In the past decade or so skill trees have emerged as one of the most ubiquitous and lazy game design tropes. Originating in RPGs, but soon spreading to almost all genres, the mechanic is actually a very clever way of addressing a lot of design needs at once. Many titles have been able to create really great skill trees that complement and enhance the rest of their game. However where there is the good there is the bad, the lazy, and the cheap. Too many designers have fallen victim to the trend and added trees that feel haphazardly tacked on and often hurt the gaming experience. Plenty of articles and forums will discuss what makes a good or bad skill tree, but I think that’s kind of missing the point. Rather than choosing between variants of a single solution to a set of problems, game designers should look for new solutions all together. That style of innovative thinking is how one ends up with a game like Hollow Knight.
It’s easy to lose hours talking about the brilliance of Team Cherry’s debut title. With Hollow Knight, the trio of Aussie indie devs were able to produce a metroidvania that truly pushes the genre to new heights. Rather than copy the formula of the genre’s progenitors, or differentiate their game using modern design tropes, Team Cherry found innovative ways to make their game uniquely brilliant. One such innovation is the Charm system, a clever skill management system that solves many of the same problems as skill trees. Despite their similarities however, the two mechanics represent remarkably different modes of design thinking. The Charm system shows how thinking outside the box, and inside the context of your game, you can produce experiences that outshine precedent-based design philosophy of skill trees.
Planting the Seed
Before forging ahead, let’s define skill trees. Skills are attributes that a player can upgrade or gain throughout the course of a game. Most of the time these skills require an intentional investment. There are a number of ways players can invest in their skills, but they can be broken down into one of three areas: experience, skill points, and training. Experience systems have players gain experience, or XP, by playing the game. When they’ve gained enough they increase their level, and are able to upgrade their skills. Skill point systems simplify that process by having players gain skill points to use for skills directly through playing the game. Training systems take it a step further by having players upgrade their skills by simply using them and gaining proficiency. Some games use one of those systems in isolation, like Red Dead Redemption’s training system where different activities will upgrade different skills without direct player input. Most modern games have a mix, like in Skyrim where players will enhance areas of skill automatically by training, which in turn increases their level, and provides skill points to use on skills within the areas they’ve enhanced enough. This creates multiple layers of investment, and is a great example of skill trees.
By grouping skills together and arranging them to have dependencies on each other, players create branches of skills that make up a tree. So in the beginning only a few skills are available, which you may consider the trunk. Then once a skill is acquired, the skills dependent on that one become available, unlocking a branch of the tree for development. That branch may then be a single linear progression of skills, or can continue to branch out again. By forcing players to consider not just which skill to invest in, but also which branch, designers make skill investment a more complex decision. They also allow skill trees to function as a great conduit for progression.
All games need to have some sort of progression built in, otherwise players will feel stuck exactly where they were in the beginning of the game. That doesn’t mean every game needs to have a story or character arcs. Progression comes in all shapes and sizes. You can have a narrative and character progression in a game, but you can also have a more completion based progression where players are incentivized just to complete the game. Additionally there’s gameplay progression, where the gameplay evolves over time, emotional progression, where players feel an emotional change over the game, and mastery progression, where players simply feel like they’re getting better. But a static game that doesn’t ever change or doesn’t have the player change is no fun. Skill trees excel at being a source of multiple types of progression. Because the skills are associated with a character, players feel as if they’re evolving that character over time. Because collecting skills are presented as achievements, gathering more satiates completionist hunger. Lastly unlocking more skills typically unlocks new ways to play the game as well, allowing the gameplay to change over time. So when I played Skyrim, I felt like I advanced whenever I unlocked a new skill, say unlocking the Sweep skill in the Two-Handed branch. My character became one step closer to becoming a master dual wielder, I was one step closer to completing the Two-Handed branch, and the gameplay expanded as I could now use this new skill to fight more enemies at once.
