Folks, I have seen some games like Hollow Knight in my day. Until this afternoon, I would've told you that the iconic Metroidvania's closest relative is probably Crowsworn, which proudly blends Hollow Knight's style with action games like Devil May Cry to make something that appears meaningfully different. But Crowsworn has now been dethroned by Deviator, a 2D Metroidvania that looks so uncannily similar that I genuinely thought we'd gotten new Hollow Knight Silksong screenshots for a split-second.
Deviator's new trailer incidentally coincided with the release of Pokemon-like survival game Palworld, which has drawn some criticism for overlap with creature designs from the actual Pokemon games. But Palworld wishes it could rip something off this hard. Deviator does not simply look like Hollow Knight. It assimilated Hollow Knight like The Thing. It put Hollow Knight through a vegetable sheet cutter and clothed itself in layers of Hollow Knight peelings.
It's not just the UI, though it is also totally the UI. It's in the main character's walking, jumping, slashing, and dashing animations – especially the dash timing. It's in the layered environments, the bioluminescent biomes, the toothy spikes, spinning saw blades, and stocky platforms – all eerily familiar. It's in the bug-like enemies that crawl around, the resource caches you hit with your totally-not-a-Nail, the alabaster architecture, and the way bosses scream and shake and then vanish in a puff.
When I watch Deviator's trailer, I see inextricable flashes of Hollow Knight levels like Greenpath, Deepnest, Fog Canyon, and the City of Tears. In case you need a refresher, watch the Hollow Knight release trailer side by side with these screenshots.
Here are some different style of levels that will appear in our official version of the game, The Church, The mechanical city, The Prison, and 'Hitvis' —— an academy of sages, but also full of collision of concepts.#DEVIATOR #indiedev #indiegame pic.twitter.com/M4uYG9OfZ6January 17, 2024
On Twitter, Chinese studio Gami said in November that its team of five developers has been working on Deviator for two years. The game is described as a 2D hand-drawn Metroidvania where combat revolves around parrying attacks. I'll tell you right now that if you were to try and trap me like a rabbit, your best bet would be using a Hollow Knight-like, parry-powered Metroidvania as bait. I'd ordinarily be all over this kind of game, but Deviator has gone so far into unrestrained copycat territory that I'm struggling to get over my suspicions and am having a hard time actually liking it.
Translation errors aren't doing Deviator any favors – "very easy, but I'm dying," the Steam page exclaims – but I'm willing to chalk that up to the language barrier for the time being. (The "FPS: 16" counter in its lead Steam image isn't helping, either.) I'm trying really hard to give this game the benefit of the doubt as some sort of overwrought love letter, but it's just so blatant. Deviator has a Steam demo coming February 1, so that'll be a chance to see if it can at least walk the walk.
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