My favorite game is Hollow Knight (2017), the first indie game I ever played. What affected me most was not a single plot twist or boss fight, but the way the game uses level design, music, and environmental storytelling to evoke melancholy and curiosity.
At the beginning, Hollow Knight intentionally withholds information. There are few explicit objectives, and the player wanders through unfamiliar caverns with little understanding of the world. Rather than being frustrating, this uncertainty creates a desire to explore. That feeling reaches its peak upon entering the City of Tears. The city is vast and beautiful, yet almost completely abandoned. Rain falls endlessly as Christopher Larkin’s haunting soundtrack plays, communicating a sense of loss without relying on dialogue or cutscenes. The city itself becomes a piece of storytelling, showing the decline of Hallownest through its architecture, silence, and atmosphere.
What I admire most is how the game balances this quiet melancholy with exhilarating combat. The precise movement and responsive controls make every encounter feel deliberate, allowing challenging boss fights to become satisfying tests of skill instead of frustrating obstacles. This contrast between peaceful exploration and intense action gives the world emotional depth.
Hollow Knight showed me that game design can communicate powerful emotions through mechanics, environments, and sound alone. It convinced me that games can tell stories just as effectively as books or films, often by saying very little.
