Hollow Knight's Map is Broken

This is a map of Hallownest.

And so is this.

And this.

And, technically, this.

These images are the primary way Hollow Knight
informs us of the shape and size of its world.

And as nice looking as these various maps
are, they aren’t actually Hallownest itself.

They’re abstract shapes and drawings that
imply what Hallownest is supposed to look

like.

I want a map that looks exactly like what
we see ingame.

I want to push the camera out and see a fully
detailed version of Hallownest in its entirety.

I want something like what Team Cherry showed
off in the 2014 Kickstarter trailer for Hollow

Knight, where they zoomed out on the Forgotten
Crossroads and revealed almost the entire

area in one image.

Of course, this shot wasn’t made by just
zooming out the camera ingame.

Hollow Knight only has one room loaded in
at a time, so even if you did unlock the camera

and zoom it out, you’re never going to see
more than one room on screen at a time.

This is sort of like real life, where objects
outside your field of view cease to exist.

Team Cherry actually constructed this footage
by combining a bunch of screenshots of Hollow

Knight’s rooms together in some kind of
video or image editing software.

We can actually tell that that’s what they
did because if you zoom in on this part of

the map, you can actually see the Knight just
kinda hanging out.

You can even see it again near the entrance
to Greenpath.

Now, you could theoretically do this exact
same process but for all of Hallownest, screenshotting

every single room and combining them together
to create one continuous map of the entire

game world.

But would anyone ever actually take on such
an insane challenge and actually do this?

Are there any brave soldiers in the Hollow
Knight community willing to step up?

That was a rhetorical question.

And the answer is yes.

Back in the ancient times of August 2017,
a member of the Hollow Knight community known

as Nook, or The Embraced One, began chipping
away at mapping out the entirety of Hollow

Knight’s world.

She’d continue to work on this project in
her free time, juggling it between work and

developing her own game.

And in February of 2023, she finally released
a complete map of Hallownest.

The final work is a massive image, 72,622
pixels wide by 48,128 pixels tall.

For reference, the Knight, as it appears in
this map, is 23 pixels wide by 50 pixels tall.

The map contains a total of 307 rooms, compiled
from over 6000 screenshots, each of which

had to be cleaned up and connected to each
other in one giant image.

The entire image can be viewed on Nook’s
website, Hallownest.net, where she set up

an interactive version that loads up right
in your browser, that way you don’t have

to open the massive 800 megabyte file on your
own machine.

Nook was inspired to do this after finding
a complete map of Castlevania: Symphony of

the Knight, which is basically Hollow Knight
for boomers.

In fact, you can find quite a few full detail
maps online, painstakingly created by fans

to capture the sheer scale of various Metroidvania
maps.

This practice goes back well over a decade,
with maps like these being created for games

like the original Metroid for the NES.

As far as I know, these maps don’t have
any widely recognized name.

But for this video, I’m just going to call
them “composite” maps, since they are

usually created by compositing a bunch of
images together to create one big picture.

Creating a map like this presents two technical
challenges that I’d like to discuss in this

video.

The first challenge is creating complete images
of individual rooms.

This can be difficult because a lot of 2D
games, Hollow Knight included, feature something

called parallax scrolling.

This is where objects in the far background
move across the screen at a slower rate than

ones in the near background, creating an illusion
of depth.

It’s a bit tricky to spot if you aren’t
looking for it, but you can see it clearly

in certain objects like this chain found in
the Crystal Peak.

Some modern 2D games achieve this parallax
scrolling effect by not actually being 2D

at all, instead using a 3D camera and just
locking it from tilting or rotating.

This is done because, paradoxically, 3D game
engines can actually be quite useful for building

and debugging 2D games, as well as seeing
wider support on a greater variety of systems.

Hollow Knight also utilizes this method for
its rooms.

Using the program HKWorldEdit2 we can actually
open up Hollow Knight rooms and move the camera

around freely.

From here, you can see that the 2D assets
that dress up a room are actually placed in

3D space.

So when the camera tracks the player moving
around, these objects pan across the screen

at different speeds.

This is all very cool, but it makes creating
a full sized image of the room a lot more

complicated.

If you take individual screenshots and stitch
them together, background objects will end

up appearing multiple times since they don’t
pan across the screen as quickly as foreground

objects.

To combat this, Nook had to manually edit
almost every room to make sure the background

was free of duplicates.

This means pulling sprites from sprite sheets
and manually adding them back into the image,

as well as finding clever ways to hide seams
between screenshots, such as placing them

behind pipes and pillars.

Nook uploaded timelapses of this process on
her YouTube channel and it shows just how

much work went into reconstructing these rooms.

