I was fully obsessed with Hollow Knight, a Metroidvania- and Dark Souls-inspired game when it came out on the Switch, and I’ve been revisiting it again recently and I love its gloomy-but-beautiful atmosphere. Warning for some spoilers here, though!
A while back someone on reddit asked how to run an RPG based on Hollow Knight and I suggested Rhapsody of Blood, since it has similar inspirations. I’ve been thinking about it again, and while I haven’t had a chance to actually run RoB I still think it’s a good fit. However, the tone and the tension are very different.
Hollow Knight is about an abandoned, underground kingdom of bug people called Hallownest. The player is a small knight that has arrived and joins the foolish bugs trying to search for treasure or glory in the tunnels of Hallownest. As you explore you are mostly alone with mindless enemies, but sometimes you run into a friendly face along the way. However (here come the spoilers!) there is a corruption that was sealed away and is slowly leaking back out, first causing madness then violent mutations. To defeat the corruption once and for all, you have to find and kill the 3 dreamers, who locked themselves away to seal the corruption, then confront the Hollow Knight, your predecessor that took the corruption into themself.
Being a Metroidvania game, there are immediate parallels to Rhapsody of Blood – Hallownest is a maze of tunnels and interconnected regions, like the lush green area, the fungal swamps, or the city of Hallownest proper (full of mindless shells of former citizens). However, while RoB is supposed to be vibrant and hostile and constantly moving (at least, that was my impression reading it), the world of HK is more moody and dark and passive. Instead of a castle of shifting corridors and hunting beasts, it is a cavern network that feels like it hasn’t moved in the last 100 years (but the dangers from 100 years ago are still lurking in wait). There’s no Blood, but the Corruption whispers in your dreams and offers power at the price of madness.
Has anyone played both Hollow Knight and Rhapsody of Blood? Any thoughts on whether the mechanics could would fit this kind of change? My gut feeling is that they would mostly work with some reskinning, and describing the exploration and the clock as happening on a larger timescale, and the overall corruption gradually increasing rather than being immediately present. The first problem that jumps out at me, though, is the Reckoner’s abilities that depend on reshaping the Castle. I guess they could be an experienced spelunker, changing the landscape by causing cave-ins or discovering unseen nooks, rather than imposing their will on their surroundings. Or the ability to reshape the cavern could simply be added as part of the Corruption, as it is already mystical in nature.
Hmm, interesting! Hollow Knight is definitely on my to-play list, I’ll have to tell you what I think once I’ve played it. For what it’s worth I know there are some alternate character playbooks in the works if you don’t want to offer the Reckoner – I’ll check to see if it’s ok for me to offer them here.
I’m certainly curious about other playbooks but I don’t have any game lined up for this, it’s just idle thoughts – so don’t worry about sharing anything prematurely for my sake.
No worries!