Wait... Did Ori and the Will of the Wisps copy Hollow Knight?

On March 11th, 2020, Moon Studios released
Ori and the Will of the Wisps on Windows and

Xbox One. Will of the Wisps is the follow
up to Ori and the Blind Forest which released

five years earlier on March 11th, 2015. And
while Ori and the Blind Forest is a great

game in its own right, Moon Studios pushed
the Ori formula to its limit in Will of the

Wisps.

Moon Studios grew from a team of about fifteen
employees in 2015 to over 80 as they worked

on the second Ori game. Since their inception
in 2010, Moon Studios has allowed the majority

of its employees to work remotely from their
homes, across what is now 43 different countries.

This flexibility lets them hire talent from
all over the world. Artists and animators

from companies like Pixar, Disney and Blizzard
joined in to help craft Ori’s world and

characters. Chris McEntee, who worked on the
platformer Rayman Legends was scooped up to

work on level design. Moon Studios even hired
Milton Guasti, the developer behind AM2R,

a popular Metroid 2 fangame. Well, popular
with most people.

This larger crew helped make Ori and the Will
of the Wisps even bigger and better than its

predecessor, with more characters, more features,
monkeys, refined controls, and more levels

as well as an entirely new combat system.
Ori can now beat the ever loving crap out

of enemies with a large arsenal of weapons,
and the game sports huge, intricate boss battles

for the player to test their skills against.
In the end, all of this work paid off. Reviewers

heaped praise all over Will of the Wisps,
and outlets everywhere discussed how Moon

Studios had crafted a masterpiece. And that
praise is well deserved. If you take nothing

else from this video, let it be that Ori and
the Will of the Wisps is one of the most polished,

impressive Metroidvanias ever made.

But, there was another thing people were saying
about Will of the Wisps, and it started well

before the game even released. After the Ori
and the Will of the Wisps gameplay trailer

was revealed at E3 2018, one of the lead game
directors at Moon Studios, Thomas Mahler,

gave an interview with the Daily Star, explaining
that they were looking to make the perfect

Metroidvania. This involved studying and researching
the games that came out since Ori and the

Blind Forest. Mahler mentioned by name two
of these Metroidvanias specifically: Axiom

Verge and Hollow Knight.

This interview was shared on ResetEra, an
internet forum dedicated to discussing video

games. The thread contained a variety of opinions
surrounding the strengths and weaknesses of

both Ori and the Blind Forest and Hollow Knight.

Mahler, a regular on internet forums such
as ResetEra and NeoGAF, posted in the thread

as well, responding to comments and questions
about the upcoming game. One user, going by

the name “Jeffrey Guang” expressed concern
about Ori and the Will of the Wisps copying

too much from Hollow Knight.

I hope Moon Studio doesn't lose sight on what
makes the first game that extra special by

focusing too much on replayability.

...Please don't be a Hollow Knight clone,
which will be disappointingly hollow.

Thomas Mahler responded to this post as well,
assuring “Jeffrey” that their concerns

were nothing to worry about:

...don’t worry about us copying others too
much - we always look at what happens outside

our team, but I don’t think people will
make many connections to Hollow Knight and

the likes.

And well... Then the game came out.

Experience the new look and feel of the Ori
series’ second outing. Where they took a

glance at Hollow Knight and said “I guess
we could do that.”

In fact Ori and the Will of the Wisps takes
plenty of cues from the other major metroidvanias

of the past few years. That’s right, I’m
talking about Hollow Knight.

The first game had one original thought in
the form of having you manually plonk down

your save points which was slightly wobbly
in execution so naturally it’s been kicked

to the curb in favor of making a game more
like Hollow Knight.

If you haven’t played these games, to be
a little bit reductive for a second, this

might piss people off, but the base of it
does feel a little bit like Hollow Knight...

Let’s start by going over all the Hollow
Knight ideas they borrowed, which hey, I applaud

Moon Studios for doing. That’s a good model
to borrow ideas from.

If I failed, I knew it was because of my own
mistakes. Huh, that reminds me of another

game. Oh yeah!

I mentioned that Will of the Wisps not only
features swordplay, but a shard system similar

to Hollow Knight's charms.

Will of the Wisps introduces a system that
hues out much more closely to the charms in

Hollow Knight.

So it's got a similar badge system…

I think people have made this comparison,
and it’s probably fair, to Hollow Knight’s

badge system. A little bit similar.

Very similar.

Speaking of exploration, there's a map maker
that helps you chart each new area, in case

you're looking for another bit of Hollow Knight
influence.

And there’s an NPC hidden around the world
that sells you maps.

It's even got the one mapmaker dude you keep
running into in the world who sells you a

map for the current area.

But that’s not the only Hollow Knight influence.
One of the skills is basically the exact same

healing skill.

Moon Studios must have looked at Hollow Knight’s
freakishly creepy Deepnest and were like “Hmm…

can we top that?” Well they didn’t, but
they tried.

Because Hollow Knight was popular and did
well and has therefore gained the favor of

the giant money machine, all praise its benevolent
wisdom.

So it’s pretty clear the team enjoyed Hollow
Knight. Not a bad thing, it’s a great game.

The comparisons to Hollow Knight came immediately,
with several users on ResetEra mentioning

that they could see the clear inspirations
from Hollow Knight. One user going by the

name “Mindsale” even created a thread
titled “Is Ori & The Will O’ The Wisps

Pastiche or plagiarist?”. Thomas Mahler
jumped into the thread clarifying that Hollow

Knight wasn’t really the inspiration for
Will of the Wisps, instead citing games like

Final Fantasy VII, Dark Souls and The Legend
of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The reaction

to Mahler’s posts were mixed, with a number
of users actually disagreeing with him and

calling him a liar and a salty manbaby. In
a surprising turn of events for an online

gaming forum, the entire thread turned into
a complete dumpster fire. Things became so

heated that the thread was locked by a moderator
just over three hours after it was created.

A few months later, the other lead developer
at Moon Studios, Gennadiy Korol, addressed

the similarities during a Reddit AMA. Korol
explained that while they expected some Hollow

Knight comparisons, a lot of the systems in
Will of the Wisps that people compare to Hollow

Knight already existed in early prototypes
dating back to 2015.

So what exactly is going on here? Mahler has
said in a number of interviews that they studied

Hollow Knight and that the game inspired them.
The comparisons have been pointed out numerous

times, by fans and reviewers all over the
internet. But at the same time, both co-founders

of Moon Studios say that Hollow Knight wasn’t
the inspiration for much of anything in Will

of the Wisps. What’s the cause of this discrepancy?
How similar is Ori and the Will of the Wisps

to Hollow Knight?

Before we dive into the comparisons surrounding
Will of the Wisps, there’s a whole other

issue that needs to be discussed. It seems
when the discussion of inspiration and borrowing

ideas in gaming comes up, a lot of people
immediately jump to words like “rip-off”

and “clone”. And discussions immediately
becomes hostile. So let’s take a bit of

time to talk about what inspiration and imitation
between games actually looks like.

The question of what constitutes a rip-off
is hard to answer. That ResetEra thread I

mentioned earlier is a good testament to that.
And it’s a question that has been brought

up many times before. In fact, the issue of
rip-offs in the games industry has been discussed

by some of the greatest minds of this generation.

Alright, I gotta set the record straight.
Something is really pissing me off… If we're

gonna call stuff a rip-off, let's call it
what it is. Notch took another game, ripped

it off, created Minecraft.

This is Keemstar. Most well known for his
entertainment and social news YouTube channel

DramaAlert, Keemstar is a very polarizing
online celebrity. But before Keemstar became

the big YouTube star he is today, his first
big break came from handling the PR and marketing

for the 2011 Xbox Live Arcade game, FortressCraft.
If you were to take a quick glance at FortressCraft,

you might think it’s just a rip-off of another
game that was popular around that same time:

Minecraft. But let’s take a closer look,
and use this game as a case study for what

makes people perceive a game as a rip-off.
So let’s hear the pitch for FortressCraft.

Here’s Keemstar explaining the game in an
interview with MLDxGaming:

So just tell us exactly what is FortressCraft?

FortressCraft is a genre that was developed
a long time ago. It was actually a genre that

doesn't have a name. A game was the inspiration
for Minecraft which has been very very successful,

but it's only on the PC. In the same genre
of block building, if you want to call it

that, we've developed the game FortressCraft,
which is very similar but very unique and

different at the same time.

Keemstar’s first point here is that Minecraft
didn’t create the block-building genre,

but itself took ideas from another game. This
is absolutely true. Minecraft’s creator,

Markus Persson, or Notch, was heavily inspired
by another game, called Infiniminer, when

creating Minecraft. Keemstar’s point was
echoed by the lead developer of FortressCraft,

Adam Sawkins. According to Sawkins in an Ars
Technica article, the similarities found between

FortressCraft and Minecraft are simply part
of the voxel, sandbox genre both games belong

to. Sawkins, who had previously worked on
games from the Formula 1 and Burnout series,

compared this to the racing game genre, saying:

All racing games have cars, tracks, tarmac,
trees, armco, AI, overtaking, braking, chicanes,

and chevrons. To remove any of those things
means it's no longer a racing game, apart

from maybe trees. If I were to remove voxel
rendering, infinitely mutable worlds, perlin

generation, or—as one YouTube comment accused
me of stealing from Minecraft—grass, then

I no longer have a 'Minecraft clone.' I also
no longer have a game!