The end result of all this is that rooms on
the composite map don’t quite reflect their

ingame counterparts 100%.

Some artistic liberties had to be taken to
make these images even possible.

And this isn’t the only aspect of the map
that required some creative workarounds, which

brings us to the other technical challenge
involved with creating this map; actually

lining up all the rooms with each other.

In an interview with PC Gamer back in 2017,
Ari Gibson described Hollow Knight’s map

as “98% pure”.

There are just a few cheats...like a tiny
room goes down like, 20 tiles too low, that

kind of thing.

There's never a case where an entire room
is a paradox, that kind of thing.

And…

well…

In reality, Hollow Knight’s map cheats quite
a bit, especially when compared to games like

Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night.

Of course, these older games used rigid grid
maps, and while Hollow Knight’s rooms were

conceptualized as boxes as well, in practice,
the rooms come in various shapes and sizes

and are much more freely placed on the game’s
minimap.

This means a variety of things.

Some room exits don’t line up, multiple
rooms sometimes occupy the same space, and

some areas are much further apart than expected.

This means Nook was basically constructing
a puzzle with misshapen pieces.

So to make sense of all this, we’re going
to be going through each area in Nook’s

map and examining how well Team Cherry constructed
them from a cartographer’s perspective.

I’ll be pointing out things such as misalignments
between rooms, significant gaps between rooms,

and rooms overlapping with one another.

So which area in Hallownest do you think will
turn out the best?

Which ones will have the most nonsensical
room layouts?

Be sure to leave a comment down below that
has nothing to do with what I just asked.

Also, before I dive in proper, I did just
want to mention that Nook is also a game developer

working on her own game called Where Birds
Go to Sleep.

It’s a narrative adventure game that looks
super weird and super cool and you can find

a link to the steam page in the description
if you’re interested in wishlisting the

game.

I have randomly decided to begin our journey
in the Forgotten Crossroads.

Despite being the simple starting area, Crossroads
actually boasts the largest number of external

rooms of any section in Hallownest, comprising
a total of 40 rooms.

When I say external rooms, I am excluding
rooms like the Snail Shaman mounds, shopkeeper

rooms, and other interior rooms that aren’t
included on the game’s minimap.

So pretty much any room that is entered using
a doorway.

If we look at the long vertical room on the
left that connects to Greenpath, we can see

two horizontal paths that cut across the top
of the Crossroads.

These two paths then connect to a room on
the right, the room that leads to Myla and

the Crystal Peak.

But the lower path is too far down here.

So we’ll be adding the first of many hallways
here to line these rooms up correctly.

This lower hallway also isn’t long enough
to span the entire width of the Crossroads,

so an extra hallway needs to be added somewhere
in here to make it reach.

Switching back over to the long vertical room
on the left, we can see that the drop into

Cornifer’s room also needs to be a bit longer
than you might think.

Otherwise the False Knight room would crash
up into the room above it.

Looking at the bottom of the Crossroads, some
rooms are, unfortunately, just too cramped.

The Crossroad hot spring room, arguably one
of the best rooms in the entire game, thanks

to the inclusion of these two bugs who I can
only describe as “really good friends”,

literally cannot exist where it is.

The minimap straight up lies about how tall
the room below it is.

This room is literally as tall as the room
to the left, leaving no space for this supposed

hot spring room.

To compensate for this, Nook shortened the
spa room as much as she could, and placed

a hallway underneath it.

And the exact same thing happens over to the
left as well.

The room heading down into the Fungal Wastes
is too tall to fit underneath Cornifer’s

room.

Nook had to insert another hallway here to
make everything fit.

Another room that just won’t fit where it
needs to is the Stag Station.

The ceiling of this room crashes into the
room above it.

To fix this, Nook applied a bit of shrinkage
to the room, making it about 25% smaller.

At the very, very bottom of Crossroads we
have the elevator that leads down into the

City of Tears.

This room can be accessed from the right by
walking straight across, but we can see that

if that were the case, the Soul Vessel room
to the left of the elevator would be overlapping

with this Goam Mask Shard room.

So a vertical hallway needs to be added here
to space things out a bit.

This added hallway also pushes the elevator
further to the left for reasons we’ll see

later.

There’s another pretty bad overlap at the
entrance to Greenpath.

The ceiling of the room leading to the Brooding
Mawlek is crashing into the Elder Baldur room.

Adding a thin hallway with a slight vertical
rise makes this slightly better, and it also

keeps lower parts of Greenpath from overlapping
with Crossroads.

Overall, I think these numerous room misalignments,
combined with the sheer number of rooms in

Crossroads, make this first area somewhat
confusing to navigate at times.

