest game from my favorite series.

Hollow from the other side, I must have died a thousand times

Best games of 2017 hollow knight