Another major benefit of skill trees is that they allow that progression to feel personal. The player is choosing which skill and branch to invest in, so they feel invested in their own progress of the game. So rather than every player experiencing the same progression, everyone creates their own. This makes the gaming experience feel unique and allows the player to feel more connected to the character and their journey. So back to Skyrim, what ultimately allowed me to live the fantasy wasn’t the time I spent at the start making their face look somewhat like mine, but the hours I poured into developing that character throughout the game itself. So it’s no wonder that skill trees have emerged as an industry staple.
Death by Trendiness
Now it’s hard to pin down a single originator for skills trees. Character skills, like most RPG tropes, probably arose from trying to capture the Dungeon and Dragons experience. In D&D the idea emerged from weapon and non-weapon proficiencies, only officially being called “skills” in the 3rd Edition in 2000. These aren’t abilities themselves, but rather statistics that boosted players’ chances at succeeding in specific actions. The original video game RPGs copied that formula, and more modern ability-like skills emerged as spells and special attacks. These were often grouped together based on class and race, also a callback to D&D. This was likely the first iteration of a skill tree like structure, but there was not often a lot of flexibility as characters were usually stuck within their own class and race. As those roles became more flexible characters could invest in different classes and subclasses, something more like skill trees began to emerge.
That said, there is no one game that made skill trees what they are today. Many credit franchises like Diablo and The Elder Scrolls for popularizing the concept, and that may be true. However I think this is more likely the case of convergent evolution. With all the benefits of trees, with the groundwork laid in the original RPGs, and with technology trees already popular in the strategy game genre, the idea was very likely to emerge from any designer. All those ideas simply merged into the trope we know today. I say trope, because nowadays it’s hard to find games without them. I’ve used Skyrim as an example so far, but I could’ve easily swapped in The Witcher, Dragon Age, Final Fantasy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Borderlands, Nioh, and the list goes on and on. In a lot of those games I felt the skill trees were relatively successful, but there’s plenty of others that I hate.
I first started finding it frustrating in Xenoblade Chronicles as I realized how much time I was spending planning out my skill investment in the menus. Skill development was needlessly complicated, as were the other systems in the game, and overall felt like a drag on main gameplay experience. Not too long after I was shocked to find out the new Tomb Raider games had introduced skill trees to the franchise. At first it was an interesting concept, and helped differentiate from the similar Uncharted games. But after continuing with the franchise the skills felt so useless and tacked on, they helped inspire me to write an article about how the game was worse than Uncharted. After thinking more about the problem, I recalled my time playing Skyrim, and the hours upon hours I spent grinding just so I could complete the skill branches and level up my character to a god-like status. In retrospect, that gameplay experience wasn’t really fun, and kind of ruined the rest of the game for me as I just killed everything in one swipe. With all these thoughts swirling around my head, I felt dizzied by all my poor skill tree experiences. So many of them feel disconnected from the gameplay, overly complicated, unrewarding, and broken. Then, as I stared into the pit of mediocrity, ready to succumb to its assured eventuality, a savior emerged: Hollow Knight.
A Charming System
There’s a lot to love about Hollow Knight. Countless game enthusiasts have commented on its challenging yet rewarding gameplay, its desolate and wondrous world, its beautiful art and sound design, its lovable characters, its deep lore, and more. Many have heralded it as a redefinition of the metroidvania genre, being passed the crown by titles like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. A hallmark of these sorts of games is the unique progression of their narrative, gameplay, and map. They’re all set in an interconnected world that gradually reveals itself as players unlock abilities to overcome obstacles, defeat enemies, and uncover new areas. So in a genre where gaining new skills is essential to the overall gameplay, it’s tempting to implement a skill tree. That’s exactly what Ori and the Blind Forest did in 2015, which found a lot of success. However, Hollow Knight has fared a bit better financially and critically, and I think will stand the test of time as the superior game because it forged its own path.
