More than a dozen hours into Hollow Knight, the 2D Metroidvania played a joke on me. It was a really good joke, and also kind of a mean one. Then again, most good video game jokes are a little mean.

It's not every day you get assigned to write an article about how your boss is completely wrong, but this morning during one of our many discussions about the fantastic game Hollow Knight, Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo told me to write [Editor's note: suggested you write] about how wrong he is about the nails-tough platforming sections. Because they're actually great.

I’m flying across the country tomorrow and need help keeping calm while I travel. Luckily, the Nintendo Switch has added dozens of exploration-focused titles to distract me, including the 2D Soulslike Salt and Sanctuary. Like Hollow Knight, it’s a game that fares much better on a portable console.

In the game’s 46th hour, I finally got frustrated about a design choice in Hollow Knight. I won’t spoil it in anything but the vaguest terms, but I’m sure anyone who has played enough games can relate.

In the treacherous world of Super Mario Bros., it's useful, if not realistic for platforms to hover and fireballs to bounce. There's no logic to why things are that way. They just are. That's fine, but I enjoy when a game's designers find a way to justify the weird rules of their game, as the creators of Hollow Knight have about why their hero can't always use his map.

There are more than 150 different enemies in the fantastic Hollow Knight. While each one is entertainingly awful, some are more awful than others.

“Got him!” I exclaimed in a text message to my colleague Kirk Hamilton at 2:33PM on Friday of last week. I’d been fighting a tough boss in the difficult 2D exploration and combat game Hollow Knight. One minute later, horrified, I was sending a follow-up text: “Oh no. Didn’t get him.”

In Hollow Knight, looks can be deceiving. A sad little lamplit town may hide the entrance to a beautiful buried kingdom. A towering knight might turn out to be a sad, small thing in oversized armour. An onrushing green beast may actually be a wee creature disguised by a pile of leaves. And a simple-looking 2D action game can slowly unfurl into one of gaming's great adventures.

In a presentation at the White Nights conference last week, Valve business development head Jan-Peter Ewert put some figures on the disturbing reality for indie developers: the market is still very, very crowded. With the removal of Steam Greenlight and the straight-to-door Steam Direct approach, around 180 games get released every single week.

Even if most games find no audience at all, the increased noise makes it infinitely harder for good games to stand out. Fortunately, there's one platform where indies are continuing to find a second lease of life, or a successful first one.

While there's been recent talk about how well the Adelaide-made Hollow Knight has done since launching smack-bang in the middle of E3, the game's inaugural release has also hit a massive milestone.

Hollow Knight is finally out for Nintendo Switch, which means a lot more people are playing it than when it hit PC last year. People like me! I've put almost 40 hours into the game, and I have some tips for anyone starting out.

Over the last few years, I've started playing more difficult video games. Unfortunately, tough video games tend to include tough boss fights, and I don't really like tough boss fights.

We've been waiting a little while for Team Cherry's home-made Metroidvania, Hollow Knight, to get the Switch treatment. Good news: it's coming soon. Better news: it looks A+.

It's been a good year for Aussie games, and an especially good year for one in particular.

It's been a solid year for games. But it's been an especially good year for Australian games.

Hollow Knight gets its first free DLC today, Hidden Dreams. Expect new bosses, more music, fast-travel, another Stag station, and other secret goodies.

Hollow Knight is probably one of, if not the indie game of the year so far. It's certainly up there for Metroidvania fans, and it's one of the highest quality games out of Australia in a long, long while.

But what if you don't like running around Hollow Knight with the basic melee attack? What if you'd like to play a different way?

It's not often that Aussie games gain a lot of traction on Steam. And it's even rarer that Aussie games strike a chord with the wider Steam base.

You may or may not have heard of Hollow Knight, the gorgeous looking Metroidvania being developed by Adelaide-based studio Team Cherry, but if you hadn't you have no excuse now.

This is a gorgeous looking video game.