Notch didn’t see it that way. In that same
Ars Technica article, he shared his thoughts

on games like FortressCraft and Terraria:

Both FortressCraft and Terraria appear to
be inspired by Minecraft, which in turn was

inspired by many other games, including Infiniminer,
Dwarf Fortress, and Dungeon Keeper. However,

I do not believe you can achieve something
great or interesting by merely attempting

to emulate something successful. It becomes
especially embarrassing if you publicly deny

any inspiration when it's painfully clear
how much of a copy it is… FortressCraft

is an obvious attempt to just take something
popular and clone it as closely as possible.

I still think it's important that people are
allowed and able to do things like that, but

it's hardly graceful.

Accusations like this haunted Keemstar and
Sawkins throughout FortressCraft’s relevance.

Keemstar tried his best to dispel these criticisms...

Don't fucking talk shit about me and my fucking
game, or I'm gonna fucking talk shit about

your whole goddamn crew…

But Public Relations wasn’t really Keemstar’s
forte back then. Sawkins directly responded

to Notch’s comments with an open letter
detailing how FortressCraft had unique features

that separated it from Minecraft such as more
detailed graphics with shaders and reflections,

rayguns... trampolines. Sawkins also said:

FortressCraft is ‘basically Minecraft’
in the same way that Minecraft is ‘basically

Infiniminer’. It’s just that Minecraft
has been out a hell of a lot longer, and I

have an enormous list of plans and ideas I
want to put into FortressCraft as time goes

on.

It’s undeniable that both Minecraft and
FortressCraft started out as clones. If you

look at the video description for the very
first video of FortressCraft uploaded to YouTube,

Sawkins wrote in the description:

Minecraft clone, running on the Xbox...

If you look at the first Minecraft video Notch
ever posted, the description reads:

This is a very early test of an Infiniminer
clone I'm working on.

So what is the actual difference here? Why
does Minecraft get away with cloning Infiniminer,

while FortressCraft gets flogged and crucified?
Well, for one, Minecraft expanded new gameplay

mechanics not found in Infiniminer. Infiniminer
was an abandoned team based competitive mining

game. Notch took those elements and added
survival and RPG mechanics, to transcend beyond

Infiniminer and create something new. FortressCraft
was pretty much just Minecraft’s creative

mode, with a few game modes like tag thrown
in as well. But if you seriously look at these

games, it’s hard to believe that FortressCraft
innovated on Minecraft anywhere near as much

as Minecraft innovated on Infiniminer. Sawkins'
defense to this point was that FortressCraft

hasn’t been around as long as Minecraft,
so many of the unique ideas Sawkins had planned

for the game hadn’t been added yet, stating
that FortressCraft was just the first chapter.

FortressCraft is a novel with chapters unwritten.

But this point leads into the bigger reason
why I think so many people called FortressCraft

a rip-off. For whatever new ideas and mechanics
it might have added to the voxel survival

sandbox genre, it was clearly overshadowed
by the perception that FortressCraft was rushed

and unpolished, banking its success entirely
on its similarity to Minecraft.

It seems like FortressCraft’s actual main
selling point was that it would be like Minecraft,

except unlike Minecraft, it was on the Xbox
Live Arcade. You have to remember this was

2011, which was like a million years ago.
Minecraft wasn’t running on every device

known to man yet. There were a lot of young
kids out there who couldn’t play Minecraft,

and there were YouTubers like Keemstar who
had built their entire fanbases around this

identity of playing Xbox Live and being a
hardcore console gamer. So FortressCraft was

the perfect game for people like Keemstar
to market to their primarily console gamer

audience. Just watch the official FortressCraft
launch trailer and you’ll see what I mean.

This ain't about me. This is about the console
gamer. This is about Xbox.

I am not a PC gamer. I have not been a PC
gamer and never will be. I am a console gamer.

That is a reality. That's the way it is.

But when I looked into it, I found out it's
not exactly Minecraft. But this... I've been

waiting as long as everybody else for this
to come out; checking every day. I stayed

up till 12 when I heard that it was supposed
to c-

It’s also clear that they knew people were
going to call it a rip-off so they tried to

deflect as much as possible. Even the game’s
trailer brings up how this game technically

isn’t ripping off Minecraft.

Getting kinda worked up over FortressCraft
being like Minecraft. I haven't like, looked

into it or anything, but I think Minecraft
is based on another game itself.

In the end, FortressCraft performed incredibly
well, selling over 2 million copies. It was

clear that the game did well financially.
But as time has passed, Keemstar has spoken

a bit more candidly about his real thoughts
on FortressCraft in terms of its design and

quality, saying in 2020:

That was my first big, big break. Not a good
game, shitty game, but people bought it.

It was a Minecraft clone but it was the only
one available on Xbox, so of course fucking

kids are gonna buy it.

Brilliant, brilliant move.

As for Sawkins, he actually continued development
on FortressCraft, creating a sequel called

FortressCraft Evolved, which blended the standard
Minecraft-type gameplay with Factorio, mixing

in logistics and tower defense mechanics to
make something more unique. So it seems like

Sawkins was honest when he said he had a lot
of ideas to make FortressCraft different from

Minecraft. As for FortressCraft: Chapter 1,
I don’t think people will ever view it as

all that innovative or unique, and it will
go down in history as one of the many video

game clones created to cash in on what was
popular at the time. Sawkins actually re-released

the original FortressCraft on Steam to celebrate
the game’s 10th anniversary. So you can

check it out if you want, if you have a PC
that is...

So what can we take away from that little
example? First, games take ideas from other

games all of the time. It’s perfectly natural
and it’s even responsible for the creation

of one of the greatest video games ever made.
Second, video games that exist within the

same genre are bound to have similarities.
Racing games all have cars. First Person Shooters

are all in first person. Roguelike are all
fucking bullshit. But a game needs to do at

least something unique and different from
other entries in the genre, otherwise, it

might be called a rip-off.

Finally, the single biggest part to what makes
a game seem like a rip-off is if it feels

rushed, poorly made, and is released shortly
after another specific, popular game in the

same genre. Even if a lot of the comparisons
between those games might boil down to conventions

in said genre. This is especially true when
the genre itself is very young and undefined.

This is why early FPS games were called Doom-clones
and early third-person open world games were

called GTA-clones.

But what if the genre is old? Minecraft and
FortressCraft were very fresh experiences

when they first came out, so what about the
genres that have been around a long time?

How does that impact our ability to talk about
rip-offs and inspiration? Since Ori and the

Will of the Wisps and Hollow Knight are both
Metroidvanias, let’s talk about the Metroidvania

genre as a whole.

The word “Metroidvania” is a portmanteau
of the words “Metroid” and “Castlevania”

which themselves are portmanteaus of the words
“Metro”, “Android”, “Castle” and

“Transylvania”. And somehow this portmanteau
of a portmanteau, a portmantwo, if you will,

now describes an entire genre of 2D action-adventure
platform games which feature open worlds and

power up based progression systems.

It’s safe to say that Metroid, released
in 1986 in Japan, was one of the earliest

proper “Metroidvania” games. Metroid featured
a non-linear side-scrolling world that the

player primarily progressed through by collecting
permanent upgrades such as the morph ball,

high jump and missiles. This set it apart
from other adventure platform games at the

time like Zelda 2 and Castlevania 2, which
relied more on finding key items and solving

cryptic puzzles.

Other games such as Blaster Master and Wonder
Boy also used this Metroidvania formula, but

it wasn’t until Super Metroid released in
1994 that the genre really had its founding.

Super Metroid set the stage for what a modern
Metroidvania game would look like, with a

giant map and ability upgrades. Three years
later, Konami released Castlevania: Symphony

of the Night. The previous Castlevania games
were straightforward level-based romps, with

Castlevania 2 experimenting a bit with an
open world and RPG elements. In general, these

games were also hard as balls.

According to the assistant director for Symphony
of the Night, Koji Igarashi, they wanted to

keep the length of previous Castlevania games
without making this game as difficult. So

they looked to a different game as inspiration.
Igarashi explains this in a GDC talk back

from 2014. Well, a translator explains:

We really wanted to extend the life of the
game and the one game that popped up in our

heads was Legend of Zelda, an exploration
filled action game. Pretty much our entire

team, including myself, were huge fans of
the game and wanted to make something very

similar. So now you know, the origin of inspiration
actually wasn’t metroid. … and of course

I have the utmost respect for that game, and
the folks behind it.

So as it turns out, Symphony of the Night
naturally created a Metroid-like game just

by trying to make a side-scroller that progressed
like The Legend of Zelda. But people who played

Symphony of the Night and the games that followed
it like Circle of the Moon and Aria of Sorrow

saw similarities to Metroid. People started
calling these Metroid-like Castlevania games

“Metroidvanias” with the earliest instance
I could find of someone using the phrase dating

all the way back to the pre-civilized world
of 2001.