There are four different types of skills you gain throughout the game. Spells and Nail Arts are similar in that they both provide new ways to attack. Spells consume Soul (like mana) and are largely about resource management. Nail Arts are special melee attacks that use the knight’s main weapon, a nail, and need to be charged up, requiring precision and timing. Next up are Abilities, which are given by special items and are largely based on enhancing platforming and providing new ways to explore the world. While those three types of skills provide progression and are expertly designed, what really sets Hollow Knight apart is the final skill type, Charms.
Charms are also a sort of item you can acquire throughout the game, but where the Ability items are automatically and permanently applied to your character, Charms are optional and limited. This acts similarly to character equipment builds that most RPGs have. These often focus on weapons and armor, but most also include additional item slots for accessories. Take for example Nioh, where you can equip two melee weapons, two range weapons, five pieces of armor, and two accessories. However these items typically are all about boosting stats, not necessarily providing new skills. Hollow Knight does have a few Charms which boost stats, but most provide unique abilities. Also while players can collect 40+ Charms, they are limited in how many they can equip by their available Charm Notches. That limitation is similar to card games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, where you have plenty of cards to choose from, but are limited by the size of your deck, the number of each card you possess, and how many cards you can play in a turn. Hollow Knight makes it a bit simpler, the Charm Notches are the only limitation.
What makes the Charm system such a great asset is that it has most of the same benefits as skill trees, but a few additional ones too. For example, it provides four forms of progression, where most skill trees have only three. Just like skills, Charms allow you to evolve your character and make them stronger. Players are incentivized to collect all the Charms and complete their set. Each Charm provides new and unique ways to play the game. And additionally, each Charm serves as a reminder of the character’s journey, a marker of the narrative progression. On top of all that, the Charm system is able to avoid many of the common problems that skill trees run into, by keeping personalization flexible, preserving and enhancing gameplay quality, and feeling like a natural part of the world rather than a gamey add on.
The Dream of Personalization
The dream of all role playing games is to have the player truly live through their character. So RPGs have constantly tried to find ways of making their characters feel more personal, like the use of first-person perspective or character customization. The games which kicked off the video RPG craze, Wizardry and Ultima, followed D&D’s design in having players create their character with a predefined race, class, and ability stats. However what has been harder to emulate is the character’s journey and evolution over time. In D&D players have complete control over what actions their characters attempt, and so feel very invested in the characters’ journeys and experience upgrades. That’s not possible in video games since a characters’ actions and journey are limited by what developers are able to program. Where imagination has no limits, technology has them in spades. So instead developers had to find clever ways of making players feel more invested in their characters. Skill development is a major solution for that. By allowing players to invest in skills, and entrenching their characters in those skill investments, those characters felt shaped by the players’ decisions. That works very well for RPGs where the desire is gameplay experiences centered around a player’s choices, but it doesn’t allow for a lot of flexibility.
When a character’s development is rooted in a player’s past decisions, it limits what that character can do in the future and what new choices players can make. So say for example you’ve invested your time into making your character a towering, heavy-blade wielding, barbarian, but later feel that gameplay experience isn’t fun anymore. Well too bad, you’ve already invested your skill points, so if you want another experience you’ll need to restart the game. Now if you want to encourage replayability, this might not be a bad thing, but that’s a gamble. A lot of players may not finish the game the first time around, or may not feel it’s worth playing again. There’s a lot of features that can enhance replay value, but skill trees are heavy handed as they often require replaying large segments of the game rather than individual levels. A lot of games have found clever solutions for this by allowing players to undo certain skill investments. For example many titles have items which allow you to completely reset your skills, like the Manual of Focus in Dragon Age Origins and the Book of Reincarnation in Nioh. Some have more unique solutions, like how after completing a skill branch in Skyrim you can make it legendary, which resets the skill investment and allows the skill points to be reallocated. Some of these solutions work better than others, but by and large they’re afterthoughts.