I have accidentally walked into this damn
elevator room when I thought I was higher

up more than once while playing this game.

And while I am bad at Hollow Knight, I’m
not THAT bad.

Now, you could argue that these misalignments
add to the design of Crossroads.

Perhaps Team Cherry wants you to get a little
lost and turned around in this area, so the

misalignments aren’t that big of a deal.

It’s a reasonable argument to make on the
internet.

But if you tried to make this argument to
my face, I would probably punch you.

I will say that Crossroads does have to contend
with being surrounded on all sides by other

areas that it has to line up with.

But I can safely say that the Forgotten Crossroads
is easily the worst offender in the entire

game when it comes to rooms overlapping or
just not lining up at all.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Team Cherry
made the Crossroads first, and weren’t as

experienced with making sure rooms lined up
correctly.

Because I do think every other area in the
game does a better job than the Forgotten

Crossroads.

Greenpath does a much better job of keeping
its rooms lined up fairly consistently.

While Greenpath’s rooms are on average larger,
we’re only dealing with 31 rooms this time

instead of 40.

But that’s still a big number, only surpassed
by the three largest areas in the game.

Greenpath has two large corridors that run
across the area, and they connect back to

each other across three branching paths, all
of which line up relatively nicely.

The top section of Greenpath, where the player
first finds Zote, also lines up well.

In the bottom section of Greenpath, where
the area connects to Fog Canyon and Queen’s

Garden, Nook did add a vertical hallway near
the Stone Sanctuary bench.

This keeps a portion of Queen’s Garden from
overlapping with the path to Sheo’s hut.

But outside of that, Greenpath is in really
good shape.

I think it really benefits from having the
space to move as far out as it wants.

As you can see, Unn’s room at the very bottom
of the lake is the leftmost room on the entire

map.

Either way, Team Cherry did a good job on
this one.

Our next stop is in Crystal Peak.

Peak has a total of 26 rooms, and takes the
general shape of a tall rectangle with horizontal

offshoots.

There are two entrances into Crystal Peak
from the Forgotten Crossroads, and both of

them have some issues.

The lower entrance is not quite long enough
to make it across the gap created from the

width of the higher entrance.

So a hallway has to be added to make up the
difference.

This is the first of many border hallways
which connect two separate areas together.

And let’s just say that these hallways aren’t
going to be staying very straight, if you

know what I mean.

As for the higher entrance, it actually doesn’t
drop down far enough to line up with the lower

entrance.

This is in part due to that vertical hallway
added in Crossroads that we looked at earlier.

But this problem actually compounds more as
we look deeper into Crystal Peak.

Two additional vertical shafts are needed
to connect upper Peak to lower Peak.

Nook actually had to extend the well drop
at the top of Crossroads to keep these rooms

from overlapping.

This extended hallway on the left also pushes
the Crystal Crawler room up so it can line

up with the Grub challenge room on the right.

So while some of Crystal Peak’s weirdness
is due to things happening in Crossroads,

there are still some internal misalignments
within it as well.

Another issue pops up at the Crystal Dash
challenge rooms that connect Dirtmouth to

Peak.

The path is simply too short, and two hallways
were added to make the section long enough.

I should mention that Crystal Peak was one
of the earlier maps that Nook recreated, as

she was going area by area at first, and her
methodology for dealing with misalignments

wasn’t fully set in stone yet.

At first, Nook wanted to avoid making these
extra hallways as much as possible.

But as she got further into the project, she
began to realize that it was going to be impossible

to line up all of Hallownest’s rooms without
more liberal use of these hallways.

Before coming to this realization, she employed
a different trick to fix some of the misalignments

in Crystal Peak, scaling.

A good example of this is the vertical room
right of the lower bench room.

This room has three exits on the left side
of the screen.

But these exits are too close together, and
don’t match up with the exits they connect

to.

Nook chose to scale up the entire room itself
so that it aligned with these three adjacent

exits.

However, outside of Peak and a few rooms in
the Soul Sanctum, Nook rarely used this method

to line up rooms.

Crystal Peak is home to a very unique set
of room connections.

When you drop off the cliff at Hallownest’s
Crown, you will go to one of two separate

rooms depending on if you exited by going
down or by going out.

The downward path actually does link up pretty
closely to where we would expect.

Nook opted to show the further path on her
map, and it’s fairly reasonable all things

considered.

The only other spot in the game that acts
like this is the drop off in Howling Cliffs.

You can either drop into King’s Pass or
Dirtmouth depending on how you exit the room.

Speaking of Dirtmouth, let’s check out this
little observation deck where Quirrel can

be found.

