Hollow Knight
In late August 2025, the release date of Hollow Knight: Silksong, one of the most highly anticipated video game sequels ever, was announced: September 41. Foolishly, I thought to myself, “Hey, maybe I can play the original Hollow Knight in the couple of weeks before Silksong comes out.” I’d always heard good things about it, even though I wasn’t aware of quite how big the fandom is. And, it turns out, how big the game itself is… unless I were to spend almost all of my waking hours playing, there was no way I would have finished it before the sequel’s release.
I had actually tried Hollow Knight briefly when I bought it earlier that summer, but had shifted my attention to another game, because Steam sales inevitably result in a big batch of titles landing in your lap all at once, and you just have to try them all.
The beginning of Hollow Knight can feel a little unwelcoming. You control a little bug, and you start off being only able to jump and hit enemies, which are other little bugs that crawl around in a dark grey world. The 2D levels are mazelike and I didn’t know where I was supposed to be going. Frankly, in the first 30 minutes of the game, I didn’t think there was much to it, and it didn’t seem that fun.
Little did I know how much bigger it would get: the variety of the world’s design keeps growing and growing as you explore, and the gameplay changes whenever your character gains a new ability.
Little did I know that would end up becoming one of my all-time favourite games.
Confessions of a Furtive Gamer
I’ve covered all kinds of media on this blog—books, movies, TV shows, music—but there’s one form of entertainment that I’ve never written about: video games. Ironically, games are probably the hobby that I’ve spent the most time on… and that’s also part of the reason why I haven’t written about them. The truth is, I’ve always been a bit ashamed to be a gamer.
Video games are one of the more geeky realms of geek culture, and I grew up in a time before the geeks inherited the earth. As a kid in school, I learned to avoid revealing parts of myself that would invite mockery: being good at math and computers, enjoying Star (Trek|Wars), still watching cartoons well into my teenage years, and yes, playing video games. You had to make an effort to find people, other geeks, that you could safely be yourself around, because the self that you wanted to be was not the socially accepted norm. For the most part, I did fall in with a group of friends with the same interests, but we would only talk about nerdy stuff when we were at our cafeteria table, away from the “regular” kids.
I’ve also shied away from writing about games because I’ve always had the sense that I play them “too much.” Nobody wants to admit their bad habits in a public forum. Even though I don’t know how to clearly define what amount of play is acceptable, I know that I often feel guilty, that I should be doing something better with my time than gaming.