Hollow Knight’s Charm system doesn’t ever run into this problem. Charms can be changed whenever the player is at a bench, the world’s resting points. This lets players try out different Charms, but makes sure they aren’t pausing in the middle of a fight to hotswap their build. There still needs to be a decision made on which skills to apply to the character, and what combination to use them in, so player input is very much affecting their gameplay. While Charms aren’t set in stone, players still need to live with their choices. Some will use this as an opportunity to hone in on their preferred skill set. Others will just have fun experimenting around with different setups. This design certainly loses a bit of the permanence of the player investment, and therefore may not feel as personal as a skill tree, but that fits within the designers’ desired experience. In a game all about exploration and adventure, it makes sense to allow players to explore the different powers available to them.
There’s another choice that a lot of designers make to overcome this problem, and that is to allow players to simply have all the skills. This has become a favorite among non-RPG skill trees, such as Wolfenstein, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Tomb Raider. These games don’t place as much emphasis on the gameplay feeling personal and the player embodying the character. So skills and abilities act more like rewards and achievements in the game, meant to fuel the completionist fantasy. By the end of these games the protagonists often feel overpowered, and don’t feel at all unique, since everyone can arrive at the same, fully jacked up character. Skill trees don’t feel like the right solution in these cases. The goal of those games isn’t personalized progression, but experiencing the journey of a given character on a given path. Where the end result of RPG characters is a unique player-influenced persona, the end result of these action-adventure games is B.J. Blazkowicz, Lara Croft, Aloy, etc. If they want a skill acquisition system, or want some level of personalization, Hollow Knight shows that skill trees aren’t the only path. Even though players can find all the Charms in the game (with a few minor exceptions in the DLCs), the character isn’t allowed to use all of them at once. By enforcing limitations in the system, designers are forcing players to make decisions and make the journey their own. These constraints also help the system excel at one facet of skill trees that is often left lacking: gameplay progression.
Nailing Gameplay Progression
A core functionality of skill trees is to progress the gameplay, which often ends up being one of their greatest challenges as well. Some skill trees run the risk of making players too powerful, which causes the difficult curve to plunge. So at the end of Far Cry 5 I was able to mow down any enemy no problems, just because I’d unlocked all the skills. The only way to have fun at that point was to play really lazily and aggressively, which was hardly satisfying. On the other end of the spectrum are games which rely on skill trees and experience too heavily, but don’t allow you to progress fast enough. These games end up forcing players to grind for hours on repetitive gameplay, just so they are powerful enough to progress. A lot of JRPGs have that issue, like Xenoblade and Dragon Quest.
What’s clear is that Hollow Knight is finely tuned to make sure players aren’t too powerful. In fact many people will say that it’s difficulty is too high, often making comparisons with the famously painful Dark Souls. However, it’s not a situation where grinding is going to help much. Some items need to be purchased with Geo, the in-game currency, so you can try just killing monsters until you have enough dropped loot to get new Charms. But the main process by which players grow stronger is exploration. Once again Team Cherry doubles down on what their focus is, pushing players to uncover the secrets of Hallownest. Hidden within the world’s depths are health and Soul upgrades, new Spells and Nail Arts, and more Abilities and Charms. This ties the player’s growth and the game’s difficulty to the intended gameplay experience. There definitely is still an element of pure mastery that’s required to complete the game, but boiling it down to just “getting good” isn’t a fair descriptor.
Aside from affecting difficulty, skill trees also play a major role in adding gameplay variety. The best skills provide new ways to experience the game and keep the game fresh throughout. Great examples of this include unlocking new combat maneuvers in Nioh and new supernatural abilities in Dishonored. On the other side of the spectrum are systems that focus on adjusting gameplay, rather than expanding it. Skills in these systems usually read “make X deal more damage” or “increase chances of X happening”, like some seen in Skyrim and Far Cry. The most egregious example of this I’ve seen is in Control, where there is an entire skill tree system dedicated purely to making abilities deal more damage or last longer. A major problem with that design is that acquiring new skills makes older skills redundant. If the mechanic was presented as a leveling system rather than a tree that wouldn’t be . However, by framing each upgrade as a new skill the designers placed emphasis on the skill in isolation, rather than its role as a modifier of an ability. So when a player invests points in the skill, they are inclined to evaluate the quality of their investment based on the skill itself rather than the ability it affects. It’s rare to see a system so heavily entrenched in that type of skill. Most trees have a mix, some skills adding new ways to play, others making older ways more or less viable. Hollow Knight technically sits in that camp, but because of the flexibility it provides places emphasis on variety and player choice.