And thus the grandparents of the genre were
born, and the term Metroidvania was eventually

co-opted to mean any game that follows the
design philosophies of the Metroid and Castlevania

games. And… There's a lot of debate about
whether or not it’s a good term to even

use, with people suggesting alternatives like
Mapformers, Platform-Adventures. Platform-RPGS,

non-linear 2D action platformers, action adventure
2D platformer adventure-like non-linear action-RPG-like

non-closed-world side-scrollers, and open-world
Mario games.

Regardless of if you like the term or not,
one thing the phrase “Metroidvania” does

do well is demonstrate how much these games
are influenced by those two franchises. But

at the same time, they will mix other games
in as well. Axiom Verge drew ideas from other

NES classics such as Contra, Bionic Commando,
Rygar and Blaster Master. Guacamelee, originally

inspired by another indie game, Castle Crashers,
combined the Metroidvania genre with brawler

elements. Ori and the Blind Forest mixed the
Metroidvania genre with the more fluid platforming

found in Super Meat Boy. Want to play a Metroidvania
but with Pokemon? There’s Monster Sanctuary.

Maybe a Metroid pinball game? There’s Yoku’s
Island Express. Metroidvania with anime girls?

Actually, I don’t think any of those exist.

And then, of course, there’s Hollow Knight.
Developed by Team Cherry, most of what we

see in Hollow Knight comes from the minds
of William Pellen and Ari Gibson. Aside from

the Metroid and Castlevania games, Hollow
Knight took inspiration from a lot of old

school NES and Super Nintendo games like Mega
Man X and Zelda II. William Pellen explains:

We’ve stolen a lot of ideas.

But there was one game in particular that
people saw a lot in Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is a metroidvania souls-like
game.

This is more of a metroidvania souls-like.

Hollow Knight takes a lot of cues from the
Dark Souls series...

It’s really the Dark Souls of games that
are trying to be the Dark Souls of Dark Souls

without actually being Dark Souls...

Dark Souls…

Dark Souls…

Dark Souls…

Mario…

Hollow Knight is pretty much just Dark Souls.

Of course, there was a certain craze back
in the day of comparing everything to Dark

Souls. But the comparisons to Hollow Knight
are probably more apt verses something like

Cuphead. After all, a lot of people seem to
consider Dark Souls a Metroidvania as well,

at least in some vague sense.

The original Dark Souls game is also a Metroidvania
game, just in 3 dimensions instead of 2.

Dark Souls, itself a cousin of the Metroidvania…

And I love Symphony of the Night, but no non-2D
games have captured the essence of Metroidvania,

I'd argue since Metroid Prime, and then I
knew where we all were and was free hereafter

to happily halberd hellspawn.

This just shows how vague and malleable terms
like “souls-like” and “Metroidvania”

are to a lot of people. It’s this vague
definition of difficulty and exploration.

Is trying to find the bathroom in a crowded
mall after eating Chipotle a “Metroidvania

souls-like” experience? Team Cherry has
never really championed Dark Souls as one

of their main inspirations, but they do acknowledge
it.

Maybe a bit of Dark Souls in there as well.
That type of stuff.

When pressed, they usually downplay the comparisons
a lot of people tend to make, saying that

Hollow Knight feels similar to Dark Souls
because both games draw on early Nintendo

games.

You have a new generation of people who haven't
played Nintendo games, who haven't played

those early games. So they don't have the
touchstones like Zelda 2 to talk about and

it's much easier to say "like Souls" as a
capsule, as a modern game, that emphasises

all of those qualities of the unknown, and
discovery and challenge and overcoming challenge

to access new areas.

Although they do admit that the corpse running
mechanic in Dark Souls directly inspired what

they did in Hollow Knight. They’ve also
cited the Rally mechanic from Bloodborne as

a loose inspiration for Hollow Knight’s
soul and focus system.

When you hit an enemy in Bloodborne, you regain
a bit of health... There's a parallel there

with our soul system which is just that you
hit, and you stock the soul, which you then

use to heal at your own rate.

However, there was another comparison some
people made during the game’s early days.

A game that appears to have had no influence
over Team Cherry: Ori and the Blind Forest.

Again, Hollow Knight's cartoony, slightly
Ori and the Blind Forest, esc style...

The atmosphere created in this Ori and the
Blind Forest meets Salt and Sanctuary artstyle...

The comparisons to Ori were not quite as prevalent
as the comparisons to Dark Souls, but they

happened enough to warrant a comment from
Team Cherry themselves.

When you're coming out as an unknown developer
and you have no game, people have no touchstones.

Everyone who saw this game, or I’m not going
to say everyone, but certainly, there was

a lot of sentiment which was “Oh, it looks
like that game Ori.” Which we’ve never

played. But it looks fantastic and apparently
it is fantastic by all accounts and I’m

sure we’ll be able to get some time once
we…

There’s a sequel soon so we’ll just wait
‘till then

We’ll wait till the sequel and buy a bundle
pack or something.

So even before Ori and the Will of the Wisps
was being compared to Hollow Knight, Hocllow

Knight was being compared to Ori and the Blind
Forest. Which begs the question. Why have

the claims surrounding Will of the Wisps been
so much louder? There’s certainly a case

to be made that Will of the Wisps shares more
design elements with Hollow Knight than that

game did with Blind Forest. But I think another
big factor in all this is the fact that the

Hollow Knight fanbase is much bigger than
the Ori fanbase. For example, the Hollow Knight

subreddit and Discord server are both over
10 times larger than the Ori counterparts.

That’s not to say that Hollow Knight is
a better game than either Ori 1 or 2. But

I think it contributes to why so many more
people are seeing similarities between Hollow

Knight and other games. And I’m not just
talking about Will of the Wisps.

In December of 2019, Nintendo showed off the
trailer for a game called Gleamlight. This

game was developed by a Japanese company called
DICO. The company is a decent sized publisher

who even helped with the development of another
recent Metroidvania game, Bloodstained: Ritual

of the Night: Koji Igarasha’s spiritual
successor to Symphony of the Night.

The immediate reaction to Gleamlight’s trailer
was that it was a cheap knock off of Hollow

Knight. The game’s publisher, D3, addressed
these accusations in a Polygon article saying:

Gleamlight is still in development and it’s
not final at this moment… The dev team is

aware of Hollow Knight but the game has nothing
to do with that title.

Very few seemed to actually believe this statement.
In his review of the game, NintendoLife reviewer

Stuart Gipp said the following:

Gleamlight's developers have claimed that
their game isn't a rip-off of Hollow Knight.

They're right. If it was a rip-off, then it'd
share some kind of inspiration, some mechanical

flair. The creativity, the baseline of enjoyable
moments, some solid fundamentals. It's all

missing. It's not a rip-off of Hollow Knight,
it's a stupid child's drawing of it.

So what exactly is it about Gleamlight that
makes people call it a rip-off? Much like

FortressCraft, the game looks very rushed
and unpolished, and it was released somewhat

recently after Hollow Knight’s huge success.
On top of that, the game shares a number of

similarities. They are both platformers with
somewhat dark atmospheres and enigmatic protagonists.

They both feature a melee combat system where
the primary method of attack is a short range

sword swipe. And some of the areas bear a
resemblance to the areas found in Hollow Knight…

but is any of this really all that unique?

With FortressCraft it was a lot easier to
notice, because there were very few games

that looked like Minecraft in terms of game
design. But the things that Gleamlight has

in common with Hollow Knight are not very
new ideas. For example, Hollow Knight’s

moody atmosphere is not particularly original,
with some early impressions calling the game

Tim-Burton-like.

It brings to mind "The Nightmare Before Christmas"
almost.

It's a little bit "Tim Burton".

There’s definitely going to be a connection
to that.

It’s got that like “Tim Burton”, or
gothic vibe to it. That type of thing.

And remember how people compared Hollow Knight
to Ori and the Blind Forest when it was coming

out? A lot of that was probably due to the
fact that both games were non-pixel art based

metroidvanias featuring small-sized protagonists.

As for combat, melee combat in a Metroidvania
isn’t particularly unique either. The Castlevania

games have primarily used melee combat as
well. Hollow Knight’s combat seems to draw

somewhat from the side scrolling combat of
Zelda 2, which in case you didn’t know,

is really old.

As for areas… Well forests in real life
are green, so I don’t think that’s fair

to say that’s a rip off. And there are purple
crystals in the real world called Amethyst

crystals. So that’s not really that unique
of a concept to Hollow Knight either. I mean,

come on, have people not been playing 1.17?

On top of all of this, Gleamlight is barely
even a Metroidvania. I know that term is vague,

but Gleamlight doesn’t really emphasize
exploration in any way. You travel through

each room linearly, and there’s no map at
all. There are power ups that you gain but

it really is the bare minimum.

All that being said, it’s certainly possible
that Gleamlight was just an attempt to cash

in on Hollow Knight’s popularity. But if
that’s the case, then the developers really

had no idea what it was that made Hollow Knight
such a good game. Honestly, I think this is

less to do with developer intentions and more
to do with how we as gamers discuss video

games.