In his dialogue, Quirrel mentions that he
can just make out the light from Dirtmouth

all the way off in the distance.

Now, is this possible?

Realistically, Quirrel probably would not
be able to see Dirtmouth itself.

This is true when looking at both Nook’s
map and the ingame minimap.

The shape of the cliffs would block his view.

But from the game’s opening cutscene, we
can see that the surface world of Hollow Knight

appears to have a lot of fog and clouds.

So it’s possible that light being emitted
from Dirtmouth might be reflected off the

clouds above it and that might be visible
to Quirrel in the Crystal Peak.

So I’m calling this one plausible.

While not as solid as Greenpath, Crystal Peak
is reasonably connected together, all things

considered.

Things are a bit spaced out, but nothing overlaps,
so that’s a plus in my book.

But unfortunately, Crystal Peak is not quite
“peak”.

Fog Canyon is a small, humble area with only
13 rooms.

And it doesn’t cheat much to achieve this.

The biggest offender in this area is the explosive
bubble room, which overlaps somewhat with

the room below it.

So it has to be moved back and up to fit properly.

While Fog Canyon might fit nicely internally,
its connections to other parts of Hallownest

are pretty egregious.

The whole area is just too small for the space
it’s supposed to take up.

Nook decided to line the area up with its
connection to Queen’s Station, which is

the lowest section of Fog Canyon.

This results in very long, winding hallways
between Crossroads, Greenpath, and the upper

portion of the Fungal Wastes.

Even the connections to Queen’s Garden aren’t
quite long enough to make it on their own.

So internally, Fog Canyon looks great, but
its border hallways are just silly.

You’d really need the Mantis Claw to get
anywhere in this version of Hallownest.

Which I guess is already kinda true, but it
would be even more true than it already is.

Fungal Wastes is next with a total of 30 rooms,
some of which are packed together quite tightly.

And for the most part, things don’t overlap
much.

However, Nook did have to smush the Shrumal
Ogre arena room into the room to its right.

Vertical hallways had to be added near Mantis
Village in a couple of spots, mainly so that

the bottom of Fungal Wastes was low enough
to connect to both Deepnest and the Royal

Waterways.

However, the most blatant flaw in Fungal Waste’s
layout is the room leading up to the Fungal

Core.

You probably remember seeing an entrance to
this room when first exploring Fungal Wastes.

You likely hadn’t found the Mantis Claw
by this point, so this room entrance taunts

you by being too high up to reach.

But with the placement of these rooms, the
Fungal Core would be overlapping with the

room directly above it.

The only way this path works is if this entrance
is lower than the wall you have to scale to

access it.

Right beside the Fungal Core, another vertical
hallway has to be added to line up the cross

section between Fungal Wastes, Deepnest and
Queen’s Garden.

So, remember back when we were talking about
all the extra hallways that had to be added

in the Forgotten Crossroads?

Well, both Fungal Wastes and City of Tears
are downstream of that piss storm, and we’re

now going to see the consequences of shifting
things around so drastically up there.

Fungal Wastes is now really far away from
the City of Tears, and by extension, the Royal

Waterways as well.

In the top right section of the Wastes, the
player can find a large door that is chained

shut.

The other side of this same door can be found
in the City of Tears elevator room that leads

back up to the Forgotten Crossroads.

But these rooms are nowhere near each other
on the composite map.

Because both areas are connected to Crossroads,
they are forced apart due to that level’s

janked up layout.

And this is even after pushing the Crossroads
elevator as far to the left as possible to

get it closer to Fungal Wastes.

So, Nook decided to add a few really long
hallways to connect the Fungal Wastes to both

the City of Tears and the Royal Waterways.

And so we’ve finally arrived in the heart
of Hallownest; the City of Tears.

This area is massive, with 37 external rooms,
which is STILL 3 less than the Forgotten Crossroads.

The City of Tears was a uniquely challenging
area for Nook to map out due to the sheer

openness of the rooms.

A lot of the rooms in Tears aren’t closed
off at the edges, instead implying that there

is more to see just beyond the edge of the
screen.

Because of this, Nook decided to fill in these
gaps with additional background to reveal

the unseen portions of the city.

It was an insane amount of effort, but it
really helps illustrate just how massive the

city really is.

Some of the buildings look a bit strange when
seen in their entirety, but let’s be totally

honest here.

The buildings in the City of Tears just look
weird in general.

For me, it’s all these windows.

I think their design was inspired by termite
mounds, and these windows are where the holes

on a termite mound would be, but I’m just
not a fan.

Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate
the smart, walkable, mixed-use urban design

of the City of Tears, but man, these buildings
are weird.