There are a few charms which provide typical buffs, like Greed (more money), Heart (more health), and Strength (more damage), but are far and away the minority. They’re also given as Fragile, meaning they’re destroyed if the player dies. This makes the other, more robust Charms in the game more attractive, though they’re already quite easy on the eyes. There are those that behave like modifiers but for more unique abilities, like Charms that help spellcasting or weapon range. Others provide different ways to deal damage that didn’t exist before, or new ways to escape damage. Aside from uniqueness in ability, Charms also have different Charm Notch requirements based on how powerful they are. This mirrors card games once again, like how in Magic: The Gathering power powerful cards require more mana to play. In those games this pushes players to strategize on where they’ll spend their resources, just like Hollow Knight. So players can choose whether to equip a few strong Charms, or a lot of weaker ones. All this Charm diversity helps players keep the game fresh since they can change their Charm setup whenever the game feels too stale.
A question worth asking, however, is how much time players should be devoting to character customization, both in the process and the pursuit. In regard to the latter, the desire for a skill or completion of a branch is a strong one, and can drive hours of gameplay. However, that gameplay may not be the best experience. The hours I spent in Skyrim smithing, enchanting, brewing potions, and slowly carrying way too many materials, just to fuel those previous activities, weren’t much of a thrill. Skill trees, and all game mechanics, should encourage players down the path most fun. Luckily Hollow Knight never encourages grinding, and new skills can only be found through the intended experience, exploration. On the other side of that question though is the process, the time spent in menus choosing skills and enhancements. A lot of gamers find that experience to be quite fun, and many skill trees and character build systems cater to that desire. This is hardly a surprise, as an early source of inspiration for skill trees were technology trees from strategy games.
Introduced by Civilization in 1980, tech trees became really popular by the turn of the century before skill trees were ever introduced. They were mainly used for turn-based games, which were almost entirely dedicated to playing in menus, strategizing and devising the optimum setup and plan. This sort of play is also found in character building, as players are often encouraged to spend a long time figuring out which skill to invest in, which item to purchase, which weapon to upgrade, etc. I actually enjoy that, to an extent. It was fun strategizing the way to create the best armory in Skyrim. By maxing out my skills, I was able to brew the best potions, which helped me smith the best weapons and enchant them to be as powerful as they could be. When I finally dawned my complete set of weapons and armor, I felt like one of the game’s divine beings. The problem was that momentary thrill ruined the rest of the game for me. If a designer wants to have a portion of their game dedicated to strategy play, they have to do it in a way that doesn’t harm the other gameplay. A great example of this is Nioh, where I spent plenty of time in menus creating my perfect character build. However that process was made separate from the rest of the gameplay. Since accessing the menu doesn’t pause in-game time, you need to be in a safe area to use them. Other menus, like purchasing items and upgrading weapons, can only be done between missions. This ensures that the pulse-pounding action of the main gameplay experience is never disrupted. Additionally limitations are placed on what you can achieve through just strategizing in menus, so it doesn’t dilute the rest of the game. Hollow Knight follows a similar pattern, since switching Charms can only be done at rest points, away from the action. However, through the system’s simplicity, Team Cherry decides not to prioritize in-depth strategizing within menus, so players never spend too much time choosing which charms to equip.