One of Hollow Knight’s first exposures to
a wide audience came in 2015. On November

19th, a friend of the dev team and the voice
of Sly, Graig, posted about Hollow Knight

on Reddit, linking to the Ferocious Foes trailer
on YouTube. This post received over 25,000

upvotes, and hundreds of comments came flooding
in. And what were people saying? Well, they

were comparing Hollow Knight to other games.
Dark Souls. Super Metroid. Bloodborne. Symphony

of the Night. Ori and the Blind Forest. Dust
Elysian. Castle Crashers. Shovel Knight. Child

of Light. Mario. Uhh… Bleach.

How many of these games did Team Cherry actually
take inspiration from? Like 3. Whenever we

see a new video game, our brains immediately
try to find some kind of analogy, other games

that resemble it, to help us get an idea of
what the game is like. Our brains are pattern

recognition machines, seeing things even if
they aren’t even there. Anyone who’s been

online in the last year should know this painfully
well. So it’s pretty much impossible for

new games to not be compared to old ones.

Gleamlight was dropped into the limelight
in the middle of an Indie World direct, and

I can tell you, a large chunk of the Hollow
Knight fanbase watches Indie World directs

in the futile hope that there might be even
just a monochrome of Silksong news presented.

So when Gleamlight popped up, and shared a
few superficial similarities with Hollow Knight,

the comparisons happened immediately.

Now those comments on Hollow Knight from 2015
were mostly positive. There were still a few

people calling Hollow Knight a rip-off, but
in general people were kind to the game. And

that was probably because Hollow Knight looked
like a pretty good game. As for Gleamlight,

well… I’m gonna have to say something
mean here, so if there are any developers

at the Japanese company DICO watching this
video, please plug your ears. Gleamlight’s

trailer looked really shitty. Like the game
just looks bad.

So when a whole bunch of Hollow Knight fans
saw this game, and saw how bad it looked,

it was inevitable that everyone would start
calling Gleamlight a rip-off. But if you actually

played Gleamlight, it doesn’t seem much
like Hollow Knight at all. I mean, it’s

still a bad game. I got every achievement
after four hours of playtime and I can confirm

it’s a bad game. But I think that has more
to do with DICO being primarily a publisher

and having very little experience with game
development than them trying to quickly cash

in on Hollow Knight’s success.

Of course, that’s not to say that Hollow
Knight hasn’t inspired other developers.

There have been quite a few games to pop up
such as Haiku the Robot, Lone Fungus, Chiaroscuro,

Curse of the Sea Rats, Ender Lilies, Unbound:
Worlds Apart, and Zapling Bygone, which all

claim Hollow Knight as an inspiration in some
way. But one Hollow Knight inspired game in

particular, Crowsworn, ended up getting some
heat for looking too much like Hollow Knight.

When they posted their pre-Kickstarter trailer
on Twitter, a number of tweets were posted

calling the game a rip-off of Hollow Knight.

Once the game was brought to the attention
of the wider Hollow Knight fanbase, partly

due to me tweeting about it over on my twitter
at twitter.com/mossbag69, discussion became

a lot more positive.

Since then, Team Cherry’s marketing director,
Leth, has even joined the Crowsworn team.

In an interview with the The Indie Gamer,
Leth made it pretty clear that Team Cherry

has no issues with Crowsworn:

Look, this game looks cool. We don’t mind
if people look at Hollow Knight and go “I

want to do that too”.

Leth also pointed out how it just makes sense
that small-team indie studios working in the

Unity game engine would make games that look
similar to Hollow Knight.

There’s only so much you can do with Unity
for a 2D game. And the fact is that Team Cherry

and Ari were very clever with how they developed
Hollow Knight in a way to make it super efficient

and it’s also very good. So if you depart
from that to a great degree you risk making

something bad.

And when Crowsworn went live on Kickstarter,
it hit its $100,000 goal in less than three

hours. So the game clearly has value to a
lot of people. Even Team Cherry left a comment

on their Kickstarter saying their game looks
great.

Now to be fair, I understand why some people
making these comparisons are so negative about

Crowsworn. Crowsworn does wear its Hollow
Knight inspiration on its sleeve. But from

what we have seen of Crowsworn, it appears
that they do have ideas of their own, and

are putting work into making their game stand
out as a unique Metroidvania. The developers

reference the Donkey Kong Country games as
an inspiration, and yeah, these things are

basically barrel cannons. They’ve American,
or I guess Canadianized, the game quite a

bit with the inclusion of guns, which I thought
was a pretty glaring omission from Hollow

Knight, to be honest.

In reality the vast majority of the games
within the Metroidvania genre draw direct

inspiration from Metroid and Castlevania,
combining elements from those games with other

games like Super Meat Boy and Dark Souls to
try to create something new. This isn’t

controversial and those games are seldom called
rip offs. Then Hollow Knight came along and

became extremely popular, resulting in both
a lot of people inspired to make games similar

to Hollow Knight, and a lot of people seeing
Hollow Knight’s mechanics in other games,

whether or not that was actually intentional
on the developers’ part.

So what makes it okay to draw ideas from Metroid,
like Axiom Verge does, but not draw ideas

from Hollow Knight, like Crowsworn does? I
think a lot of people think it’s fine to

copy Metroid and Castlevania because those
games are old, and Hollow Knight is new. But

keep in mind, the gaming industry is very
different now than it was in the 80s and 90s.

There are now thousands upon thousands of
indie games being released every single year,

so we are likely going to see iterations of
game ideas and designs happen faster and more

frequently. It took so long for games to take
from Metroid because indie developers weren’t

really a thing until Cave Story came out in
2004, which is a Metroidvania by the way.

Well, depending on who you ask.

At the end of the day, as long as a game does
enough to set itself apart from the games

that inspired it, we really shouldn’t be
upset about clones or rip-off or however old

the games it takes from are. And just watching
the trailer for a game sometimes isn’t enough

to know if that’s the case. Seriously, the
amount of people saying that Hollow Knight

looked like Ori after watching the Ferocious
Foes trailer is kinda crazy considering how

different those two games are.

Enter Ori and the Will of the Wisps. You know,
the game this video is supposed to be about.

After the completion of Ori and the Blind
Forest, it wasn’t a done deal that Moon

Studios was going to make a sequel. The co-founders,
Thomas Mahler and Gennadiy Korol, weren’t

exactly onboard with making a sequel, until
they started thinking about the ways a sequel

could improve on Blind Forest’s weaker parts,
comparing it to how Super Mario Bros. 3 improved

on the original game.

If you would see Ori and the Blind Forest
as the original Super Mario Bros... The sequel

could actually become like Super Mario Bros.
3.

Sort of like what Super Mario Bros 3 was to
Super Mario Bros.

We want Ori and the Will of the Wisps to become
to Blind Forest what Super Marios 3 was to

the original Super Mario Bros.

My next guests say this game will be the best
Ori and will be to Ori what Mario 3 was to

Super Mario Brothers. I guess that's a quote.
That's impressive.

And part of that process of refining the sequel
was to look at the other Metroidvanias that

were released since the first game.

In terms of the gameplay we really just wanted
to push it a step further so we looked at

all the Metroidvanias that also came out after
Blind Forest. We just basically wanted to

say "How can we even take it a level further
than that?"

Like we saw earlier in this video, Hollow
Knight was one of the games that Moon Studios

looked at when creating Will of the Wisps.
But since the game has come out, Mahler and

Korol have both denied taking any inspiration
from Hollow Knight. When I first caught wind

of all this back in March 2020, I went on
a bit of a rant. I posted to my twitter account

over at twitter.com/mossbag69 claiming that
Moon Studios had obviously taken several elements

from Hollow Knight, and were now blatantly
denying it. Now I know this is a really rare

occurrence for Twitter, but my tweets were
perhaps a bit reactionary and ignorant to

the greater context surrounding the situation.
I hadn’t even played the Ori games when

I made those tweets. But that was over a year
ago. Since then I have taken the time to play

both Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and
the Will of the Wisps. I also played through

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures a few times
just for good measure. I also researched the

development of the Ori games to better understand
how they were made.

So, have my thoughts changed? Well, yes, but
it’s complicated. There really isn’t a

clear cut answer here. So let me just answer
this question in two parts.

Was Ori and the Will of the Wisps influenced
by Hollow Knight in some way?

Most likely.

Did Ori and the Will of the Wisps directly
copy mechanics or ideas from Hollow Knight?

Probably not.

In order to get to the bottom of this, I’m
going to be digging into a number of interviews

Moon Studios has participated in, as well
as looking through posts Thomas Mahler has

made on the websites ResetEra and NeoGAF.
Mahler has been open about sharing his opinions

in gaming forums. And once we dig into his
posts, we soon realize something. Thomas Mahler

doesn’t really like Hollow Knight.

Mahler first played Hollow Knight right as
the game came out in February 2017.