The opening portion of Tears, starting from
where Quirrel is found, heading down into

the city streets and then back up into Soul
Sanctum, lines up fairly well.

However, the bridge path up top where Zote
can be found is a bit longer than the ground

path near Lemm, so a hallway is needed to
space things out a bit.

In the Soul Sanctum, the most troublesome
room is just left of the Soul Master boss

arena.

This room drops down low enough that it’s
overlapping with the bridge underneath.

From this bridge, we’d expect a little bit
more space, as we can see open air just above

it in game.

A bit of hallway was also added before the
lift heading up to Crossroads to help push

the rest of the City further right, so it’d
line up better with that side of the world

map.

And this hallway isn’t the only one.

More are added in the top and bottom paths
near the Hollow Knight fountain to space the

city out even more.

Without all these extended hallways, there
would be a pretty big misalignment with the

Resting Grounds elevator.

If we look at the Watcher’s Spire, we can
see that the lower portion of the tower doesn’t

go high enough to line up properly with the
Soul Sanctum tower, so a vertical hallway

is needed to help out.

The Watcher Knight room is also misaligned
with the room right below it.

These two vertical hallways just don’t line
up at all.

Luckily for Nook, fixing this on the composite
map was pretty straightforward.

Yet another hallway is needed after Watcher’s
Spire, and we can also see a pretty crazy

border hallway with the elevator shaft heading
down to the Ancient Basin.

Because we’ve been stretching the city so
much to the right, this room actually needs

to cut back to the left.

It also needs to be further down to line up
properly with the left side of Waterways,

which itself had to be pushed down due to
the infamous Tuk Rancid Egg room.

On the far right side of the city, King’s
Station shares two exits with the room on

its left, which, unfortunately, do not line
up.

While it’s not on the map, Nook actually
did recreate the Pleasure House elevator room,

and we can see that it’s not quite tall
enough to reach the other room on the composite

map.

There’s also another vertical hallway added
above King’s Station.

This was all done so that there would be open
space beside the window found at the top of

the Tower of Love.

Also, this isn’t really a misalignment,
so much as an observation that the bugs of

Hallownest have no idea how to build buildings,
but the penthouse of this tower is way wider

than all the floors below it.

I blame gentrification.

Finally, there are the connections to Kingdom’s
Edge, all of which are just way off.

The two exits near the Tower of Love, which
aren’t terribly far apart, split way off

of each other in Kingdom’s Edge.

These types of misalignments can’t be blamed
on changes made elsewhere in the map.

These rooms just don’t line up right at
all.

You probably also noticed that the horizontal
distance here is also quite large.

That’s due to the top path between City
and Kingdom’s Edge, the one that leads to

the Colosseum of Fools.

This hallway is so long it pushes Kingdom’s
Edge really far to the right.

This hallway is also higher up than the game
implies, so another vertical hallway is needed.

So none of the connections between Tears and
Kingdom’s Edge line up very well.

All things considered, the City of Tears could
have been a lot worse.

Its internal connections do make sense for
the most part, and there really aren’t many

major overlaps either, which I think are the
biggest offenders when it comes to map layouts.

I can sort of imagine a long hallway existing
between rooms in my mind, but two rooms occupying

the same space simply isn’t possible outside
of the U.K.

I think we need a break from some of these
more involved levels.

Let’s take a look at something more simple
for a change.

Dirtmouth and King’s Pass are only two rooms,
so there's not much to keep track of here.

However, as you can see, there’s a pretty
large gap between these two rooms.

This is because Howling Cliffs drops directly
into King’s Pass, and since the cliffs are

connected to Greenpath, we end up with a pretty
large gap that’s completely unaccounted

for.

Team Cherry really should have put an extra
long, empty hallway here.

I think it would have tremendously helped
the overall game experience.

The Howling Cliffs only have 6 rooms on the
composite map.

And everything actually lines up pretty well.

It’s probably the best region on the entire
map in terms of rooms fitting together.

I should mention that the drop down into King’s
Pass is a bit strange.

There’s a very long border hallway that
needs to be added.

Also, the opening cutscene from Hollow Knight
shows us what the path from Howling Cliffs

to Dirtmouth should look like, and it’s
not really clear where King’s Pass is supposed

to be.

Like it’s just not there?

Where did it go?

The more astute of you might have noticed
that a certain room was left out of Nook’s

composite map.

In the top left hand corner of the area is
the entrance to the Stag Nest.

And the Stag Nest’s room placement is so
nonsensical that even Team Cherry left the

room off the minimap completely.

If we were to put the actual Stag Nest room
on the map, it clearly overlaps with the room

below it.

