Ok, This Game Actually Copied Hollow Knight (again...)

[@fireb0rn]

To clarify, there are no ripped Hollow Knight assets in Deviator. When I said "copying" or "stealing", I meant in the same way one would copy or steal someone's answers on a test, someone's comedy routine, or stealing someone's ideas. Plagiarism can and often does refer to stealing ideas. In academia, plagiarism usually doesn't take the form of photocopying someone's paper and publishing it as one's own -- it usually means copying someone's ideas and/or taking their words and rewriting them. That's what happened here. The Hunter was plagiarized not by taking the asset from Hollow Knight, but by stealing the ideas behind its design and redrawing it. The Black Egg Temple was plagiarized not by taking the room files from Hollow Knight, but by stealing every aspect of the area's design and recreating it. And just to be thorough, here's the similarities between the Black Egg Temple in Hollow Knight and in Deviator: - Monochromatic color palette using only the color blue (with the exception of the green doors) - Solid black floor and background without any "textured" ground or walls - Oval tiles which light up within a radius around the character - Large background symbols which light up within a radius around the character - Floating circular particles which fade in and out - Cracked egg objects in the background... A comparison between the two was shown in the video. I do regret not digging into it more, but it's all there and if anyone suspects I'm being disingenuous for views -- if they care so much about proof -- pause the video for a few seconds and look. It's not that hard. I've been told Deviator isn't plagiarizing because the assets are not ripped (aka not copy pasted from the game files without modification). Again, it's true the assets are not ripped. When I said "1 for 1 copying", I was joking about how the game testers might have reacted to the gameplay based upon what the Deviator team told me. In retrospect I shouldn't have made that comment, but I thought it was pretty clear it was a joke. Anyway, in the video, I showed Deviator's assets, including highlights of the entire demo. Nothing is ripped. I'm kind of baffled by how people use this video as evidence that they didn't rip assets, while also claiming that I'm arguing they ripped assets. If I wanted to make the argument (in bad faith) that they were ripping the assets, why am I showing the entirety of the demo and multiple comparisons which unambiguously prove they never ripped any assets? Well, it's because I wasn't trying to make that argument. I argued that they plagiarized, stole, and copied, which does not strictly mean photocopying, ripping assets, etc. Numerous people have called me clueless about plagiarism. On the contrary, I have a degree in education and experience dealing with plagiarism in real classrooms. Honestly, the people clueless about plagiarism are the people who assume it only means "taking without modification." I want to make it very clear that I don't want the developers to be on the receiving end of any hate. I've read a lot of nasty comments about them and it's extremely upsetting. But frankly, that hate was also already happening, and was probably worse before I made the video. Go read the awful responses to the IGN Deviator video. Which is a video I've probably rendered redundant in the algorithm. I've always been strongly opposed to criticizing developers for taking inspiration from Hollow Knight. I have had numerous arguments with people bashing the Crowsworn developers and will probably continue to have more in the future. But Deviator crosses the line. I'm not changing my stance on that and I'm not censoring the truth just because a few misguided jerks might post nasty comments at them, because that's frankly going to happen either way. It's just a very unfortunate trend for developers to cheat themselves out of what they're truly capable of by plagiarizing. Furthermore, the message of this video isn't "they're plagiarizing, get them!" -- I'm explicitly giving people reasons to wait and see and give the devs a chance, and I'm recognizing the talent of the devs, something people were, in my opinion, failing to do before. Prior to this, all anyone knew was that these devs were unapologetically plagiarizing and would continue doing so in the future. Now, people are actually informed about the situation, and apparently that's a terrible thing. Most importantly, how is this not a publicity stunt in the first place? The devs told me they knew their game was too similar to Hollow Knight, according to their testers and the responses to their gameplay videos... then sent a demo to me, the Hollow Knight guy who has a 1M+ viewed video about Hollow Knight plagiarism. I don't know of any other Hollow Knight creator who was sent an early access copy of their demo. I covered it because I feel like it's a waste of their talent to do this kind of thing, but I'm pretty sure they got exactly what they wanted. I felt like that kind of went without saying too, but here we are. After I released the video, the team sent me a thank you message, and they've become one of the top wishlisted metroidvanias on Steam. It doesn't seem like they've been victimized to me, except maybe in the overactive imaginations of some commenters.

[@cyclejason]

Jesus

[@radomguy2543]

Bro wrote an equalilent of 20 game reviews

[@void_-.]

bro wrote an actuall essey

[@SquidLikesTalking]

I ain't reading allat

[@fatalerrorepicsanscoolsans2545]

Holy-

[@CrankyTemplar]

Team Cherry can't keep copying games like Deviator and get away with it. My disappointment in them is immeasurable.

[@vivavaldez87]

...and your day is ruined?

[@Chromebookdemon]

Mine too they have to get caught someday

[@itsfy_]

im so sad they would do this

[@plumbus09]

truly a horrible crime

[@BadChess56]

How could they

[@tsirakura1684]

What sucks is that the game truly looks fun to play, but the greenpath setting is just so jarring. The game would be so much better with an original art style that actually compliments the main character

[@incidentlyaniguana2193]

Honestly, if it weren't for the artstyle and charm system, I think it has great potential. The changes they made are pretty great, and I'm okay with dev's building off hollow knights base combat. I mean, everyone has built off darksoul's combat over the years, and plenty of those games are wonderful. If they give the game it's own identity and work on localization, it could be very fun.

[@saycap]

The only thing that really matters is how good the final product is. No one in your market audience cares about any step between starting and shipping. Look at palworld. No one cares. If the game is good, gets eyes on it, it will be successful and people will play it. Plagiarism drama is negligible at the end of the day.

[@logicss2893]

@@saycap this is massively different from palworld, palworld gave the pokemon fanbase what they're longing for, this is not giving what us players want in a metroidvania game its straight boring

[@Dandygirl_94]

Definitely a tron or computerized/futuristic setting would have worked better

[@gektoast4968]

@@saycap bruh palword isn’t basically a 1:1 copy of anything. We don’t care about the “plagiarism” in palworld because it’s hardly present.

[@gusten13]

The devs were nice to name it Deviator, makes joke writing easy enough

[@BlindRK]

734 likes and no comments, lemme fix that

[@yungefendi6480]

copyiator?

[@Dandygirl_94]

Plaigerator?

[@The_Jayman]

Lol

[@bestyoutubernonegraternumber1]

Deriviator

[@brookerainwater640]

I think that jellyfish thing at 9:45 has a different art style that makes it look put of place in the world. Like, it has thin lines and delicate shading that is completely out of place in the hollow knight art style. Even the colors seem to make it feel out of place in the environment. But it is very pretty. If they redid the art in a style that matched that better, it may make it look more unique.

[@AromaticTea.]

ikr, it feels almost studio ghibliish compared to the dark cartoonish rest of the game

[@hi28]

I would play that its so pretty

[@Ovnidemon]

Same withe creature at 15:00 , it feels out of place

[@ナサニエルヒックマン]

And it looks like it's ripped from Studio Gibli 🤣

[@Yourlocalstupidoverseer]

ehhh... i can see where your going with this but for me personally this looks like the same thing just not transparent with an orange mess in the middle

[@hopestoryteller]

Still not over the audacity of them going "yeah we're a small team so we have to reuse things :(" You Are Bigger Than Team Cherry.

[@placeholderdoe]

Maybe they’re all 5 years old and 2 feet tall, they need five people to stack on top of each other to reach the keyboard, and only one person can dev at a time

[@alguienconJ]

@@placeholderdoe bro ats 3 kids to use the computer use a laptop

[@enzopierlot5599]

Let's not forget that what Team Cherry did is absolutely INSANE, that's partly why they're praised for it. A team of 3 talented people is a really small team, as is a team of 5 average people. Okay it's way too similar, but they're putting effort into it to take their own path at least. The artwork is original!

[@urtoryu_dy_althraidn]

True, but it's not like Team Cherry is an easy standard to follow. Not defending them, just pointing out that Team Cherry's a big outlier.

[@mrhalfsaid1389]

Yeah, they probably don't actually care about hollow knight enough to actually know how many people are on team cherry, I don't like taking assets and not only not crediting team cherry but trying to downplay the theft is genuinely worse

[@amateraceon5202]

Now I need a mod where whenever the Knight uses Wraiths/Shriek, a really loud track of someone yodeling plays every time

[@valiyar7541]

Now no one can yodel!