After playing the game for a few hours, Mahler
posted in the NeoGAF thread dedicated to discussing

Hollow Knight. Mahler criticized the game’s
slow pacing, calling it too slow when compared

to games like Super Metroid, Symphony of the
Night and Blind Forest. In later posts, Mahler

also said he isn’t a fan of Hollow Knight’s
“simplistic combat”. And while he didn’t

say this next point was criticism, Mahler
also talked about how he thinks that games

like Axiom Verge and Hollow Knight don’t
really do anything new to push the Metroidvania

genre forward, as opposed to the Ori games
which blend the genre with the more fluid

platforming found in games like Super Meat
Boy.

Mahler’s criticisms of Hollow Knight are
certainly not unique. As much as I love Hollow

Knight, it’s not a perfect game. There are
aspects of it that just won’t do it for

some people. One of Hollow Knight’s biggest
stumbling points for a lot of players is its

pacing. Hollow Knight is a massive game with
a huge map and the movement upgrades are few

and far between. As a result, some areas feel
like they are missing content or satisfying

moments to keep the player engaged. This can
seriously affect the game's sense of pacing

and progression if the hook of exploration
doesn’t grab the player. This has been pointed

out by a few reviewers here on YouTube.

And even with every ability it can take a
while to get where you need to because the

map is absolutely massive. Massive and boring!

And the world is fun to explore, but asks
for a bit more than what these kinds of games

usually entail given its sheer size.

A building of tension in exploration, story,
and gameplay complexity, that ends with nothing

instead of a climax. I’d call this poor
pacing.

Boooooorriiinnnggg!

Even people who praised Hollow Knight as the
best Metroidvania ever made such as Game Maker’s

Toolkit have issues with how long the game
goes on.

I felt finished and satisfied with the game
after dispatching Hollow Knight for the first

time, and when I discovered online that there
was a lot more to do, I didn't really have

the drive to carry on and seek out yet more
secrets.

In terms of combat, Hollow Knight’s combat
is more simple on the surface when compared

to what is featured in Ori and the Will of
the Wisps, especially in the first half of

the game, when the player doesn’t have a
very complex moveset. This also spills over

into affecting the games pacing as well.

Up first is that it takes far too long to
go from this… to this.

This means that there is a long stretch of
game time wherein the player has very few

options during combat compared to the potential
you have at the end. Things don’t stay quite

as simple as they are right at the beginning,
but they don’t get really interesting until

you’re close to finished.

And it is fair to say that Hollow Knight doesn’t
really do anything unique. There were a number

of reviewers pointing this out.

Although Hollow Knight may have many of the
same trappings we've seen countless times

before, it stands above thanks to the strength
of its artistry and execution.

The mechanical aspects of the game aren't
anything truly innovative or unique, but they're

responsive, easy to learn and most of all
completely fair.

Hollow Knight maybe doesn't rewrite the book
on the new abilities aspect, but it does make

them feel meaningful and very important to
your progression.

I should point out that while Mahler has discussed
his problems with Hollow Knight a number of

times, he has still consistently said that
he has a lot of respect for Team Cherry. And

he has also constantly said he’s happy that
more and more great Metroidvanias like Hollow

Knight have released since Blind Forest. But
he’s also made it very clear that the game

just didn’t do it for him, saying:

I get that fans might see similarities between
the games, but I wasn't even a fan of the

game when I played it, so…

However, Mahler has done more than just talk
about how he dislikes Hollow Knight. He’s

also gone back and forth on whether or not
he actually finished the game. He said he

did finish it in a post from shortly before
Will of the Wisps released, but then he said

he didn’t finish it after everyone started
comparing the two games a month later. At

another point he compared the sales figures
of the two games after another user said Blind

Forest just came and went while Hollow Knight
was extremely popular. And in general, Mahler

has expressed a very competitive mindset whenever
he talks about Hollow Knight.

So it’s clear that Mahler has a complicated
relationship with Hollow Knight. For comparison’s

sake, the only thing Team Cherry has ever
said about the Ori games is that they’ve

heard they are fantastic.

Of course, Team Cherry are pretty tight lipped
in general, and don’t have much of an online

presence, either personally or professionally.
Probably to a fault sometimes.

Mahler has the opposite problem. He is just
really open about sharing his opinions, and

even he admits that it lands him in hot water
sometimes. Back in March of this year, he

posted a public apology on his Twitter account
after calling the developers behind No Man’s

Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 snake oil salesmen
in a post he made to ResetEra. To be fair,

Mahler made some interesting points in his
post, and honestly, I kind of agree that hype

culture in gaming incentivises studios to
overpromise what their games will be. But

he probably should have avoided calling specific
people like Sean Murray “snake oil salesmen”.

In his Twitter apology, Mahler said the following:

I always really liked the idea of gamers and
developers alike having an open discourse

about games, so that we could all figure out
together how to improve the artform.

I think this is why Mahler is so open about
sharing his opinions on Hollow Knight. He

likes discussing game design with other gamers,
and he isn’t afraid to share unpopular opinions.

And I don’t think there’s any problem
with him saying he doesn’t like Hollow Knight.

But it’s the amalgamation of his attitude
and statements surrounding Hollow Knight that

make me think his feelings towards the game
go deeper than just not liking it. I think

Mahler has a competitive mindset when it comes
to game development, and he viewed Hollow

Knight’s massive success as a challenge
to overcome with Will of the Wisps.

Looking at the language used by Mahler and
Korol to describe Will of the Wisps, it really

seems like the goal for this game was for
it to surpass Hollow Knight and become the

“perfect Metroidvania.” In an interview
with the Daily Star in July 2018, he said

the following:

A lot of what we’re doing with Will of the
Wisps is trying to perfect the genre, perfect

Metroidvania. We looked at a lot of games
that have come out since the first Ori - Hollow

Knight, Axiom Verge - and studied them and
researched them. Now it’s our turn to take

it to the next level. That’s how Ori evolves.
We look at what’s been done since the last

game, and we push it further. We take it further.
It’s pretty bananas!

Korol has said this as well:

We really want to make sure that absolutely
every single aspect of a Metroidvania can

be perfected.

And we can see this was the case before Will
of the Wisps. With Ori and the Blind Forest,

the goal was to push the platforming found
in Metroidvania games further than ever before,

bringing the fluid platforming of Super Meat
Boy to the genre. They literally even put

Meatboy’s rotting corpse in the game, in
case you didn’t notice the inspiration.

Thomas Mahler explains:

We wanted to improve Metroidvanias by really
focusing on the platforming component because

honestly, if you look at your typical Metroidvania.
If you look at Symphony of the Night and Super

Metroid, yes they do have platforming but
it’s very simple, right? It’s not on the

level of Mario....

So that’s where we wanted to improve things.
To me, it just made no sense that, hey if

one of your core aspects, if one of the core
hooks of the game is platforming like jumping

around these levels, why wouldn’t the levels
and the platforming component be as good as

Mario? Like that should be the case. So that’s
where we took it.

After the release of Hollow Knight, however,
Mahler and Moon Studios looked to push combat

further as well, thus having both the best
combat and the best platforming in the Metroidvania

genre. And to do that, they seemed to compare
themselves a lot to Hollow Knight:

Then Team Cherry came in and did Hollow Knight
and they did a much more traditional thing,

right? Or Axiom Verge for example also did
a much more traditional approach to Metroidvanias.

And I think that’s fine, but in terms of
the combat system, we wanted to kind of like…

I always like that competition and the challenge
and say. Okay you guys did that. Let’s see

how you can follow up when we do this stuff.
You know, like that kind of thing.

The combat itself in Blind Forest was much
more focused around the platforming, and then

you have games like Hollow Knight coming out
which focused a lot more on just precise hits

and so on which just wasn’t the focus for
Blind Forest and we thought “Hey, you know,

we could do that as well, right?” And we
could really create this perfect package that

here’s what a metroidvania should look like
in 2019 and 2020.

So it’s clear that Moon Studios was very
aware of Hollow Knight while making Will of

the Wisps, and I think part of the whole “perfect
Metroidvania” mentality really just meant

“better than Hollow Knight”. So does Mahler’s
feelings towards Hollow Knight, mixed with

Moon Studios’ philosophy of perfection prove
Ori copied ideas from Hollow Knight. Well

no, but I think it shows that Hollow Knight
likely had some influence over them as they

made the game.

But if we ignore the Hollow Knight stuff for
a minute, the basic philosophy of perfecting

the Metroidvania genre is an interesting approach
from Moon Studios. It’s also very different

from what Team Cherry did. William Pellen
and Ari Gibson actively avoided even calling

their game a Metroidvania at all.

So when we were making the game, obviously
the blueprint for it was a lot of those games

like Metroid and Castlevania, but we weren’t
super conscious of staying true to the genre

or anything like that, you know? It was just
what we thought would be fun or what made

sense, what we wanted to make...

In another interview, Leth confirms that they
consciously chose to avoid using the word

Metroidvania:

Team Cherry was the same way. They didn't
want to use the word Metroidvania either.

They were calling it "action platformer" or
something like that.

In fact, Team Cherry has even said that Hollow
Knight is actually most like Faxanadu:

Everytime we say Faxanadu, which is probably
the one that it is most closely alined to,

everyone just goes. “Ah what?”