And we can see that the edge of this room
extends far beyond the edge of the actual

cliff itself.

It’s like Team Cherry wants to treat this
room like the various internal rooms found

in the game, but didn’t actually give the
room a door entrance like you’d expect.

This room is just very weird, and weird things
make me angry.

We caught a glimpse of the Royal Waterways
earlier but let’s figuratively dive a bit

deeper into this area.

The Waterways consists of about 16 rooms,
a fair number of which are quite large, meaning

the Waterways still takes up quite a bit of
space.

Right off the bat, the whole area is lowered
just a bit to prevent the infamous Tuk Rancid

Egg room from poking up into the city streets.

Towards the left side of the area, Cornifer’s
room is moved slightly down to make it line

up correctly with Fungal Wastes.

A couple of vertical hallways are needed to
make the left half of Waterways line up correctly

with the long elevator shaft leading down
to the Abyss.

You can also see that the tight hallway that
the player is supposed to Crystal Dash through

had to be lengthened on both sides.

The bottom path of the elevator also has an
extra hallway that goes down a little bit.

This was done to make the tram line in Ancient
Basin line up vertically with the tram lines

in Deepnest and Kingdom’s Edge.

On the right side of the Waterways, things
actually line up pretty well.

However, just like with City, the Waterways
are quite a ways away from the Kingdom’s

Edge, so a pretty big hallway is needed to
connect them.

You might have noticed that this map does
not contain the Junk Pit, where the Godseeker

can be found locked away in her cocoon.

If you weren’t aware, these rooms, along
with the Pale Lurker arena, were added into

Hollow Knight a year after its release in
the Godmaster update, and there are a few

unique aspects to them likely because of this.

Two of the new Royal Waterways rooms actually
do fit nicely on the map, but this third room

is special because it very clearly runs straight
through another portion of Waterways and connects

to the room containing the Nailsmith’s hut
in City of Tears.

Well, it almost connects anyways.

Team Cherry left this third room off the map,
which kind of makes sense because the lower

passage to the room is a doorway, making this
an internal room.

However, the higher passage to this room is
an exit hallway.

It’s a bizarre inconsistency that could
have just been avoided by adding a doorway

in the Nailsmith room instead of a hallway.

What were they thinking?

Team Cherry obviously should have used a doorway
here.

And yet this game sold hundreds of copies.

Another reason Nook left these rooms out of
her map is because the parallax in the Junk

Pit room is way more complex than the vast
majority of rooms in the game, perhaps because

Team Cherry had more time to work on the room,
or had a change in design philosophy between

the release of the base game and the release
of Godmaster.

This was Nook’s attempt at fixing the room,
and it just didn’t end up looking right.

Overall, Royal Waterways is a bit weird, but
it does a good job at maintaining internal

consistency with its level design.

Unfortunately that’s pretty much the only
thing good about this place.

The Ancient Basin consists of 16 rooms, as
long as you include the Birthplace, which

isn’t actually included on the minimap.

The Ancient Basin is unique from all the other
areas of Hallownest because it only borders

one other area, the Royal Waterways.

Because of this, and because of the vast empty
space available to the Ancient Basin at the

bottom of the map, it doesn’t have any major
misalignments or overlaps.

We do have a near-miss over where the breakable
ground leads to a Pale Ore.

But everything else just works, probably because
every path leads to a dead end, so nothing

really has to line back up.

While we’re down here, let’s take a look
at the massive Abyss entrance room.

This room alone is taller than the entirety
of the Soul Sanctum.

This room was also an absolute nightmare for
Nook to clean up due to its insane parallaxing.

The main component of the background is this
strange low resolution wall structure.

In game, it stretches all the way across the
entire room, but to work on the composite

map, Nook had to mask out the entire background
and manually add a thinner version of the

background back into the image.

Moving on to Queen’s Garden, this area contains
18 rooms in total, and is one of my personal

favorite areas in Hollow Knight.

But how well does it hold up to scrutiny?

Let’s start at the very top, where Garden
connects to Greenpath.

To the left of this room is the White Lady’s
cocoon room, which has two sections to it

that remain isolated from one another.

This lets the player catch a glimpse of the
White Lady’s cocoon without actually being

able to enter it.

Because of this, a vertical hallway is needed
here on the right to line up the lower path

to White Lady’s room with the top path.

From looking at the main loop of Queen’s
Garden, we can see that some vertical adjustments

had to be made to line things up internally
as well as correctly connect to Fog Canyon.

In the bottom portion of the area, a somewhat
long horizontal hallway is needed next to

one of the vine platforming rooms.

