Before the release of Palworld, Pocketpair didn't really have a notable reputation in the gaming industry. The Japanese studio had released a handful of interesting games here and there, like Overdungeon, Craftopia, and AI Art Imposter, but none of them managed to gain a sizable fanbase. Because of this, when Pocketpair announced Palworld during the INDIE Live Expo in 2021, not a lot of people took the game seriously. Palworld, in some gamers' eyes, looked like nothing more than a comedic Pokemon clone with guns. However, the game ended up being much more successful than most people anticipated.
Palworld was launched in January 2024 on Xbox and PC, and despite having a limited marketing budget, it sold over 8 million copies in 6 days and had over 2 million concurrent players on Steam alone. Many of these gamers were long-time Pokemon fans, some of whom were disgruntled with the haphazard state of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and wanted to give an alternative like Palworld a shot. Although Palworld actually turned out to be a pretty different game from Pokemon, it excelled in many areas where the latest mainline Pokemon games had faltered, like graphics, animation quality, and technical stability. Pocketpair managed to topple Pokemon with Palworld in this regard, and now, it seems like the company may do the same thing again to Hollow Knight: Silksong.
Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hytale Have Similar Stories, But One is Still Bound to Have a Happy Ending
Both Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hytale are games with infamously long development cycles, but the recent disappointing news may only affect one.
Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse Could Be a Serious Competitor to Hollow Knight: Silksong
Hollow Knight: Silksong is, without a doubt, one of the most elusive indie titles of the last five years. Despite originally being announced more than six years ago, Team Cherry's highly-anticipated Metroidvania has yet to be released or even receive a third trailer. A few weeks ago, Team Cherry confirmed that Hollow Knight: Silksong would be launched sometime before holiday 2025. However, since Silksong was initially meant to be released in 2023 and was indefinitely delayed afterward, some fans find this new release window hard to believe. If Team Cherry keeps fans waiting much longer, the hole that Hollow Knight: Silksong's absence has left in the lineup of upcoming indie games may soon be filled by another promising Metroidvania.
Never Grave is a New Hollow Knight-Inspired Metroidvania from the Creators of Palworld
There are tons of great Metroidvanias out there, but there aren't a lot of titles that are directly inspired by Hollow Knight. That said, one upcoming game, titled Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse, does seem to fit this description quite well. Never Grave is a roguelite Metroidvania that's being developed by a subsidiary of Pocketpair called Frontside 180. Like most of Pocketpair's previous works, this game seems to take a large amount of inspiration from other popular video games; in this case, Hollow Knight.
Never Grave: The Witch and the Curse is a game that looks a lot like a serious Hollow Knight successor, though it doesn't officially bear the Hollow Knight name. The game's hand-drawn art style, environments, and level design are all shockingly reminiscent of Team Cherry's hit title, to the point where some people may confuse the two. Although many gamers may be quick to call Never Grave a rip-off, the game seems to have some fairly significant features that weren't present in the first Hollow Knight.
Thanks to Its Unique Gameplay Mechanics, Never Grave Could Steal Silksong's Thunder
In Never Grave, gamers play as a witch who can temporarily control enemies with her cursed hat, sort of like Kirby. Throughout the game, players have to collect materials while exploring procedurally-generated dungeons in order to rebuild a ruined village. This task isn't easy to accomplish, however, so players can team up with three other friends to explore the dungeons and challenge bosses together. Never Grave was originally meant to be launched in early access on Steam, similar to Palworld, but Pocketpair recently confirmed that the game will be released in full on all modern platforms sometime in the future. Although Never Grave doesn't have an exact release date yet, if the game comes out before Hollow Knight: Silksong, it may be able to steal its thunder, just like Palworld did with Pokemon.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 71 /100 Critics Rec: 58%
- Released
- January 19, 2024
- ESRB
- T For Teen Due To Violence
- Developer(s)
- Pocket Pair, Inc.
- Publisher(s)
- Pocket Pair, Inc.
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
- Xbox Series X|S, pc
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Open-World, Shooter, Survival