[@Jandiss]

The Country of Swizerland wants to know your Locations (:

[@traqndimov3182]

that's the best mod ever

[@tidalbow8969]

That would be one of the Hollow knight mods

[@drascia]

Yodeling Wraiths

[@MaxRichmond-ol7li]

I think the reason that Deviator hasn't released yet is because the main character's face is still loading.

[@Observis_]

💀💀

[@Fawlker]

You sir won the internet today, ROFL😂👌!

[@AeonKnigh432]

I actually really like the main character's design. But the loading face is stupid.

[@Skyline-13-pvl43]

💀

[@lillyraisin]

Trueeeeeee!

[@liliana.6053]

This feels like the biggest problem with plagiarism, that it's this uninspired copy of someone else's work, that has things that feel out of place, because their focus was to use things they liked from other stuff without thinking about why and how they work.

[@blackheadcat]

I agree. The world of Hollow Knight is the world of small bugs and fungi. I want to ask the developers of Deviator what world they imagine.

[@lasercraft32]

They LITERALLY said "its too much work" to make their own assets. That's kinda embarrassing. :/ And the sad thing is, if this was a Hollow Knight MOD rather than its own game, it would be seen as impressive.

[@NorthernRealmJackal]

I'm really confused. What asset did they steal? I can't spot a single sprite in the video that was stolen??

[@lasercraft32]

@@NorthernRealmJackal Dude... Its literally Greenpath. :/

[@NorthernRealmJackal]

​@@lasercraft32 Yeah, except it's literally NOT literally Greenpath. I'm not defending them, it's extremely unoriginal and derivative, but they also appear to have made everything from scratch, which is why I'm so confused about their comment about "its too much work".

[@CosmoAnimator]

@@NorthernRealmJackal my guy thats.. literally the art used for greenpath, it isnt just greenpath itself, its reusing that art for stuff like the walls for greenpath.

[@NorthernRealmJackal]

​@@CosmoAnimatorI'm looking at screenshots side to side, and it's clearly not the same assets. A few of the bushes may have been stolen and recoloured, but I don't think so, since everything else is original graphics. Dunno what else to tell you. I feel like fireb0rn accidentally made it sound like there was literal asset theft going on, and this comment section misunderstood and jumped on it.

[@nineplusten]

I was going to write a comment listing all the similarities but I'm just a 5 person team and it would take too much work.

[@lemonomical]

gottem

[@AVerySealishSeal]

no worries, just copy someone else's comment and change like 2 words, it's completely unfathomable for a team of 5 people to make something orginal.

[@SemiHypercube]

We've been waiting so long for Hollow Knight 2 that some people have tried to straight up make Hollow Knight, too

[@kam17245]

hollow knight 2: X hollow knight too: ‼‼‼‼⁉⁉💯💯💯💯💯💯✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔💲💲

[@SageMode.]

🗣 BARS‼️

[@ArjunTheRageGuy]

Alright, you fking win on this one

[@Bigsauce7593]

Absolute banger comment

[@pk251]

play nine sols

[@ceruloryx]

what's unfortunate is that the game does look gorgeous - and it does take a lot of skill to even recreate good looking assets - but when it crosses the line and just becomes straight up plagiarism :/

[@bluelighting2659]

Yeah i was thinking the exact same thing they could have definitely made something cool and unique but sadly some games ideas will never reach their potential because of the shitty devs behind it

[@ashoka7273]

Yeah, if you can spend all that effort in copying something then you can just make your own. Like, the artists still have to spend the same amount of time creating those unarguably very pretty assets. It's the designers that were lazy with coming up with unique environments.

[@wasperfly]

They could've been making some insane tier fanart. People would've paid em big bucks to draw their ocs in the hk style.

[@VTWS]

I’m not sure how much was recreated, it seems to just reuse the exact same assets. Probably more of a mod

[@durchdenwald2880]

@@VTWS it was definitely recreated, just with very, very heavy "inspiration"

[@michaelb.3006]

I think that they could really do well if they leaned more into a neo futuristic city type style/mapping given the main character’s design. Possibly even make it so the characters goal is to “deviate” from what the “big boss man” usually tells everyone to do and ends up freeing the city or something? Just a small 2 second brain storm but if they do go in that direction I think they could do an AMAZING job with it.

[@musicdev]

From Gami Studio’s website (creator of the game): GAMI, a cutting-edge Web3 gaming studio, delivering the future of gaming by merging NFT interoperability across games and chains What could possibly go wrong?

[@just_some_dude_my_guy]

From what I could tell, that seems to be a different group by the same name.

[@bagredecartola1289]

​@@just_some_dude_my_guyi hope so, otherwise it would be blatant greed at it's purest

[@KeyToWite]

"We're only a 5 people team we can't make unique stuff!" Team cherry with 3 people making all unique art:

[@kempolar9768]

I knew that they were tiny but I WAY underestimated, just 3 people? They are damn good at their jobs.

[@EaterOfGeese]

​@kempolar9768 I think it was just 2 people for most of hollow knight's development not including Christopher Larkin the music guy. They made every single thing themselves and they had to work on a lot of characters that some supporters would design like the warrior dreams, Tiso, and a few others on top of everything else. Don't forget the four free DLCs in an underpriced game! Team Cherry is amazing

[@Crimsane247]

team cherry blatantly copied hungry knight how dare they 😪

[@natebrown7968]

And one of the best games in gaming

[@dashcharger24]

Didn't one guy basically made the whole game, the other one the artwork and the third guy the music?

[@eden-elysium]

Looking at the mobs in the game vs the protagonist… something seems off. I think it’s the lineart thickness. The protagonist’s lineart is thinner than the mobs’, which makes it seem like the protagonist was just copy-pasted in. In Hollow Knight, every character’s lineart had the same thickness, from the Radiance to a Tiktik. That consistency enhanced the simplistic style’s charm, methinks.

[@philidor9657]

Good eye. I didn't notice that until you mentioned it but now I cant unsee it

[@ngwoo]

The main character doesn't seem to belong in the world at all. They're a little robot fella, it feels like they should be exploring the ruins of ancient technology or something. Not caverns full of bugs and plants.

[@repli2991]

@@ngwoo tbf, that could be intentional, I think there's other stuff that looks even more out of place than it should, like the creature that makes platforms move, the weird bone snake thing, or the save point.

[@scorchik11]

@@ngwoomore accurately the world doesn’t belong around the character since the character is the most original part of the game (not including animations)

[@drayke8886]

@@repli2991 I don't think it's intensional. The same happens when you quickly copy from different sites for school paper and it has every paragraph in different face. This game looks like mashup of three material sources mixed together where hollow knight is the obvious one.

[@ashoka7273]

It's such a shame, because a lot of stuff looked really fun and had some nice twists and unique ideas. They really just had to go that little bit further and not be lazy and stay away from the plagarism and it would have been a great game. They've really shot themselves in the foot with that one decision of wanting to do 70% of the work instead of 100. There is also a weird juxtaposition between their original stuff and what they copied, obviously it's only noticable if you've played Hollow Knight, but there are just certain components that don't quite fit together in artstyle And then there is that elevator pig which just doesn't fit in at all and feels like it was made by someone entirely different lmao

[@cactuscam913]

yeah it definitely looks like a conflict of interest. I feel like at least one dev actually wants to make a good original game but is getting pushed to the side for the lazier ones

[@Tasorius]

It LOOKS really fun. No past tense. If you really looked at it you would see that it's not exactly the same.

[@ashoka7273]

@@Tasorius Some parts? Parts that are actually their own concepts and ideas? Yes. Other parts are blatant art theft, not just "inspiration" (some have been explicitly pointed out in the video). How can you say that when you see that city of tears part with the elevator that looked very unpolished, since it's an alpha, but because it's so barebones it's blatant how "heavily inspired" it has been by Hollow Knight. The past tense is because the game stopped being fun when they did that. Not just from an ethical perspective, but if a game doesn't have its own identity, but just feels eerily familiar then it isn't fun from a player experience for me either.

[@Tasorius]

@@ashoka7273 The annoying part to me were the hidden rolling bastards that came out of nowhere. I just started the demo by the way, and some part did feel a bit too much like Hollow Knight...

[@TeddieBean]

@ashoka7273 time stamp for elevator pig? I couldn't see that. Difficult to find the unique stuff amongst all the plagiarism 😢

[@Nate-yv9mc]

Controversial or not, creating a clone of another game while barely changing any components of it is plagiarism. You can’t make a Star Wars game and change the color of the stormtroopers to blue. Then sell the entire plot and esthetics with minor tweaks as your own creation. We all get inspired by great games/designs but a line needs to be drawn between inspiration and stealing.