Without this, the rooms above would overlap
with each other pretty badly.

So Queen’s Garden wasn’t quite as tightly
constructed as I had hoped.

But keep in mind that’s my fault for having
hope.

Just below Queen’s Garden is everyone’s
favorite pit of death and despair, Deepnest.

Deepnest is on the bigger side too, with 27
rooms.

Every connection to Deepnest lines up well
on Nook’s map, but they all needed to be

extended a bit to connect together.

Deepnest itself also had to be extended just
a tiny bit so its connection with Queen’s

Garden lines up correctly.

We also have some additional hallways off
the first Garpede challenge room to line things

up with Fungal Wastes and the rest of Deepnest.

But if we look at just Deepnest’s internal
connections, we do find a few issues.

Over in the Distance Village we have a misalignment
with the room directly to the right.

This path leading to Midwife is too high up.

Right next to the drop from Fungal Wastes,
we have another pair of exits that just don’t

line up at all, requiring a winding hallway
to patch things up.

Another pesky misalignment can be found with
the tram room where Cloth appears.

This room has two bottom exits, but they are
too close together to line up with the top

exits of the room below.

This room, and the room to the left of it,
also had to be moved up, so that the entire

Failed Tramway portion of Deepnest would align
vertically.

The tall room near Mask Maker is what pushed
everything up, and we can see how the path

right of here had to be lengthened out as
a result.

With how cramped together the right side of
Deepnest is, I’m surprised things have lined

up as well as they have.

But it’s not quite up to par with some of
the other areas in Hallownest.

Sorry to all my Deepnest stans out there.

Your life is already so hard.

Resting Grounds is one of the smaller sections
of Hallownest, with only 13 rooms, so there’s

really not much to get wrong here.

That said, its connection to Crystal Peak
ended up pretty misaligned.

The Knight takes a bit of a tumble when coming
down this hole, it seems.

Aside from that, an extra hallway is needed
to line up the top path of Resting Grounds

with the lower path.

And another hallway is added right of the
Blue Lake.

Overall, the Resting Grounds could have been
a bit better considering how few rooms it

has, but it’s not awful by any means.

Before we go, I should mention the Resting
Grounds’ notable landmark, the Blue Lake.

As we can see, the lake itself is roughly
right above the City of Tears.

We know from the minimap that the lake doesn’t
span the whole width of the city.

But from the composite map we can also see
that the lake can’t even be that deep either.

There’s no way all this rain is coming from
one puny lake.

I’m starting to think this game is unrealistic.

To finish off our journey through Hallownest,
let’s take a look at Kingdom’s Edge.

We’ve already talked about how none of its
connections work very well.

Some of you may be aware that Kingdom’s
Edge used to be a part of Deepnest.

In fact, the file names for all the rooms
in Kingdom’s Edge are called “Deepnest_East”,

but eventually Team Cherry decided to tear
Deepnest apart and make Kingdom’s Edge its

own area.

Perhaps this is why Kingdom’s Edge doesn’t
really connect to the rest of the world very

smoothly.

Kingdom’s Edge has 26 external rooms, however,
Nook included an additional 6 rooms not included

on the minimap.

The Cast-Off Shell room has been included,
as well as the incredibly tall room on the

far right side of the area that leads to a
giant Geo deposit.

This room is normally reached through a doorway,
but Nook decided to include it anyway since

it doesn’t overlap with anything.

We can see that this room does reach pretty
far down into the Abyss, with it stopping

somewhere in the middle of the giant Abyss
entrance room.

The other addition Nook made was the internal
rooms in the Colosseum of Fools which also

aren’t shown on the map.

The Colosseum is home to what is arguably
the most blatant spacial deceit in the entire

game.

When you enter the colosseum proper, there’s
a very long hallway the player has to traverse,

which really builds up the tension leading
to the various trials encountered there.

But the Warrior’s Pit, just below the Colosseum
is both a lot shorter, and yet reaches the

other side of the colosseum.

Since this is such a segregated area of the
map, it really doesn’t matter, but I would

say it’s the biggest single cheat the game
pulls off.

Another issue I noticed with the Colosseum
is this hole right beneath it.

This is, presumably, the chute where defeated
warriors are dumped out of the Colosseum.

On the composite map, this chute is directly
underneath the Shade Trap room in the Warrior’s

Pit.

However, I think it’s supposed to line up
with this grate near the Warrior Pit bench,

where we can see light shining up from below.

But even if you scooted the Colosseum over
as much as you could, it still wouldn’t

reach.

As for the rest of Kingdom’s Edge, this
long, narrow room isn’t quite wide enough

to reach the rooms beside it, so some extra
length is needed.