Faxanadu is another one of those early 2D
Metroidvania games from the 1980s, before

Super Metroid truly defined the genre. Faxanadu
sticks out with its impressive atmosphere

for an NES game and cohesive world design.
Faxanadu starts with a lone traveller arriving

at a ruined kingdom in despair, with some
inhabitants under the curse of an evil force.

This is very similar to Hollow Knight’s
general story, a lonely warrior arriving at

a civilization wrought by an infection.

So you have one developer working to push
the conventions of the genre to their limit

by crafting the best platforming and combat
mechanics of any Metroidvania game, using

Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night as
references. And you have another developer

that isn’t really worried about sticking
true to the conventions of the genre and instead

taking inspiration from other old school open
world games.

Both Hollow Knight and Ori and the Will of
the Wisps have their own unique strengths,

ideals and weaknesses that may stem from their
design philosophies. And these games do differ

quite a bit, mainly in their level design
and storytelling.

Hollow Knight’s level design prioritizes
exploration, with lots of diverging paths

and an insane amount of secret areas to explore.
You can beat the game without even seeing

the majority of the content Team Cherry created.
And your path through the game will likely

look very different from someone else's.

In contrast, pretty much every area in the
Ori games is entered through one intended

path. Because Moon Studio does this, it allows
them to carefully craft platforming challenges

around what abilities the player has obtained
so far. While there are some hidden areas

here and there, you will be seeing most of
what each Ori game has to offer just by following

the critical path.

In terms of storytelling, Moon Studios uses
swelling orchestral music and the detailed

character animations to convey the plot of
the game. All of this is done to achieve a

more universally recognizable story that doesn’t
rely too heavily on dialogue.

There's still a certain tone to Ori where
we try to tell our stories with as little

dialogue as possible, because I want people
from India who don't necessarily speak English

or something to get as much out of the games
as Americans and Europeans and so on. I want

this to be a global thing.

Hollow Knight, on the other hand, has tens
of thousands of words for the player to read

and analyze, if they can even find those words
that is. And even then, the story isn’t

exactly clear on a lot of the details. To
fully grasp Hollow Knight’s plot, you’re

going to need to go online and discuss it
with other people or watch YouTube videos

about it by people who constantly remind you
to like the video and subscribe. God, I hate

it when YouTubers ask you to like the video
and subscribe. It really kills the whole pacing

of the video.

So those are two very different approaches,
indeed. Ori is a much more guided experience.

Whereas Hollow Knight is much more open ended.
And I think this is part of why the Hollow

Knight fandom is so big compared to other
great indie titles. People have to talk to

one another online to find out about that
one hidden boss in Deepnest, or that one segment

where the game turns into Super Meat Boy,
or to even figure out what the hell is even

happening in half the cutscenes of the game.
But does Hollow Knight’s approach make it

a better Metroidvania? Can we even know what
a perfect Metroidvania looks like?

Personally, and I might be a little biased
here, Hollow Knight better encompasses what

I value most in Metroidvanias. Why is it that
so many gamers connect Dark Souls with the

Metroidvania genre? It’s because Dark Souls
nails the biggest part of what I think people

like about Metroidvanias: the interconnected
world. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t

movement upgrades in Dark Souls. It’s still
satisfying to explore the kingdom of Lordran.

And I think Team Cherry kinda stumbled into
the realization that the strict upgrade progression

system that’s found in games like Castlevania
and Metroid isn’t necessary. When making

their game, they weren’t afraid to strip
Hollow Knight of its rigid Metroidvania structure

to create a more freeform experience:

The basic outline of the game at the start,
especially because it was really small, was

a much more rigid kind of traditional “this
power up first then this power up then this

power up” and you follow that through the
game. As the game expanded and as we kept

working on it, we kept finding interesting
connections between areas that didn't exist,

so we kinda chipped away at the floor or the
ceiling to allow you to move between areas

a little more freely.

While I think Hollow Knight better captures
what it is I like about Metroidvanias, I wouldn’t

say Hollow Knight is a better Metroidvania
than Ori. Both games are trying to do their

own thing within the genre, and they both
do them so well it’s not really reasonable

to even compare them. Oddly enough, Thomas
Mahler has even said this too:

I think Hollow Knight and Ori honestly both
have their own thing going on, I don't really

see all that much overlap apart from them
being both Metroidvanias... It's like comparing

Mario and Sonic to me - Sure, both are platformers,
but that's where the similarities end. I'm

just glad we're seeing more amazing Metroidvanias
finally again…

So while Mahler does talk a lot about wanting
to perfect the genre, he still understands

that there is room for variety within that
genre, at least sometimes. Thomas Mahler is

a very complex man, in case you couldn’t
tell. He’s like an onion. He’s got layers.

The whole notion of figuring out what constitutes
a good or perfect Metroidvania is a bit silly

to me. We would need to set up a rubric and
strictly define all the components of a Metroidvania

and methods for evaluating those components.
And you probably could do that, at least to

some degree. But this system would be worthless
because a lot of what makes new Metroidvanias

interesting and worth playing is that they
mix the Metroidvania genre with something

new. And a lot of times, when people make
these mental checklists in their head about

what makes a perfect Metroidvania, they use
older games as reference, like Super Metroid

and Symphony of the Night. But there’s no
guarantee that the specific mechanics and

design choices that worked well in those games
are going to work well in other games. Would

the pinball Metroidvania Yoku’s Island Express
be better if it had the Shine Spark? Or Form

of Mist?

While it’s certainly possible to compare
and contrast games and argue which ones did

certain mechanics better, it’s important
to remember that each game is unique and we

should judge them based on how well they execute
their own ideas and not pigeonhole them with

comparisons to 20 year old games.

Anyway, now that I’m done talking about
how we shouldn't compare games all the time,

let’s compare these games.

Earlier in the video, I mentioned that a lot
of Hollow Knight’s ideas that Gleamlight

apparently stole weren’t all that original
in the first place. Some of that applies here

as well, but luckily Moon Studios has provided
us with more info on Will of the Wisps’

development than DICO ever did. So let’s
start off the comparisons with the biggest

new addition to Will of the Wisps: combat.

If we look back to Ori and the Blind Forest,
one of the largest and most common criticisms

of that game was the combat.

As fun as exploration is, combat is a little
more uneven.

Combat isn't one of Ori's strengths.

Basically the combat in Blind Forest consisted
of standing near an enemy and button mashing

a homing energy attack until they died. So
about as interactive as watching YouTube ads.

A big part of Will of the Wisps' reason for
even existing is to improve upon the combat

from Blind Forest.

When we started really working on the game
we immediately looked at all the feedback

that people gave us. And one of the big things
was the combat system. We completely refined

the combat system and made it crazy in terms
of what you've ever seen in a Metroidvania.

That's the first big thing about Ori 2 is
that we really wanted to take the combat and

completely revamp it. Make it absolutely awesome
in a way that we believe maybe wasn't done

in a Metroidvania before.

When people point out the similarities between
Hollow Knight and Ori’s combat, they usually

just point out that the Knight’s nail and
Ori’s Shard Sword are similar. Or they are

just pointing out that Will of the Wisps has
more combat now. But in reality, Will of the

Wisps probably would have had more refined
combat regardless of if Hollow Knight existed,

since combat was the weakest aspect of Blind
Forest.

As it turns out, a prototype version of the
sword weapon in Will of the Wisps was created

during the development of Blind Forest. According
to Korol:

We had a working version of sword fighting
in Blind Forest, but it was very hard to make

it work. It was such a big game and we needed
to ship a game at some point.

Due to Moon Studios’ small size and the
complexity of combat systems in general, Blind

Forest ended up letting combat take a backseat
so the developers could focus on platforming.

For the sequel, Moon Studios wanted to create
a combat system unlike what has been done

in a Metroidvania before.

We saw earlier that Thomas Mahler looked at
Hollow Knight and wanted to one-up what Team

Cherry did with that game’s combat, while
also saying that he doesn’t really like

Hollow Knight’s simplistic combat system.
So it seems like Moon Studios looked at Hollow

Knight’s combat just so they could try and
up the ante with Will of the Wisps. Apparently

they even reached out to one of the developers
on Killer Instinct, Ken Lobb, to discuss designing

combat for Ori. And looking at the final products,
the combat system between Ori and Hollow Knight

are noticeably different.

According to Korol and Mahler, the combat
system for Ori drew more from Dark Souls and

Symphony of the Night as opposed to Hollow
Knight. Mahler said in a ResetEra post:

The Melee stuff is inspired by Symphony of
the Night and Dark Souls, mostly, those are

games we looked at when it came to how to
make the combat feel satisfying and crunchy…

Korol also mentioned Dark Souls in another
interview:

We were almost inspired by games like Dark
Souls... we're really creating really interesting

dances with the enemies…

Dark Souls and Symphony of the Night differ
from Hollow Knight in that you can equip a

wide variety of weapons aside from just a
sword. You can use shields, spears, rods,

your goddamn fists, it’s really up to you.
In Hollow Knight, all you ever get is the

nail. There are still different playstyles
thanks to charms and spells, but you’ll

be whacking off with this thing from the very
start to the very end.