[@fireb0rn]

Exactly. Thank you.

[@Yourlocalstupidoverseer]

@@Nate-yv9mc I've had this happen to me before, I'm not going to get into detail about it because the story has some personal details, so to make it short: I made a drawing and some guy redrew with much less quality and tried to take it off as his own.

[@Daxton.H]

Where do I get this new hk texture pack? Looks great.

[@ingenarelitems]

7:06 -- black egg temple floor glow and cracked eggs 7:26 -- areas lighting up like black egg temple 7:34 -- baldur's shell charm 8:04 -- vengeful spirit animation 8:18 -- breakable walls like kings pass 8:42 -- soul 9:06 -- king's pass 9:10 - dreamers 9:40 -- Walmart version of hollow knight poems 9:58 -- notice the blue glow/fog type thing clipping? that'll happen when you copy paste asests 10:07 -- cornifer 10:15 -- literally copy pasted greenpath platforms 10:18 -- fungal wastes takes over green path 10:19 -- mosscreeps 10:33 -- mosskin 10:37 -- partharas geo? 10:40 -- lifeblood textures on geo rocks 10:45 -- tiktiks 11:15 -- great slash but blue 10:37 -- comes in like the spider lady 11:47 -- vengefly 11:52 -- baldurs but mushroom... why not? 12:35 -- squits.... 12:46 -- hornet attack with aimbot 13:09 -- charm selector but no opaque background 13:27 -- little enemies can downward dash now 14:02 -- shade dash before the normal one? 14:06 -- dash attack 14:03 -- the hunter's kids... 14:56 -- seems like bretta on the right side.. only saw her for a few frames tho 15:17 -- teenage version of the hunter 15:56 -- actually bretta? idk edit: 21/02/24 12:52am hey fire i think you forgot about the internet thumbs up. 😭 lmao i come back to this every day just to see i've won

[@ickabug957]

I wonder who will get the internet thumbs up…

[@Oddf0x]

Its not a hollow knight copy but "blood vials" healing and also getting health from parries is literally bloodborne

[@junkygamer3348]

@@Oddf0xits one mechanic from another game, that is inspiration

[@Yusuf-ke5iu]

cornifier is iffy, since he didn't do anything yet

[@LeCrazyy]

This game definitely has issues with originality but the vast majority of points here are stupid comparisons that could be made with so many other games well before hollow knight existed.

[@FirionLeFleur]

Gotta love how many people said Crowsworn was a rip-off despite these existing and you not hearing a peep out of them.

[@surtursaga6789]

Because crowsworn is actually a promising looking game

[@4foot11rat2]

@@surtursaga6789 crowsworn is gonna be top tier

[@N1conek0]

crowsworn looks incredibly good tho

[@damonlam9145]

and a bit hypocritical considering the fact one of the og developers of Hollow Knight is currently working with the team creating Crowsworn.

[@victorjohnson5646]

@@damonlam9145 dude that's sweet

[@PendragonDaGreat]

The first two minutes: THANK YOU Homage is great, inspiration is great, stealing is not. If I play a metroidvania and one side room looks like the Queen's Garden with a nail and mask leaning against a wall that's fine. Heck, give your map seller big glasses and name them Cornelius for all I care. But if an entire region looks like someone just turned up the saturation slider in Photoshop that's when things start to break down, and it just got worse from there.

[@Acefdiamonds]

Yeah if you have a nail in the ground in a separate room that's fine Hell I may do it myself and I'll appreciate it

[@mastrheartsxiii]

I mean I have to push back on hollow knight being the most influential metroidvania seeing as we refer to the game genre as… well.. “Metroid””(castle)vania”s

[@NorthernRealmJackal]

Excuse me, but the politically correct term is "Knightlike" now.

[@HyperionDash]

I'm going to be working on my own metroidvania, that will follow the hollow knight style, once I've developed a beta, I would love for you to do something like you've done with this game, definitely critique it, ALOT, it will probably take a few years as I'm a solo developer still going through school, but ill update you when its ready :)

[@abaddonarts1129]

My favorite part is the laugh of sheer disbelief @ 8:03 when the animation for collecting magic is the same "hover with particles being absorbed" as Hollow Knight (i.e. when you get a spell/absorb a dreamer). Fire realized exactly what was happening as soon as that came up. I do think there's some cool ideas in here! The shield/parry system is really cool, and I'm a big fan of the smoothness (though that may just be the Hollow Knight slash animation speaking)

[@FUNKYPINKU]

lower beings, these words are for you together

[@alex_schmalex_]

💀

[@seashell3403]

There’s a lot to unpack here, but here is all the similarities I’ve found Starts out with egg cracking in animated cutscene, Beginning area similar to black egg temple, Walls in beginning area look similar to seals of binding, Starts with mysterious poem on a black screen, Same ability introduction UI, Same glowy pickup orb thing, Balderdash cosplaying as mushrooms, GREENPATH, Mosscreeps, Mosscreeps &tiktiks love child Jerry, Squit looking thing, Same slow-mo/poof damage effect, Low health effect similar to fury of the fallen, Soul totems. Just soul totems, Charms from Wish (work the same too), Charm notch system, Charm UI, Health UI looks like it was traced, Sou- I mean consciousness, Same upgrade/ability gain animation, Similar text box, Blue geo, Blue geo rocks, Moss/grass literally identical, “We have the Hunter at home.” The Hunter at home: 15:18 Walking grass particle, Boss staggering animation, Enemies don’t respawn after killing them, Very similar environment layering technique used, Not even gonna start on the art style I’m probably gonna add more to this if(when) I find more. It’s a shame, because the parry and special end,y attack mechanics have a lot of potential.

[@MC-zr7hl]

Coulda just said "everything but the main character" and saved yourself some time.

[@Lappelduvideify]

Nah, I like the in depth writeup.

[@Rujewitblood]

So everything, except for one thing?

[@seltersaar3512]

The downward slash animation of the little bug at 14:11 is identical to that of Soul Warrior, except that it makes no sense here, since the enemy is much smaller that our character.

[@sergioortiz8784]

@@MC-zr7hl aight

[@Lunarianelf]

As a junior developer myself, this blows my mind. I do 3D art, animation, music, sound design, and coding, and boy, I tell you it's HARD. It just takes so much effort, time, passion and resources to do all of this, why on EARTH would you do a carbon copy of another game??. While the team seems to have a very talented bunch of people, and a fair marketing budget, OF COURSE their game is gonna flop if players/customers see the blatant plagariasim, cause why would I buy it when I can buy Hollow Knight instead? This is self sabotage, and my brain just can't accept the fact that these dudes spent a LOT of time and resources making this very accurate copies instead of doing what we all came for in the first place: creating games out of pure love of developing... and the saddest thing is that looking at how effective these are, you can see that they have what it takes and much more...

[@KuroroSama42]

I will say that the first area kind of reminds you of black egg temple, sure, but it's not all THAT similar. And the other clips you showed during that first half of the video had some pretty different looking areas. There was a moment of "white palace" in there, but most of those castles and whatnot were pretty different. 6:01 to 6:20 shows like 5-6 reasonably different looking areas to anything Hollow Knight has (ok, there's the clear "deepnest spike pit" things) You mentioned the "pillars from king's pass"... but that's just some rocks. You could say that Hollow Knight's rocks look like any number of other older 2d game's rocks. The most egregious similarity certainly does seem like greenpath. Sure it's "just a forest", but it's the exact same take to forest as Hollow Knight did. I feel like they just didn't know how to make a forest area so they stole it. The rest they had an idea of what to go with and actually created something. That being said add in the copied animations, gameplay, and UI... that's definitely too much, even if you can overlook a stolen greenpath. Also, as you said, they're making excuses for the greenpath steal. They could just forgo a forest and make it very different. And try to make the UI/animations a bit more different.

[@lyria261]

This game honestly has some cool original mechanics, i particulary like the awareness attacks. There's potential here. If they changed the art and enviroments it could be its own masterpiece. The character feels very out of place in the underground hollow knight enviroment. I feel like a more sci fi-ish setting would fit way better than the nature theme (with the loading screen face and all) and give the game a unique feel. The devs are definetly skilled enough to create a good game. Now it's their choice if they want the best for this project and choose to create something memorable or if they'll just be known for making a forgettable knockoff at the end.