Additionally, the Tram room at the bottom
of the area doesn’t line up correctly with

either of the rooms next to it.

It’s too low and too short.

As for the Hive, it fits surprisingly well
into the bottom portion of Kingdom’s Edge.

And while we’re here, let’s take a quick
peek at Hive Queen Vespa.

As you can see, she is one giant woman.

The section to the right of the Hive is also
very well constructed.

I’d say that Kingdom’s Edge is yet another
area that benefits from having plenty of room

to sprawl and not having many other area connections
to handle.

Speaking of things that are sprawling, looking
at Kingdom’s Edge like this helps us examine

some strange recurring imagery.

You might have noticed these weird bone-like
structures winding in and out of the walls

in various places, with a huge concentration
of them being found right next to the Cast-Off

Shell.

It seems likely that these are part of the
Wyrm’s decaying carcass, which is coiled

up all throughout Kingdom’s Edge.

The portion of the corpse we walk into seems
to just be the mouth of the Wyrm, and the

Wyrm itself is actually much, much longer
than this.

Taking these additional bones scattered across
the area into account, here’s a more complete

view of the Wyrm corpse as it can be seen
in Kingdom’s Edge.

We can also see a lot of these white branches
and discarded or dislodged teeth littered

all over the place, which likely come from
the Wyrm corpse as well.

If we assume that these objects tend to stay
close to the carcass, then it might be even

bigger than what we can actually see.

Looking at it now, the Wyrm easily dwarfs
any other creature in Hallownest.

It’s way bigger than Bardoon.

It’s way bigger than the Colosseum carcass.

It’s even way bigger than the infamous Tuk
Rancid Egg room.

It truly is gargantuan, and can only really
be appreciated thanks to looking at things

from a new point of view.

If you want to read more speculation about
the Wyrm’s anatomy and biology, check out

this post by fellow Hollow Knight community
member, MEBI.

It’s some really cool stuff and I highly
recommend you check it out.

We’ve reached the end of Nook’s creation
of Hallownest, but I wanted to do a bonus

round for the White Palace.

Since Nook hasn’t created a map for this
area, we’ll be using a different composite

map created by Raining Chain.

This map can be viewed on their website and
is more focused on showing item locations

than having realistic room connections.

But it can still be used for comparing scale.

Before the White Palace was moved into the
Dream Realm, it was originally located in

the Palace Grounds in the Ancient Basin.

If we place the palace into the spot it supposedly
was before, we can see that it’s absolutely

massive.

The White Palace almost reaches up to the
top of the City of Tears.

So how does this make sense?

You could argue that the Palace as we see
it in the Dream Realm doesn’t truly represent

the Palace as it was in the real world.

Or you could argue that Team Cherry just wasn’t
concerned about this when making the level.

Either way, it’s very funny to think about
the White Palace literally sticking up through

the city’s sewer system.

As for the rooms in the White Palace itself,
there are a few things worth noting.

First, the Path of Pain does not fit in with
the rest of the map.

But, it’s not really clear if the Path of
Pain is supposed to be a real place at all.

It seems to just exist to protect the sealed
memory found at the end.

So maybe it shouldn’t count.

The second weirdness is the Pale King’s
workshop.

This room’s exits are so incredibly misaligned,
there’s no possible way that it was a mistake.

This could imply that the Pale King was trying
to hide his workshop and used some kind of

Pale King magic to make its entrance nonsensical,
or it’s just further proof that the White

Place as it exists in the Dream Realm has
somehow become warped from how it existed

in the real world.

Or it means some other third thing that I’m
too stupid to think of.

I’ve been quite harsh on Hollow Knight throughout
this video, picking it apart and criticizing

the most minute of details.

But I should mention that I don’t think
these misalignments and overlaps are all that

noticeable when playing the actual game.

And I think most people who played Hollow
Knight would probably agree.

The world doesn’t feel broken while playing,
which ultimately is what’s actually important

from a gameplay perspective.

So I do think Team Cherry pulled it off where
it actually counts.

Except maybe Crossroads.

Still not sure how I feel about that one.

Either way, it’s impressive how Nook worked
around all these issues to put together a

complete map like this, and I had such a great
time poking around her creation and seeing

what a spatially accurate Hallownest might
look like.

And like I said before, you can view the whole
world map over on Hallownest.net if you’re

interested.

Of course, with Silksong on the horizon, the
big question on all our minds is, how will

that game’s world fit together?

I asked Nook if she was planning on mapping
out Silksong like she did for Hollow Knight

and committing to cleaning up another of Team
Cherry’s geographical messes.

She said “fuck no”.