Despite the simplicity of it’s mechanics, the Charm system manages to create a lot of depth with the sheer number of Charms and combinations. This runs the risk of being overwhelming, which is also a problem skill trees face. Many, with the number of skills and branches, tend to leave players at a loss for what they should be spending points and time on. Skyrim has 18 skill branches, organized into categories for The Mage, The Warrior, and The Thief. For players starting off, that can be a lot to process, and it’s easy for them to end up investing in areas that they regret long term. And then there’s games like The Path of Exile, which presents players a giant web of 1,325 passive skills. Though they’re also divided into different sections and only a handful are available at the start, just seeing what’s available can be frightening to the uninitiated. If in Hollow Knight players were presented with all the Charms at once I’m sure they’d also feel uncomfortable. However Team Cherry wisely makes sure to feed players Charms one at a time and to keep undiscovered charms a mystery. This helps encourage players to try out each one, since it’s human nature to be fascinated by the new and unknown. Then by the time they’ve found enough Charms to experiment and find their unique build, they can do so with confidence.
Now to summarize the Charm system’s effect on the gameplay: it slowly introduces new mechanics, adds layers and possibilities to the gameplay in an approachable and brief manner, keeps the game fresh, and encourages exploration. Sure, it may not provide the strategic thrills of some skill trees, or the sheer number of abilities of others, but in doing so it outperforms most of them in the areas that Team Cherry prioritizes. Additionally, they’re able to make their system achieve what few, if any, skill trees can manage, drive the narrative progression.
Tokens of a Journey
One of the cardinal sins of skill trees is how disconnected they often feel from the games they’re in. Similar character enhancements like acquiring or crafting equipment and learning spells or recipes feel like natural parts of the games world. So take Horizon Zero Dawn for example, another game where the focus is understanding and exploring the incredible world. A lot of systems in that game focus on gathering resources from the natural world and machines to craft and purchase weapons, ammo, armor and more. All those systems feel connected to the world in a tactile and tangible way, and characters within the game will often reference them. Even if you need to sift through game menus to manage these systems, the actions you do feel connected to actions your character is doing within the game’s world. However, in stark contrast with those mechanics, is the character’s skill tree. It’s never explained or commented on in the world, and just feels like an extra feature developers felt would be cool. This reflects a problem with a lot of skill trees, because unlike equipment or items, they are representative of concepts that are immaterial, things characters have learned. Some skill trees are better at this than others, like the weapon-based skill tree in Nioh or the profession-based skill tree of Stardew Valley. What’s great about those is their focus on particular aspects of the character, and how they promote the intended experience of their said games. However they still have the flaw of being tied to this unnatural idea of points and/or levels.
Skill trees rely on player investment that often takes the form of some gamey quantity that’s disconnected from the game’s world. Experience based skill trees rely on counting XP and levels. Skill point based skill trees rely on those said points. Training based skill trees typically rely on levels and experience as well, as is the case in Stardew Valley, but specific to each skill or branch rather than the whole character. This concept harkens all the way back to Dungeons and Dragons, which also relies on levels, and is a fundamental flaw of skill trees. There are a few games which try to explain those quantities within the context of the world, like how Bloodborne explains the currency used to purchase items and level up as Blood Echoes, "The Bloody memories of those cursed by the plague of the Beast". Those are few and far between, and only partially successful. Team Cherry decided to stay away adding quantities like that into the game. When specifically asked about the lack of enemy hit points and skill trees they said “we didn’t want it to be a very ‘numbers-y’ game.” Therefore Hollow Knight’s skirts all these problems by using in-game items that are collected within the world itself, instead of esoteric quantities.
This leads to the final, fantastic aspect of the Charm system, how it fits within the context of the world. While a handful of Charms are simply purchased, most Charms are acquired through exploring the world of Hallownest. Some Charms are simply found in an interesting location, others are given after completing a task, and many are won in combat. Each one serves as a reminder of the knight’s trials and tribulations, a token of it’s travels. And since the Charms aren’t explained ahead of time, each one feels like a genuine discovery of something new. Additionally, since there’s no mediary of skill or experience points disconnecting the gameplay and the ability, players are incentivized to explore the world. Where in most games experience and skill points can be awarded through a variety of tasks, and then spent on a variety of skills, there’s no direct link towards a specific gameplay experience and an acquired skill. Alternatively in Hollow Knight, if a player wants to get specific Charm, they need to have the specific experience the designers intended. This way Team Cherry is able to make sure the Charm system is focused not only serving as a progressor of the character, completion, and gameplay, but the narrative as well.