[@jacobwagner8984]

I could totally see this being set in a cyberpunk style setting with lots of neon lights, pinks and purples, and enemies being more mechanical than organic. But i'm sure asking the artist to remake literally every background and enemy visually would be too much work. Saying they reused elements from HK to save time is fine when talking UI or some of the mechanics. But the entire world setting is wild for them to just copy.

[@bb-boys4147]

Guys this is actually silksong. Team cherry just renamed themselves to GOMI and when this game comes out its going to reveal to everyone that it was silksong all along trust me guys my dad works at team cherry trust me please

[@spoongrman]

I'm the dad, I can confirm

[@Dravianpn02]

@@spoongrman its true. I'm confirm, can dad.

[@spoongrman]

@@Dravianpn02 indubitably.

[@Reinoiro]

Dhar Man ass plot twist

[@Tropical_Tutorials]

An amazing quote I’ve heard. “Instead of trying to be completely original, try to draw your inspiration from so many different sources that none of them become identifiable”

[@Acefdiamonds]

I mean everything has been told once so yeah it's true

[@miamesa8652]

That's literally how you learn art, and build a style, yeah. And is what they've done.

[@Tropical_Tutorials]

@@miamesa8652 Well, the problem here is that one of the specific inspiration sources is not just a little bit identifiable, but so extremely clearly prominent in the game to the point where the it’s basically straight up copying hollow knight

[@ElfinHat96]

Isn't it what AI generated art does?

[@heckingbamboozled8097]

​@@ElfinHat96 to an extent. The issues with AI come from how it pulls data. Not with the output.

[@selentia404]

The mechanics actually look really nice, the way you stay in the air while attacking in it, the way the charge attackd look, but the art is just..

[@CreamerBeans]

I am solo-developing a game that takes inspiration partially from Hollow Knight (and also a lot from Super Paper Mario), and I will say, I am going for my own art style and it's absolutely destroying any chance of the game getting done within the next decade. Which I'm fine with since I'm not planning on making any money off the game, and I like making it with my style. But I can understand why SOME attributes you would copy, if you're trying to actually be conscious of how much time you're pouring in to the project. A lot of the traits of HK's style are the way they are for a reason. Hollow Knight was developed in record time, partially because of their style being fairly efficient. As a great example: Having the foreground be all black. I decided to stick with vivid colors for the foreground to match my style better, and it makes things a nightmare, because now you have to have parallaxing foreground sprites that need to somehow simultaneously blend together but not go far into where the player is moving, and you need to drastically increase the amount of sprites you need for a given room, now that you're using all that space that would be black with textures. Instead of that, I could've just had the foreground be black, and I could then reuse a lot more of my assets from room to room. Of course, that doesn't justify being this close. This is too close. I'm just saying I can see how a time-conscious dev would take notes from HK.

[@Pogobro]

I wonder how much work it would take them to redo the art, or if they will try to just cash in asap

[@tobeymaguire647]

If they just change the colour of the grass to like blue or red, it would be pretty cool and less recognizable as a derivative.

[@GrayDayMystic]

But that doesn’t really solve the problem.

[@Rujewitblood]

More time than they've already put into this crap

[@Coocoocrazy3]

Hi Pogo

[@jeremymullens7167]

It sounded like they weren’t going to copy hallow knight for future developed areas. Honestly, they have unique ideas. They just messed up their execution. It came out too derivative and they need to have something to say and not just following a trend.

[@Notgem414-wt4yo]

black egg temple,egg in the abyss,health bar, soul meter, the pic of learning great slash, "blood vessels", basically the dreamers, Green path, tiny mossy, Rolling mushrooms, squits, charms(rune), dash slash,Mothwing cloak, Place you get howling wraith, Yes i did that just for a internet thumbs up

[@zaptrap4802]

hey you can have my thumbs up too 👍

[@Dr.Death8520]

You forgot to mention legally distinct Hunter

[@santaisreal]

the text box art looks very similar as well

[@scorchik11]

@@santaisrealdon’t forget the text box position

[@Soul.Resonant]

@@scorchik11how do you steal text box positions? theres only like 5 places they could go

[@Summer_Lilac]

The hardest thing for me is like they could have done their own thing using hollow knight as inspiration. but like the mushroom enemy that rolls on the ground is just like the ones in fungal. just faster. seems like a hollow knight BUT... concept. I just hope this is a first draft and everyone calling it out will have them reconsider. because the whole parry and dashing through something and the two different kids of attacks seems neat. just do more of that. and the text seems stilted like it was translated poorly from one language to another. even their messages seemed like that. I want to have faith they are doing their best but it just seems like a cash grab.

[@valiyar7541]

I agree 100%, the new features they included looked amazing, and the dialogue just felt like a transaction rather than any real person talking.

[@levb258]

The translation I can accept, good translation is expensive. That's not really the problem.

[@RadiantSharaShaymin]

Since they're taking so much from HK, I assume they're going for a darker or more serious story... so, while the translation is going to take me out of it, I imagine it'll be unintentionally comedic. Like those "Google translated game" videos, but it's the genuine final result.

[@StoryDood]

2:33 I do feel its important to note the difference between them plagiarizing and "reusing [Team Cherrys] work". That second wording implies that they took assets directly from hollow knight, which it doesnt seem to me at least to be the case, it seems to me simply like they've indeed studied Hollow Knights art style and designs and replicated them without any thought about those choices in art direction that Team Cherry made. This is still dishonest and disingenuous if it's the case. The matter of plagiarism is up to interpretation and while I'd say it sure quacks like a duck, still, its not reusing work from hollow knight. Maybe this is a semantical point, but i feel if you're going to call them out, it's good to get your wording correct, especially since you have a large following.

[@NorthernRealmJackal]

Thank you! It looks like at least half of the comment section didn't grasp this. It's not a "semantical point." Literal asset theft is a pretty serious accusation, so you'd think someone would chose their words more carefully when implying it.

[@MrCheeseJr]

1:15 Hollow knight is one of my favorite games ever but saying it’s the most influential metroidvania doesn’t make sense to me when the genre is literally named after arguably the most influential metroidvania game.

[@fireb0rn]

The vast majority today have heavy Hollow Knight influences, and the last games I played with heavy Metroid or Castlevania influences were like... Ghost Song or Bloodstained? That was years ago. The genre has evolved. The only reason we don't call these games "Hollow likes" now is because it sounds terrible and people are used to the term Metroidvania. Also, the genre is based upon the most influential metroidvania game? Did you mean games? You're kind of demonstrating my point if you don't even know where the term came from. 😅 Also, FWIW, Hollow Knight has probably sold a similar amount of copies as the entire Metroid franchise, in a fraction of the time. I don't think most people really understand just how much of an impact this has had on the genre.

[@MrCheeseJr]

@@fireb0rn You make some fair points tbh but saying I don’t know where the term came from when I didn’t use “s” is pretty childish. All I’m saying is Metroid is one of the biggest franchises in the Metroidvania genre and this genre probably wouldn’t exist or be as popular as it is now without it. (Obv not tryna discount the mainstream appeal that hollow knight brought the genre tho.) 👍

[@Rathernot1224]

I think this game took inspiration from Team Cherry's bigger game called "Hungry Knight" and a random game called "Hollow Knight" was being talked about on the forums for a bit

[@ere4t4t4rrrrr4]

The trouble isn't that this game copies (or "draws inspiration from", whatever), but that this game copies _from a single source_ If they had a number of reference materials to draw from, people wouldn't be complaining, because they would still have the work to blend the elements together (and in this case it's inevitable to do real creative work)

[@arztje]

"Can you destroy the grass?" *fails to slash the grass* "This is a bad game." LOL

[@synphilia4776]

grass% is over

[@catscanhavelittleasalami]

I get it tbh. First thing I do in open worlds is check if I can cut the grass.

[@err0rc0degames]

6:11 Seeing that the game is Chinese makes it make more sense

[@Auvisome]

@@err0rc0degames casual racism

[@Auvisome]

Casual racism

[@err0rc0degames]

@@Auvisome You have no idea how many game knockoffs originate from China

[@Auvisome]

@@err0rc0degames and?