In Will of the Wisps, Ori has a variety of
skills, which allow it to use energy to create

a sword, a bow, a giant hammer, a giant spear,
a shuriken/boomerang thing, and most devastating

of all, a feather. These attacks, and a few
more, can be quickly set to face buttons,

allowing the player to change weapons on the
fly.

Another major difference with Ori’s combat
is how attacks actually happen when you press

the button. In Hollow Knight, you press a
button and the Knight swings its sword. It’s

very straightforward. Mahler didn’t like
how simplistic this was, saying:

We really wanted to take it to that level
where it’s like, ‘No, it’s actually

an animation-based combat system.’ My idea
for Ori is always that you have to feel like

a super fucking cool ninja.

That being said, I think Hollow Knight still
gets better use of its combat. It may not

be as complex, but the game gets a lot of
depth out of it. The combat in Will of the

Wisps is certainly an improvement from Blind
Forest, but it’s still not as satisfying

or enjoyable to me as the platforming.

The YouTube channel Ingeniousclown Gaming
did a really thoughtful critique of Ori and

the Will of the Wisps. And I pretty much 100%
agree with his critique on Ori’s combat:

Granted, Ori's combat is significantly more
complex than what Hollow Knight offers, but

the inspiration can be seen regardless. Hollow
Knight had over 40 bosses to explore the game's

combat with, while Ori has a measly six.

But keep in mind, I’m definitely biased
here. I’ve played through Hollow Knight’s

boss rush mode several times. If I didn’t
think Hollow Knight’s combat was fantastic,

then I’d be an absolute lunatic for doing
this. And I haven’t put anywhere near as

much time into fighting the bosses in Ori.

So did Ori copy Hollow Knight’s combat?
Well, they were aware of Hollow Knight, and

they seemed to take it as a challenge of sorts
to push their combat further than what Team

Cherry did. But in reality, Moon Studios was
always going to revamp the combat system because

it was Blind Forest’s biggest stumbling
point. And the combat system they did implement

into the game is very different from Hollow
Knight’s in a number of ways.

So… yes?... but actually no.

The healing system is another comparison I’ve
seen thrown around. In Blind Forest, Ori could

heal either by finding health drops in the
world, or by unlocking an ability that healed

Ori whenever it created a save point. In Will
of the Wisps, Moon Studios wanted to use the

face buttons for equipping skills, leaving
no place to put the manual save ability. Due

to this, they decided to replace that feature
with an autosave system, and the healing ability

was turned into one of the equippable skills.

On the face of it, expending a resource in
order to heal isn’t all that unique, which

is pretty much what Mahler said when people
brought this up as being similar to Hollow

Knight. But it’s the way this healing plays
out during gameplay that I think makes it

feel similar to some people. Healing can now
be performed in the middle of combat, and

requires Ori to stand still and avoid taking
damage for a short period of time. This is

very similar to Hollow Knight. On the other
hand, it’s also very similar to Dark Souls.

Both Team Cherry and Moon Studios have cited
Dark Souls as inspiration for their games.

And we know that Moon Studios wanted to replicate
the “interesting dances” the player has

with enemies in Dark Souls. Part of that dance
involves finding the right time in between

enemy attacks to use an Estus Flask to heal.
And I think it’s reasonable to say that

Hollow Knight’s focus mechanic took cues
from the Soulsborne series in this regard

as well.

So did Ori construct their healing spell to
act more like Hollow Knight’s because they

wanted to replicate Hollow Knight’s gameplay,
or did they go back to Hollow Knight’s source,

Dark Souls, and replicate that? Did Ori copy
Hollow Knight’s idea to copy Dark Souls?

Or did Ori just copy Dark Souls? It’s at
this point where even trying to figure out

where an idea came from or how it migrated
to other games becomes pointless to even talk

about. It’s like jumping. Does every game
draw direct influence from Donkey Kong because

it popularized the jumping mechanic?

I think the healing spell change in Will of
the Wisps ties into Moon Studios’ more combat-focused

design philosophy, and might just be an extension
of Dark Souls’ influence over them. Is it

possible Hollow Knight influenced them in
some regard as well? Maybe, but leaving Dark

Souls out of the equation and saying they
are just copying Hollow Knight leaves a lot

of details out of the picture. And that goes
for the entire combat system in general. Both

Ori and Hollow Knight draw from that series,
and that might be a big part of why the combat

in these games “feels similar” to a lot
of players, when in reality, they are quite

different.

The concept of Metroidvania games using RPG
elements has been around at least since Symphony

of the Night, which boasted an experience
system as well as equipment management. And

both Moon Studios and Team Cherry also put
RPG elements into their games.

Ori and the Blind Forest features an ability
tree, which allows Ori to gain different abilities

and perks, such as breathing underwater, better
resource drop, showing things on the map,

and making attacks more powerful. The tree
has three separate, linear branches, so a

lot of the later power ups are locked behind
a bunch you might not even want. Korol explains

this issue:

With Ori 1 we kinda had a tree system, so
if you wanted to get an upgrade you gotta

get all the upgrades before it on a certain
path so it kinda locks you in.

The shard system introduced in the sequel
offers a lot more flexibility. On top of not

having to spend resources on abilities you
don’t want, the player can also switch out

shards depending on what they are struggling
with currently in the game. It’s also very

similar to Hollow Knight’s charm system,
with only a few minor differences. Each shard

in Ori is worth exactly one shard slot, whereas
notches in Hollow Knight have different costs

depending on how powerful the charm is. Shards
can be upgraded to become more powerful, which

was a planned idea for Hollow Knight’s Godmaster
update, but was ultimately cut.

Both Moon Studios and Team Cherry cite different
RPGs for their systems. Team Cherry says they

looked at the badge system from Paper Mario.
In that game, you had Badge Points which could

be spent to equip badges, with some badges
having different cost requirements, very similar

to what we see in Hollow Knight. The developers
at Moon Studios, on the other hand, originally

based their shard system on the Materia system
in Final Fantasy VII. In that game, weapons

and armor have a certain number of Materia
slots. If you equip a Materia to a character,

they gain the Materia’s power, and the Materia
itself can be leveled up by gaining AP points

through combat.

According to Mahler, the shard system in Ori
was going to work a lot more similarly to

that, saying:

… at some point in the game we literally
had slots in all the skills that you inserted

shards into - that became too cumbersome,
so we turned it into a global system.

Gennadiy Korol echoed this inspiration, saying:

We looked at the materia system from Final
Fantasy and the shard modifier system where

you can customize your character and have
more choice…

Korol also mentioned that the shard system
existed in prototype form since early 2015,

long before Team Cherry ever showed off Hollow
Knight’s charm mechanic.

The ability to level up shards is probably
a remnant from this original idea. So while

the final implementation of the shard system
looks a lot like Hollow Knight’s, Moon Studios

didn’t just rip that system straight out
of that game and cram it in Will of the Wisps.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps features a much
larger cast than the first game. And some

people have compared this to Hollow Knight’s
large cast of characters. But there’s a

good reason why Ori and the Blind Forest didn’t
have many characters: budget.

Ori and the Blind Forest had a very unique
pipeline for the creation of its characters.

First the developers would create and rig
a 3D model of the character. But this 3D model

wasn’t actually used in game. Instead the
3D model was then rendered into individual

2D sprites. These 2D sprites were then modified
to add in details like motion blur and depth

of field effects. Then a whole bunch of ingame
effects are used to make the sprite match

the surrounding lighting. This was done for
all the characters, including the gigantic

owl Kuro. So when you look at Ori in Blind
Forest, you are actually looking at a 3D model

that has been rendered as a bunch of 2D sprites.
It’s an interesting process, and if you

want to learn more about how it was done then
I’d recommend this GDC talk by animator

James Benson.

In Hollow Knight, Ari animated each character
in Photoshop… and yeah, that was pretty

much it.

Moon Studios’ involved process for creating
characters kept them from creating more than

just the barebones cast we see in Blind Forest.
But with the larger team and budget for Will

of the Wisps, the developers were able to
add in way more characters for Ori to interact

with. They also just ended up using 3D models
as well. Mahler says the inspiration for this

larger cast comes from A Link to the Past,
which had way more NPCs than the first Zelda

game. And honestly, I think saying Will of
the Wisps copied Hollow Knight just by the

virtue of having more NPCs is pretty dumb.
The same thing happened with Hollow Knight

and Dark Souls, with people saying Hollow
Knight’s system of recurring NPCs was taken

from Dark Souls.

However, there is one specific NPC that a
lot of people hone in on when comparing the

two games: Lupo. Lupo is a cartographer who
shows up all over the world, selling maps

of each area. This function is similar to
that of Cornifer.

When people on ResetEra brought up the comparisons
between Lupo and Cornifer, Mahler mentioned

that the Castlevania games have merchants
who sell maps, so Hollow Knight didn’t invent

the concept. And that’s true. In Symphony
of the Night, Alucard can purchase a castle

map from the Master Librarian, among many
other things. But that’s not really the

same as Cornifer and Lupo. The Castlevania
NPCs are shopkeepers, not cartographers. The

concept of a cartographer NPC wasn’t present
in those games, which does make Cornifer more

unique.