Hollow Knight has a mysterious and rich lore that fans love diving into, and the Charms do a great job as a conduit for it. Take for example the Dashmaster Charm, usually acquired early on in the game. The Charm is found at the entrance to the Royal Waterways beside a statue of its namesake, The Dashmaster. Little is known about the eccentric bug, but when its Charm is worn its legacy lives on through the titular knight. Another great example is the Spell Twister, found only after defeating the Soul Master. That fight is one of the more difficult in the game, and the Charm serves as a reminder of your victory and the tragic history of the Soul Sanctum. These Charms are physical representations of the world’s lore and the knight’s journey. So as the knight progresses through the game it increasingly carries the weight of the world with it, figuratively and physically. This level of narrative integration as never, and likely will never, be achieved by a mere skill tree.
Soul Centered Design
The Charm system isn’t going to become the next big industry trend, and that is exactly why it’s incredible. The system is so ingrained in the Hollow Knight experience, so specific to Team Cherry’s vision, it can’t just be copied and pasted into every other game. The benefits it has are only available because they make sense within the context of the game and work towards the intended gameplay experience. Skill trees on other hand are a relatively generalized concept, as every implementation of them is somewhat unique. Most skill trees do suffer from common problems that the Charm system avoids, whether it’s their lack of flexibility or weak impact on the gameplay. Some games are able to implement skill trees that don’t run into those problems, but even then they are handicapped by issues inherent to the concept, like the disconnect from the game’s world and narrative. The Charm system does sacrifice a bit of personalization by going its own route, but that’s okay because it doesn’t need it. The focus should be on fitting the solution to the game, not the game to the solution.
Once people started getting their hands on Hollow Knight, the industry immediately categorized it as a metroidvania, and soon crowned it a modern masterpiece of the genre. However when asked about that, Team Cherry said “We pretty much shied away completely from describing the game ourselves, in marketing and stuff, as a metroidvania...We just said we're going to make an adventure in this big world, and let's build an interesting world with lots of things to discover and see, and hopefully keep people engaged throughout.” Their focus was never on following conventions or letting trends and precedents dictate their decisions. While they include Metroid and Castlevania among their inspirations, along with Zelda and Faxanadu, what they drew from them was the feeling of discovery rather than trying to emulate specific mechanics or systems. They also never tried to emulate modern trends, giving the advice: “Don’t worry too much about things like ‘I really like a brand new mechanic’.” They started small, with a focus on discovery and exploration, and then built a world, systems, and mechanics around that to layer on top of that idea. They added what worked, cut off what didn’t, and never allowed themselves to lose sight of their vision.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Hollow Knight. The Charm system alone demonstrates how skills development can be flexible, provide gameplay variety, and carry narrative heft. Beyond that there’s great takeaways from the level design, platforming variety, world building and more. However, the greatest, singular lesson from the game is the importance of a vision-centric design ethic. Instead of letting themselves be burdened by precedent or trendiness, Team Cherry focused on delivering on their vision for the game. Breaking down how the Charm system is superior to skill trees only works in the context of Hollow Knight, and that’s all it needed to do. It’s not a controversial opinion to say there are a lot of bad skill trees, but rather on trying to make them better, let’s just stop trying to make them. Rather than focusing on replacing skill trees, designers should focus on simply building towards their vision and addressing their games needs. Too many game designers, and in a broader sense product designers, arrive at a solution before really understanding their problems. That doesn’t mean you can build upon old solutions and old games, nothing under the sun is truly unique. The key is to be inspired by previous generations, but to build something new. Cut away the past, shed away its carcass, and carry on its soul.
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