[@err0rc0degames]

@@Auvisome And you are braindead

[@XaadeTheBlade]

It's a weird gray area between stealing and suggesting someone can own an art style. You can't own an art style. Thick lines and subtle cell shading can't be owned. I bring this up because this feels wrong, but Pal World doesn't. That game is distinct to a degree. Nintendo can't own cartoon animals with bulbous features. They can't own using these animals to fight, and they can't own the idea of capturing them, even with a.... ball. I mean, would it be different if PW had a cube? Honestly? I say all this while not even liking Pal World. I feel like that game is lazy, but didn't cross that line. Where exactly the line is crossed is hard for me to tell.

[@jacobwagner8984]

The animation of gaining a new ability. The spells used. The charm notches. The entire UI for the menus. The enemy movements and types. The black egg temple carbon copy. ART - yes, it's not owned by anyone. And although this art style looks extremely similar to the HK art style, it's not crossing the line. The artist still drew some pretty good stuff. The rest of it though? It's very much crossed the line. HK and Ori had a lot of similarities in getting upgrades that open up new areas of the map. But HK did it differently enough it never felt like the same game. With this game, I'd feel like I'm playing Wish Hollow Knight the whole time. What the devs should do, is pull an environment from a different game entirely. And apply that to the game. I think that could go a long way to being different. I like the idea of it being more industrial and futuristic to fit the main character a bit more. Use hyper light drifter for a theme

[@NorthernRealmJackal]

​@@jacobwagner8984"similarities in getting upgrades that open up the areas of the map" ....idk maybe don't speak on what is/isn't plagiarism when you don't even understand what a metriodvania game is?

[@heckingbamboozled8097]

​@@NorthernRealmJackal this is utterly irrelevant to the point they're making. This is some reddit tier "um ackshually" pedantry

[@pauloazuela8488]

Palword is so different enough that it deviates to pokemon, while this one the environments alone if you cut some parts and mix and match it , the average folk wouldn't see it's change. Like the lifeblood enviroment that is prominently have plants with blue glows, ofc in HK there are blue flowers that is butterfly shape but the vines that are just blue can be cut and use the environment from this game instead and put it in HK lifeblood areas, high chance people wouldn't notice it

[@TWGatorade]

thats my youtuber right there, doing his best to prevent people from unpromptingly harassing people to probably not much avail, but hes still trying it nonetheless. good on you, man

[@dieselboy.7637]

@@TWGatorade Portugal is so bad lmao

[@bipolarlive1214]

Gami: Well yanno we only have 5 people and its unsustainable, blah blah blah Us: TEAM CHERRY BUILT THIS IN A CAVE!! WITH SCRAPS!! (Iron Man 1 Reference)

[@Dravianpn02]

Everyone knows it's an iron man 1 reference my dude.

[@frogmanjones6340]

Honestly, If you can make a game with the same mechanics as Hollow Knight, it could ve been fine, they're generic enough (double jump, dash, wall jump, etc.) to make something similar but still unique. But damn, stealing art, plot and designs is ridiculous. How come you can't have an ounce of creativity or originality to make something unique? HOW????? And the absolute b*lls to ask for cash money. Insane.

[@mr.lavasquid9285]

bro really censored balls but not damn

[@bobertastic6541]

bro censored balls 💀

[@Netsuki]

I mean, the abilities are not just similar/generic. They are done exact same way. If You jump as Mario, as Ori and as Knight, You feel different. If they move around, their movements is also different. But Deviator has the exact same style of movement/abilities. Though it's kinda sad that with that much talent and ideas, they chosen to copy Hollow Knight, because parry/dash/shielding is definitely amazing thing. I hope the devs will chose the right path and will make the game inspiration, not a copy. Because they do have potential and talent. The game could become another hit.

[@gustsword6588]

the stupid thing is a game like this doesn't even need to have lore AND they do have unique mechanics in this game that are not directly ripped off from HK so they had everything to make a similar but good game lol.

[@samwesker5104]

I don’t even think the art is that bad like obviously most of its custom made but just in the same art style which in my opinion is fine and so do team cherry (look at crow sworn) My main problem is how it’s just hollow knight retextured, I think it’s ironic that the only original part of the game is actually the sprites/art😂

[@urnuste]

1:14 no that would be Super Metroid smh

[@Ringoroadagain6]

Lol super metroid is not a metroidvenia. It's one of the father's to the genre tho

[@urnuste]

oh no it completely is a metroidvania, it has every single element of the genre and thus, by definition, is part of the genre.@@Ringoroadagain6

[@ronantheronin3521]

​​@@Ringoroadagain6Super Metroid isn't a Metroidvania? What's next Castlevania Sotn isn't a Metroidvania?

[@plugshirt1762]

@@Ringoroadagain6 bruh yes it is lmao its literally in the name. There is nothing castlevania added to the genre metroid wasn't already doing so it doesn't make any sense to try and claim the first metroidvania isn't one

[@diamondscar5818]

It's not just the art. The way you gain abilities, the way you walk, the way you dash e.t.c. it's almost identical in terms of gameplay and animations too.

[@HeliteGamer]

-The starting cutscene looks like The Hollow Knight shattering its shell at the start - Starting area is like Black Egg Temple -Shield kinda uses Baldur's Shell mechanic -The animation of getting the attack is similar to the animation when you get a spell and its upgrade -Blood Vial are technically soul vessels -The speech at the three statues is kinda similar to the speech of the Dreamers at Greenpath, and the statues also look like the monument at Resting Grounds -Next area is very similar to Greenpath -Some creatures drop currency like geo in Hollow Knight -Player character can grab ledges like Hornet in the Silksong trailer and demo gameplay -There is a Goam-like creature in the next room -Enemies behave like Shrumal Warriors and Moss Creeps -There is also an enemy that behaves like a Squit -Player character has obtained a spell-like ability -There are charms in this game -The getting hit animation is similar to Hollow Knight, there is even the sound effect -Gotten Shade Cloak -UI behaves the same as in Hollow Knight when in 1 mask? What even is the health called? -You have Sharp Shadow -The Hunter Jr makes an appearance

[@ingenarelitems]

if fire ever curses... you know that shit's about to go down

[@gengarisnotinsmash...]

Why would they have to steal from TC? Are there not thousands of free assets on the internet they could use and/or modify instead?

[@NorthernRealmJackal]

I think everyone is grossly misunderstanding the claims in the video. It's not like they literally stole assets (you can compare with screenshots from Greenpath side-by-side) - they appear to have made everything from scratch. It's just extremely derivative ...like Palworld, but much worse. I'm not sure fireb0rn even understands this, because at 2:55 he misquotes the developers. What he's reading, and what is written on screen is not the same thing.

[@DataLabsYes]

This comment was originally written for another video about Deviator, but I saw Fire's upload and decided to comment here as well. So, if Fireb0rn mentions some of the stuff I have written down below, that's probably why. Hello everyone, I'm a Chinese person who decided to do some research after hearing about this game. Before I get started, I just want to say that it wasn't a pleasant experience to see all the racist stuff here. I suppose it is fair to say that there are a lot of Chinese rip-offs out there, but calling all Chinese people thieves reared by the chi-com would be going too far. And please don't reply to me with a mindless social credit comment. Please don't do that if all someone is doing is trying to clear up harmful stereotypes. Anyways: I went to the Chinese equivalent of KZbin, Bilibili. The general consensus of the people there seems to be that Deviator copied a lot from Hollow Knight, but it is still more than just a thoughtless cash-grabbing clone. I found some devlogs by the creators of this game, which I found rather interesting. According to them, a major change this game will have is that its combat system will emphasize parries. Personally, I don't think this is enough to make it a "original" game, but I suppose to some people this is enough. Another thing I noticed from the devlogs is that this game's art and concept is actually not completely mindless. The devs showed some concept art and animations in the devlogs, and I'm honestly impressed by some of the things there. The setting and lore are also not that awful. The devs have also addressed the similarities in art style between this game and Hollow Knight in one of the devlogs. This would be quite an odd action if they were merely money-hungry IP thieves. Anyways, my personal conclusion would be that this game is a passion project, but the devs are not very original and are just bad at development. Still, I must give the devs some credit: developing a game you want to develop, even a bad one, takes time and energy. What I've seen on Bilibili has convinced me that Deviator isn't entirely a cash-grab. The devs clearly has tried to put thought into this, unlike, say, the developers of Lotus Knight or Gleamlight. If you want to do some research for yourself, just search up "偏差者" on Bilibili, which is Chinese for "Deviator". That's all. Thanks for reading :D

[@heckingbamboozled8097]

Them addressing the similarities doesn't make the issue go away - especially when many assets are literally 1:1 rips. Many aren't, but enough are that it's egregious. Nothing in this comment addresses the actual issues being talked about. It's just excuse making because they spent some time working on the game. You don't get a reward just for trying - you have to actually have some original ideas too. The immediate racism point being brought up was a clear showing of deflection. You can go to the IGN overview yourself and see that the VAST majority of the criticism is about the game, not the race of the devs. Ender Lilies was also made by a Chinese team, but even though it's kinda mid people don't *hate* it because they actually tried to make their own assets and gameplay mechanics

[@sanguinetales]

There's an interesting conversation about derivation and originality to be had. If the game was in a different genre copying the aesthetics wouldn't be as egregious. Like you can be influenced by something as long as you don't parot it 1:1. PalWorld is an example for being inspired by pokemon but changing the mechanics enough that people praise it. To "Deviator" could have been a sci-fi game going more "Metroid" than "Castlevania" and if they did that then there could be other changes that follow suit to make the game more interesting and varied from Hollow Knight. But right now its mechanically and aesthetically a Hollow Knight knock-off.