That being said, the idea of a map making
cartographer NPC seems pretty logical for

a Metroidvania. Honestly, it’s weird that
Hollow Knight’s the first well known example

of one. And there are memorable cartographer
NPCs outside of the Metroidvania genre. It’s

really not that unique of an idea.

Regardless, Lupo’s implementation is nothing
compared to Cornifer’s. In Hollow Knight,

you need to find Cornifer to even get a map.
You also have to buy the quill to update your

map, which only happens when you sit at a
bench. And you have to buy and equip the Wayward

Compass to even see where you are on the map.

In Ori, your map still fills in without talking
to Lupo, but his maps help reveal large chunks

of each area. And the player icon and map
updating all happens automatically. It’s

way less involved, which makes sense because
Ori is less about exploring a large interconnected

world, and more about moving through areas
sequentially. Also Lupo doesn’t have a smoking

hot trophy wife. So that’s a pretty big
game changing difference.

On top of that, there are other parallels
we can draw between NPCs. Tokk is a wandering

traveller who drops random bits of lore and
advice, similar to Quirrel. Opher teaches

new attacks, similar to the Nailmasters. At
the end of the day, there’s only so many

different archetypes of characters you can
make that would be relevant to a Metroidvania

game. And Cornifer and Lupo just happen to
overlap the most.

Okay, this one is pretty damning. Did Moon
Studios really think people wouldn’t notice

the fact that both Will of the Wisps and Hollow
Knight both had spiders in them? Thomas Mahler

has never commented on this blatant rip-off,
and honestly, I don’t blame him. It’s

undeniable that they stole this idea from
Team Cherry.

But it goes a bit deeper than that. As it
turns out, before Hollow Knight popularized

the concept of putting spiders in games, there
was another game to do it. A game that was

truly ahead of its time.

Another minor comparison people make is that
one of the spirit shards Ori can obtain is

called “Thorn”, which is obviously a rip-off
of Thorns of Agony from Hollow Knight. Except

the concept of thorns dealing damage like
this has shown up in plenty of games before,

such as Diablo 2 and FortressCraft.

Those are the main notable comparisons I have
seen floating around online. Hopefully you

can see that on an individual level, these
similarities aren’t that deep and often

have alternative explanations. A combination
of drawing from similar sources and pure coincidence

can explain a great deal of Hollow Knight
and Ori’s overlapping features. All that

being said, when you take a step back and
look at how Ori incorporated these elements

together, what elements they chose to include,
and how they differentiate it from Blind Forest,

the final product does end up barring some
resemblance to Hollow Knight. It’s the totality

of these baseline similarities that seems
to be driving the claims here.

And from looking at the developers’ claims
about wanting to “perfect” the Metroidvania

genre, it’s possible that Moon Studios was
trying to “out-Hollow-Knight” Hollow Knight

in some way, and this lead to a game that
feels like Hollow Knight to a lot of people,

even if when put under a microscope, those
similarities disappear.

That’s why I prefer to say Hollow Knight
influenced Will of the Wisps, especially in

terms of combat. I think while the combat
in Will of the Wisps is very different from

the combat in Hollow Knight, the developers
still looked at Hollow Knight as a reference

for them to compare themselves against. So
it would sort of be like how they referenced

the platforming of Super Metroid and Castlevania
as something they wanted to improve on. Even

if the final product isn’t much like the
reference, the reference is still there and

still visible to a lot of people.

I personally think Moon Studios should have
acknowledged Hollow Knight’s influence over

Will of the Wisps’ development once everyone
started making the comparisons. They seemed

to acknowledge some influence before launch,
but have downplayed it since then. Although

I can understand why they did so. Team Cherry
did something very similar with Dark Souls.

They did take some inspiration from Dark Souls,
that’s undeniable, but they preferred to

play that down in interviews because a lot
of the connections people were making to Dark

Souls weren’t intentional on Team Cherry’s
part.

That being said, Team Cherry never contradicted
themselves on if they ever played Dark Souls,

and they’ve never compared the sales figures
of their game to that of FromSoftware’s.

And that does set them apart from Mahler.

So to sum this all up, Hollow Knight certainly
had a vague influence over the development

of Will of the Wisps, but I think people overstate
how much Moon Studios directly copied Hollow

Knight. I think the wise people over at Honest
Game Trailers said it best:

Where they took a glance at Hollow Knight
and said “I guess we could do that.”

There’s a strange irony to all of this.
It’s pretty clear that Thomas Mahler doesn’t

like Hollow Knight. But at the same time he
seems to have set out to create a game that

could surpass Hollow Knight in the public
eye and become the pinnacle of the Metroidvania

genre. But in attempting to do so, he created
a game that people just compare to Hollow

Knight anyway. Even if Mahler didn’t intend
his game to look like Hollow Knight, the pieces

fell together to make a game that was arguably
much better than Ori and the Blind Forest,

but also seemed more like Hollow Knight. It’s
sort of like a greek tragedy, like Oedipus

Rex just without the eye gouging.

And I should say, while I have scrutinized
Thomas Mahler’s words quite a bit in this

video, I still respect him. He’s clearly
talented and has a strong creative vision.

The beauty and design of the Ori games are
strong testaments to that. And he seems content

to take heat for what he says on the internet.
When he posted his controversial thread calling

other game developers snake oil salesmen,
Mahler said the following:

Trust me, me talking openly about games and
sharing opinions and such has gotten me into

quite a bit of trouble before, I'm very aware
of that :D I just still like the discourse

that happens and when I was younger, I loved
when actual developers jumped into public

forums to explain this or that. It's great
when the discourse happens from both sides,

at least I think so.

My goal with this video isn’t to make you
hate anyone at Moon Studios or think Thomas

Mahler is a bad person, but to highlight how
complicated talking about inspiration and

influence in the creation of any work of art
can be. There’s a lot more going on behind

a game than people usually realize just watching
the trailer or playing the game.

Also Thomas Mahler isn’t the only one working
at Moon Studios. Dozens of people have worked

on these games, each bringing their own creative
ideas, influences and skills to the table.

And like I’ve said 100 times by now, the
Ori games are definitely quality games, and

totally worth picking up if you enjoy platformers
or Metroidvanias. To simplify Will of the

Wisps down to just being “Ori but more like
Hollow Knight” you’re underselling what

it is that makes both Ori and Hollow Knight
such amazing and fun experiences. The last

thing I want from this video is to start some
stupid flamewar between the Hollow Knight

and Ori fandoms over which games are better.
They’re all great games.

I first played Hollow Knight back in April
2017. In those days, the Hollow Knight community

was small, and it felt like this undiscovered
gem. I only heard about it because videogamedunkey

recommended it at the end of his video shitting
all over Yooka-Laylee. And guess how he promoted

it? By comparing it to other video games.

Bam! Hollow Knight. It’s like “cute Castlevania”
with some nods to Dark Souls and you can do

the DuckTales hop.

But now, Hollow Knight and its fandom loom
large over the Metroidvania genre, with its

sequel, Hollow Knight Silksong being the third
highest wishlisted game currently on Steam.

With such a successful title and large fanbase,
I don’t think the comparisons of other games

to Hollow Knight will be ending soon. It’s
certainly possible that Hollow Knight will

become like Dark Souls in that people will
start comparing it to any and every game that

looks even slightly similar.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though.
I think the comparisons of Hollow Knight to

Dark Souls probably helped convince people
to pick it up. And like I said earlier, that’s

just how people describe new games to one
another. But I hope that comparisons to Hollow

knight aren’t done just to put games down
or insult them. Team Cherry is clearly okay

with games taking inspiration from them.

Look, this game looks cool. We don’t mind
if people look at Hollow Knight and go “I

want to do that too”.

Just like how Team Cherry took a lot of their
ideas from other games.

Zelda II, Metroid, Castlevania, Faxanadu,
Bloodborne, maybe a bit of Dark Souls in there

as well, Megaman X, Megaman Zero as well,
Pac-Man 2 The New Adventure

According to their website, Moon Studios “prides
itself on an excessive 'iterative polish'

process”. And that’s how great games get
made, through iteration and polish. Whether

that be through popularizing an entire genre
through the clever use of disparate mechanics

[Minecraft]. Or by combining and executing
on established mechanics to an insanely high

degree of polish [Hollow Knight]. Or by transferring
ideas from one genre into another to create

something fresh and unique[Ori and the Blind
Forest].

And we as a community should try our best
to be supportive of developers taking inspiration

from great games and finding new ways to build
upon those ideas. Getting defensive about

developers taking mechanics or art styles
from other games isn’t a great idea, especially

since it’s really easy to falsely attribute
where a specific idea came from. That’s

not to say that some developers aren’t just
trying to cash in on the success of another

game, but as long as the final product is
something of quality and worth playing, I’m

not sure the other factors matter all that
much.

I’m excited to see how the Metroidvania
genre evolves, especially in the wake of such

amazing games as Hollow Knight and Will of
the Wisps. As the barriers to entry for aspiring

game developers continue to drop, and the
genre gets more and more amazing titles, who

knows what Metroidvanias will look like in
a few years. Maybe by then we’ll have come

up with a better name for them. Eh, probably
not.