[@abdurehmanmalik2980]

"Mind to think Voice to cry suffering You are not the Vessel You are not the Hollow Knight."

[@SoulEaterKiddo]

it's kinda really funny, how basic enemies, who got tiny hitboxes, get the soul warrior attacks 1 for 1, like the dash, jump and downwards attack

[@megabobkillerdean7191]

I’m so glad you put Haiku the Robot as a game that’s does a good job with inspiration. It helps with the wait so much and it’s what I’m putting on my snowboard. It’s the first time I got into pixel are and it’s really fun. If any hasn’t played and is waiting for Silksong I highly recommend. Especially the hard mode it has.

[@lehilivingston3124]

I don’t think the game feels that much like hollow knight, they obviously were inspired by the art style and implemented it into their own games design. It still feels like it’s own game in my opinion including the art work that they have done even though it feels reminiscent of some Hollow Knight zones. It definitely could use a more unique plot and I think it could really shine in its art design with a few good cinematic moments. Anyways don’t be so surprised that when a team is looking to create a new metrovaynia that they “study” the best one ever made to do it. In fact I would suggest this to any team to learn from an expert so they don’t completely fail it’s just the smart and natural thing to do. I wouldn’t give them such a hard of time for implementing some of dad’s moves, plus it’s still not finished and could end up being more original down the line.

[@azzy-551]

Yeah, you copy to learn, but you don't publish your copy. In fact, you don't just copy when you learn, you deconstruct it to understand the thought process behind decisions. It's clear these devs just mindlessly copied without understanding what makes hollow knight good. There's just a complete lack of creative integrity here.

[@Nerdy1729]

Similarities: A black egg cracknig with an orange glow, and a chain in background Floor lighting up like black egg, dark backround like black egg, Shield is like baldurs Hollow knight spell absorption ctrl c ctrl v Attack symbol looks like Sheo's painting Breakable walls? (could be original i guess, but king's pass had so many) Literally "higher beings" text but "inheritor of my consciousness", blood vials are soul King's pass spikes area The three dreamers The poem, but one line is just 'they' Greenpath (at least the idea of 'bench text' isn't copied) Zelpharos is corny? we'll see Fungal "Consciousness" and 'blood' is soul mosscreep mosskin geo 2 GEO ROCK (bursting with lifeblood) tiktik Pogo but sideways? great slash ctrl c ctrl v fury like color change baldur+shroomling Enemy gauntlet flukenest+needle charms (runes?) apprenticeship=soulcatcher mini mossy+ mushroom fragile heart cloak artwork The hunter! Vessel death animation 33 "coincedences"

[@coderaven1107]

There is also some stuff I really like: The glowing design at the start kinda takes on its own form, where its not similar to black egg temple. I honestly dig the character design and his sword animations though! Those are better than in HK (more variance, feel more dynamic, while HKs are really simplistic, which I also like dont get me wrong). I think what feels deja vu like is the silhouette of the character, which is really similar also in the animations.

[@MusicComet]

I think it comes off as more dynamic because the character is taller and you can see the difference between the cape and their body's position way more easily, that and the fact that the colors make them more contrasted. I feel like they made the animations smoother and didn't know that it also makes it lose significant impact.

[@KnakuanaRka]

I thought this was going to be about Never Grave, the new game from the Palworld devs, but this is even more shameless. Given the look of the protagonist and some of the things they interact with (like at 0:40), they could go for a more sci-fi neon look with glowing Tron lines and runes and such to make it a little more distinct, but they don't even bother with that.

[@yourtimetraveleralara]

Yeah.

[@CommentPositionInformer]

Man, I love the themes and mechanics of this game. I would definitely love to see some work with the 'Momentum' thing. Imagine if you can accumulate/spend momentum to drastically alter your movement speed, swinging speed and damage. Besides the special abilities of course. Also, the 'gaining height from forwards slashing', if paired with a decent movement ability, can result in some incredible boss-battles. Imagine a high-speed flying enemy, and you spend the entire fight air-comboing them as you both dash across the entire arena.

[@Lappelduvideify]

So Ori and the Will of the Wisps? I didn't even realize that there was no ground until the fight was over.

[@ClodsireBcuzYes]

keep in mind i havent played hollow knight in a realllyy good while but i did get to pantheon 3 when i did play, got pretty close to beating the path of pain but i lost my progress because i was playing on switch and my sister booted up a different game 6:57 huh, a black egg, jee that sure seems familiar, i just cant quite put my finger on it. 7:01 a creature with the same exact proportions and cloak as the knight. 7:06 "soul meter" and "hp bar" are effectively the same, and as you said, looks like the black egg temple 7:11 same walking animation, either traced or copied as closely as possible. a bit of a nitpick but its so similar i just had to point it out. 7:25 cant really say anything about the jumping animation, its jumping, you can only make jumping look so different. still wouldn't be surprised if it is one for one traced tho. 7:35 ngl, baldur shell. 2:47 parrying isnt exclusive to hollow knight, but the sword slash animation is probably traced or copied. 8:04 one-for-one copied from getting the new spells 8:34 blood vial = soul 8:47 these are new, cant think of a parallel 9:11 Monomon the Teacher, Lurien the Watcher, and Herrah the Beast. the 3 dreamers (had to google the names ngl), but this time there are eyes instead of masks 9:38 could be wrong but isnt that what the one dudes tried to do with soul, like the mini version of the soul master boss? mb i havent played in ages but i thinkkkk thats what they tried doing. 9:55 this is all new as far as i remember, except for the fact that we are now in greenpath. 10:11 no fr is this cornifer/quirrel? 10:28 soul. 10:30 currency sound is identical if i remember right. also these are the little baldur dudes. 10:40 i forget what they are called buts mechanically thats the exact same thing as the little lumps that give u currency. 10:56 reskinned tiktik 12:35 almost 2 whole minutes without anything new stolen. anyways thats just the mosquito dudes. 13:10 same charm menu, charm notches, and ofcouse, charms. 13:39 it wouldn't usually be "copied" if it weren't for the fact that the dash animation is probably traced 15:19 hunter 15:55 A WOMANNN!!!!!!!!!! nvm this game is hype while there is definitely some neat new mechanics, its borderline a reskin of hollow knight.

[@drawnfromflames7007]

Also this seems to be more of a Deisgn Copy rather than an artistic copy. I will probably play Deviator honestly these assets seem different enough, I want content and SilkSong isn't out yet

[@CaffSoup]

Similarities I caught: 1. Dash 2. Skill gathering animation 3. 1 hp animation 4. Patches of collectible currency 5. Charms 6. Hidden breakable walls 7. Only being able to equip charms at a safe space 8. Placement of text and picture on skill gathering screen 9. Beginning section that teaches actions 10. Charm selection screen 11. GUI and placement when gathering currency 12. Enemies mostly being smaller and with different weapon from the player 13. Structure of floating platforms 14. Healing by using equivalent of soul which can only be gathered through combat 15. Spells similar to those in HK 16. Graphics 17. NPCs that don’t help the player 18. Beginning of game lore given by a mysterious figure 19. Gate trapping the player into a boss arena 20. The boss’s grating similarity to the hunter There might have been more but these are my observations.

[@oXRaptorzXo]

Not all of this is stuff you can consider copied. Like hidden breakable walls? Dash? Spells? Harmful NPCs? A tutorial? Really? That’s class metroidvania stuff. But other stuff yeah

[@martymcfly88mph35]

I mean I'm legally blind, have a 65 IQ AND post on reddit (worst offense) and even I know almost everything in that game is stolen...

[@nicocornejo6902]

"Hollow Knight is the most influential metroidvania ever made" Metroid and Castlevania exist my guy 💀

[@bagredecartola1289]

In the modern area hk is debatably the most influential, since konami won't do shit with castlevania

[@nicocornejo6902]

​@@bagredecartola1289 Within the indie realm, yeah, i can agree that HK is the most influential metroidvania. And yes, Konami kinda sucks 👍

[@lazydroidproductions1087]

Yeah I would put Super Metroid as still the number 1, considering that’s, uh, one of the two primary foundations of the genre

[@Lappelduvideify]

I saw a comment on another video that Metroid wasn't a meteoidvania.

[@luxnoria]

I mean metroid will always be the best of the genre to me but that's cause I'm a massive fan of the series. Which is a shame cause I've long since stopped buying nintendo products.

[@alpacasheep20]

"Similarities" off the top of my head: - crouching animation when the character bends down to pick up an item, indicated by a shining light on the ground - animation when obtaining skills (character floats in the air with particles flying around) - icon when obtaining skills (slash, dash, vengeful spirit) - hidden room/hallway animation (black at first, background fades when you enter hidden room) - rocks containing currency + currency addition appearance/animation - slash animation - wall breaking animation (and health of the walls) - elevators from City of Tears (both the lever to bring the elevator to your floor and the lever to trigger vertical movement) - critter moving around the platform are just like crawlids in appearance and movement - flies are like squits in movement - charm system/UI - soul/healing/mask system There's probably a lot more to be found. It would probably be easier to point out the differences.

[@UnicornLove5596]

Some of their things looks really unique and fun! The healing system seems different enough, it takes much longer to fill up one of those small circles and it heals multiple health instead of one, plus the aimed attack where you can use momentum is different enough from Vengeful Spirit to be fun. And the fact that having more momentum causes in increase in attack swings means that by healing you lose some of that extra power and you need to balance the two, kinda like the special attacks but it adds another layer so that you have to be super conscious of your momentum. The actual character designs (even some of the enemies from the trailer) look super cute! The grammar needs a lot of work but I’d be interested in their stories. There was one part in the video at 6:25 where they had platforms as thin moving lines that you could fall through if you moved; that looked so fun!! I liked how the dash through was situational and it offered more of a peri attack system. Some of their backgrounds from the trailer also look unique and cool! I just wish that hadn’t so blatantly copied Hollow Knight. This would be a game I’d genuinely be interested in if they changed the artwork.

[@Aranboi]

1:30 "soon to release" biggest lie in history

[@zacharysawcyn3066]

Silk song tomorrow?

[@minto_de_shade]

of course 🤡

[@michaelgamel5915]

One of these days

[@VVToonZ]

absolutely, in the next 24 hours

[@Netsuki]

Silksong at home: Deviator

[@sediew]

We have silksong at home already (this vid)

[@ACrypticCube]

Wait a minute is it just me or are the grass particles the same. Idk why that is the one thing that stood out to me

[@reknostarfox4690]

Grass is forever. Grass *is* life. We shall praise the Grass.

[@Snowy-wj9iq]

I really hope the devs realize the issues here and make some changes because there are actually some pretty cool mechanics (even if not 100% original), also yeah no grass% means 0 stars I also noticed that the momentum gain charm is even in the same slot in the inventory as soul catcher and several room layouts are quite familiar

[@TheMudbug6483]

They should talk to Team Cherry about licensing as a spin off. Oblivion made an awesome fallout game (understandable since they were mostly the original fallout team from Interplay) so maybe team Cherry would license their art for a%

[@roxanakballeroaguero210]

None looked so batantly like this tho lmao. HK was so great, and as each star of any game genre, is inevitable bound to serve as inspiration and standard, thas not a bad thing. Nowadays a lot of the new metroidvanias take out inspo from HK in some way, but they still have their own art style, lore and game mechanics, like Haiku the Robot, Nine Sols, and Crownsworn (this last one looks HEAVILY similar to HK too, but unlike in Deviator, if you look at vids of their demo there is no enemies that look "out of place" in the sense that the art and animations of them look different than the rest, overall map is more polished, similar but still diferent move animations, combat mechanics, UI, lore elements, feeling.)

[@jackwilder2544]

I kind of like the combat system. Specifically the awareness attacks. It looks sick when you pull it off. Having both a parry and a dodge is nice, too. The game honestly look like it's build to allow combos into multiple enemies.

[@TheKatsMeow113]

If the devs are from China (the logo makes it seem like they are), there is a totally different understanding of what constitutes plagiarism when compared to western countries. We actually see plagiarism happen a lot in academia because of this cultural difference, and oof is it difficult to explain citing other people’s work vs. copying to international students from that part of the world. There’s also a bunch of studies about how common it is within research, so tbh I’m not surprised this is happening. I don’t think they’re going to change it, because from their perspective they didn’t do anything wrong 🤷🏻‍♀️ Edit: Typos

[@rilstrup83]

If they release the game in the US they will absolutely be sued and have issues

[@CassiusStelar]

Why call it momentum if it's literally just EXP mixed with Soul (kind of like Mana in Pseudoregalia actually) If I were to name a resource "momentum" in a video game, the gauge would actually spin as it accumulates, and the faster it goes, the stronger and faster *you* get (not actual speed, but better frame data and more uses for your movement upgrades)

[@Zayd-bg1pt]

I’m guessing it’s just bad translation

[@sebastianturner2458]

Translation moment.

[@-Nightingale]

Hol'up, that sounds sick, did you steal that from a video game? If so, which one?

[@CassiusStelar]

@@-Nightingale its an amalgamation of Pizza Tower's Combo mechanic, Kirby Return To Dreamland Deluxe Magolor Epilogue's combo UI, the Minecraft gold tools usage in Smash Bros Steve, and Anthem from Gunvolt. Also Sonic Momentum by Mr. Bane Studios

[@CassiusStelar]

Also to the two people that say it's a translation error, shut the fuck up, that's not how translation errors work, its clearly *supposed* to be named momentum because it gives you after-images, I just don't know why they *would* name it that if they couldn't be creative enough to justify it Y'all are the same kind of idiots that perpetuated "I am error" being a translation error when "my name is Bagu, show this to the river person" is right there

[@Sape_o]

Somebody needs to make a Deviator skin for Hollow Knight

[@alive527]

I like that fire was using constructive criticism. He couldve said "L dev team bad game what a bunch of scammers" but instead expressed disappointment because he sees the potential they have. Watching the gameplay although yes it could be refined it looks pretty good, but as he said its dragged down by the ripped ideas they used from HK. Hope this game can make a turnaround because it looks good aside from the copying stuff (especially the parry mechanic)

[@minedark597]

Is Aestik a copy? I saw the game and it looks basically the same but it has some cool mechanics in it. It has a demo on steam, could you check it out? I'd love to have your take on it

[@jackcopeland9193]

i checked it's demo out, it is pretty different from hollow knight. of course there will be similarities, but instead of just reusing things from the game they went on their own path.

[@alpal4245]

This could be so good!! There are actually interesting ideas such as parrying. I think there's still things to be adjusted but I want this game to find its own style and lean more into that instead of trying to be more like hollow knight.

[@pizzaziuminfinionite134]

parrying is in hollowknight.......

[@alpal4245]

@pizzaziuminfinionite134 yes but it feels more distinctive in this game (at least to me). I haven't played myself but the impression I get is that there's a unique button for it (and blocking) which would make it distinct. I am not absolving it at all, honestly it's sad seeing potentially fresh ideas yet having people decide to steal instead of create for themselves

[@pizzaziuminfinionite134]

@@alpal4245 ya it would of been nice if hollowknight had an actual button for parrying

[@plugshirt1762]

@@pizzaziuminfinionite134 lol I always forget the game has parrying because I can't think of a single situation I would actually want to use it outside of sly

[@Barakon]

11:45 they could have leaned into the Rayman Origins Jibberish Jungle look if they wanted to be different from Hollow knight. Cuz that skeleton looking fella with the eye looks like one of the underwater creatures from it plush one of the prickly eyed vines & flowers

[@rosatomatur]

exactly what i was thinking also the ones in the later levels of rayman that are like coming out of the sky they behave exactly like that lol

[@MainTopmastStaysail]

15:02 Ok, the elevator pig is damned adorable. It looks completely out of place among the Greenpath knock-off assets.

[@victeeem]

1. Intro cutscene has egg 2. black egg temple 3. dreamers but they have eyes instead of heads 4. spell absorb animation 5. momentum = soul 6. ui 7. underground 8. fungal greenpath 9. mosscreeps 10. mushroom enemies are just baldurs 11. mothwing cloak 12. soul catcher 13. vengeful spirit 14. another enemy that curls up into a ball but it jumps instead of only rolling 15. sprint parry seems like shade cloak 16. hunter becomes a boss (although a lot smaller) 17. runes = charms 18. you even change them at save points 19. geo rocks

[@xann2681]

I personally dont care about stealing from big successful titles (except if they take actual assets), making knock-offs is not worth it cuz all they will live up to is as "HK but worse" usually leading to not even getting sales to a uniqueness factor (which it has not), but i like the idea cuz it has the opportunity to improve or take a twist on a formula that people already like Morally, i also dont care much, Team Cherry has succeeded enough to the point that they are being copied and we all know it wont live up nearly to the quality of hollow knight, they are like purposefully hindering their game's success for the sake of speeding up designing time

[@raixon175]

I couldn't help myself but music from trailer somehow reminded me Dead Cells Title music 🤔

[@averagetectonicplateenjoyer]

1:23 i may be wrong but isn’t metroid the most impactful metriodvania?

[@ZenoRogue]

Agreed, HK's influence is overrated, there are lots of great metroidvanias which were not influenced by HK. Maybe the original Zelda is the most impactful, given that it was an inspiration for both Metroid and Castlevania SotN. :) I think these, and Cave Story, would be the top 5.

[@joenoodle6914]

@@ZenoRogue zelda is definitely one of the most impactful games in existence, but when it comes to specifically metroidvanias, metroid is what built the foundation for basically the entire genre

[@ZenoRogue]

​@@joenoodle6914 I have mentioned Zelda because apparently Koji Igarashi claims that Castlevania SotN was inspired by Zelda, not Metroid.

[@joenoodle6914]

@@ZenoRogue metroidvania, as far as i understand, is like 2/3 metroid and 1/3 castlevania

[@johanneshaukanes4531]

10:55 like Halo 3 when a famous Japanese gamedeveloper shooted the grass in the first lvl and it moved. Then he noded. After that test he knew the game was good.

[@birdbeast]

My favorite example of 'art v. gameplay' is OFF. An RPG maker game from 2008 that has held such a possessive grip on my brain that it's been my favorite piece of media of ALL TIME for well over 10 years! The art is very simple pixel art, but the battle sprites, soundtrack, themes, and originality are BREATHTAKINGLY STUNNING.

[@chucklebutt4470]

Ohh that's the one with the baseball bat guy right? Weird game, still have no clue what the meaning behind it was lol.

[@birdbeast]

@@chucklebutt4470 Yes! It is! It has no real-world meaning, but it's a very in depth in-universe story you really /really/ gotta look hard to put together

[@LuDelilas]

"RIP Fandom" we can only hope

[@Taylor-us2pf]

I feel like there is a big difference between "Stealing" and basically ripping something off. The designs in this game are obviously ripped off of hollow knight, but none of them are "Stolen". No company can lay claim to an artstyle, if someone wants to copy hollow knights artstyle to a T and make their own legally distinct game that's their right. The game does a pretty good job of recreating the beautiful environments that hollow knight went for. Unless I see proof that they actually stole assets I think they are completely in the green to make their thinly veiled fan game, and if its fun I might play it.

[@TrueLunar10]

The issue is that unless they 1:1 stole assets from HK it's not plagiarism. Yes the general vibe, mechanics, and art style all are extremely similar to their HK counterparts but being a clone does not plagiarism make. I would be disappointed if they actually reused assets but simply being an uninspired clone is not as serious of a crime. The worst I can say in that case is that the game would be "more of the same with little innovation". Let's not forget that the Metroidvania category itself is highly derivative to the point some games might as well be the same but a different coat of paint.

[@KRosenChannel]

Agree. These people do not know what plagiarism is. Unless tea Mn cherry filed a patent for the likeness of their game (like what apple did with the iPhone) this has no legal ramifications.)

[@bagredecartola1289]

The thing is that is extremely blatant, i've played timespinner, a game that really closely resembles castlevania order of ecclesia in a bunch of aspects, even on level design in some cases, yet it feels different and unique despite that If there ain't a little bit of legal grounds on what sometimes feel like a straight up animation ctrl c ctrl v these mfs are really good at avoiding legal trouble

[@TrueLunar10]

@@bagredecartola1289 unfortunately due to how animations work I HK you can't just copy paste. Each animation is it's own frame in a sprite sheet meaning you have to re draw the characters every frame from (most) animations in the game. The only few exceptions are particle animations and some rare translation/tweening animations that HK doesn't really use, those would be the only types you could actually copy paste. Sure the animations are extremely similar but again that's less a true copy paste "plagiarism" and more "really copying their homework". It's artistically bland and scummy but not plagaristic or illegal in any way.

[@bagredecartola1289]

@@TrueLunar10 wow this system sucks

[@_AngeloDev]

As a solo game dev I would understand that “borrowing some” of hollow knight art style IF the wasn’t made of 5 game devs ,if it was 1-2 game dev I would completely understand ,in my opinion making you own art EVEN if it was sh## it would be better then steal,omg 😅

[@kobarsos82]

How can such games ever release when the artwork and even UI elements are so incredibly similar? Madness. Its almost like the devs only played hollow knight in their lifetimes, out of all available metroidvanias in the market. And there are countless games out there to get inspirations from, and then make your own creation that is never the same with any of them.

[@rafafr9]

I don't really understand, Did they literally copy from the asset in hollow knight? The artstyle is certainly derivative and the designs are clearly lifted from hollow knight, but if they made everythking from "skratch" (meaning no tracing), then its literally not plagarism

[@fireb0rn]

I think there's a misunderstanding here. Plagiarism isn't defined as stealing without alteration. I would refer to that as asset ripping in this context, which isn't what happened here. All the examples I give are obviously not ripped assets, but are obviously very heavily based on Hollow Knight. Plagiarism is ordinarily defined as reusing someone else's work (i.e. the hunter, or the black egg temple area) without proper attribution. That definition is arguably a bit dated since people use the term plagiarism in different contexts now. But it seems some people think that plagiarism in this context must strictly mean ripping assets, which isn't really what I meant to argue at all.

[@rafafr9]

@@fireb0rn but that's not plagiarism, that's derivative work. You acted in really bad faith by calling them plagiarists and implying HEAVILY in the video that they asset flipped Hollow Knight. I think its very clear that they were able to reacreate the Hollow Knight art style, but that doesn't mean plagiarism, there aren't intlectual rights for an "artstyle", and they did all the assets by themselves. It's a creatively bankrupt game that tries very little to differentiate itself from HN, but that's it. The fact that they managed to understand the style and recreate it is actually super impressive and does indeed show an enourmous amout of effort, not lazyness, like you said. There's a lot to criticise there, the game is basically trying to be hollow Knight too much for it's own good. But I think that you really did not do anyone any service by saying it's plagiarism, because it is not. And it's honestly kinda lazy and sensacionalist on your part as well.

[@Mr.Fishe007]

I actually want to disagree with this, even though I hollow knight is my favorite game, and I've completed every centimeter of it. The black egg temple and the greenpath / fungal wastes "stealing" seems very exaggerated. Because I haven't really spotted anything copypasted, I don't consider this plagiarism at all (with exception of getting skill animation, and probably charm sistem).they've drawn all of this by themselves, they're actually using parry, and It's only the demo, I feel that this game can easilly be good by itself WITHOUT replacing the current assets (but thier messages are kind of bad, i think they really need someone with marketing skills, because these statements made them look worse)

[@ybabflow]

During the gameplay I think you said it much better than in the video. I agree it is very derivative of hollow knight but calling it "stealing" is not fair. Though it is very simmilar to hollow knight they did create their own art. If there were any directly stolen assets I would call it stealing but using a derivative artstyle and charecter design is not stealing.

[@pianoman6216]

The art theft? That's their own asset. They didn't rip the asset from the game file, so that literally is just them taking inspiration. I don't think it's fair to team cherry? Team cherry has literally said they don't care if people take inspiration from their game as long as people make something fun.

[@Crytzo16]

They have so much potential to make a ORIGINAL game