Games like Hollow Knight
The three best games after Hollow Knight are Hollow Knight: Silksong (the direct sequel, harder and faster), Nine Sols (the combat, sharpened into a parry engine) and Animal Well (the exploration mystery, distilled). The list below ranks ten games by which part of Hallownest they rebuild: the map, the fights, or the atmosphere.
Hollow Knight's trick was scale: 557,000 Steam reviews at 97% positive for a game that drops you into a dead kingdom, tells you nothing, and lets the map itself be the story. Most metroidvanias since have copied the checklist — dash, wall-jump, charm system — without copying the feeling of being somewhere too big for you.
This list sorts ten by what they actually replicate. One entry is a deliberate skip: a genre darling that answers a different question than the one Hollow Knight players are usually asking.
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How we picked these
- A connected map where finding the way is the game, not a checklist between fights.
- Combat precise enough that a boss kill feels earned, not outlasted.
- Atmosphere doing story work — environmental telling over cutscenes.
- Movement that improves as you do, mechanically or through upgrades.
- Finished games, 84% positive or better on Steam.
The list
01 Hollow Knight: Silksong
The actual sequel: faster, harder, and more demanding of its movement from the first hour — Hornet starts with tools the Knight earned over a whole game. The 89% rating (vs the original's 97%) is mostly a difficulty argument, not a quality one. If you have not played it, this question answers itself.
02 Nine Sols
Hollow Knight's exploration frame with Sekiro's deflect at the centre — every boss is a parry conversation, and the final stretch is as good as this genre gets. Hand-drawn 'taopunk' setting, heavier on story than Hallownest. The combat pick of this list.
03 Animal Well
No combat to speak of — pure exploration mystery, built by one developer, where the map hides at least three layers of secrets and the community needed weeks to bottom out the deepest. Pick it if your favourite Hollow Knight memory is finding something you were sure nobody else had found.
04 Ori and the Will of the Wisps
The movement pick — by the end you cross rooms like a thrown dart, and the chase sequences are the genre's best set-pieces. It is more generous and more beautiful than Hollow Knight, and meaningfully easier: the emotional gut-punches do the work the difficulty does not.
05 Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
The most underrated game on this list — a big-studio metroidvania with combat and platforming both operating at near-Silksong sharpness, plus a screenshot-pin system that fixes the genre's 'where was that locked door' problem forever. Commercially it flopped; mechanically it did not.
06 Blasphemous
The atmosphere pick: Andalusian Catholic horror rendered in pixel art so committed it borders on liturgy. Combat is deliberately heavier and the platforming stiffer than Hollow Knight's — it plays like a procession, not a dance, and that is the point.
07 Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights
The closest tonal match to Hallownest's sorrow — a drowned kingdom, a small protagonist, bosses you feel bad about beating because each was somebody once. Mid-weight difficulty; the soundtrack carries scenes the sprite work cannot.
08 Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
The other lineage: Castlevania-style, from Symphony of the Night's own producer, with loot, crafting and a shard system that turns every enemy into a potential build piece. Less about mastery, more about accumulation — the comfort-food metroidvania.
SKIP09 Dead Cells
Skip if the Hollow Knight you want back is the fixed, learnable world — Dead Cells is a roguelike wearing metroidvania clothes, its map reshuffles every death, and permanence is exactly what it does not sell. The combat is superb; buy it when you want a run game, and pick Nine Sols when you want a kingdom.
10 Rain World
Not a metroidvania by structure — an ecosystem simulator where you are prey. It delivers Hollow Knight's 'this world does not care about you' feeling more purely than any game ever made, and frustrates exactly the players who need a fair fight. Last on the ranking, first in atmosphere.
Similar but different
Celeste
Pure platforming, no exploration web — but the same 'the wall is the teacher' philosophy, and the most precise jump on PC. Its assist options also make it the most honest difficulty conversation in games.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Where the boss-fight instinct Hollow Knight built actually leads in 3D: one sword, one parry timing, no builds to hide behind. 95% positive from 354,000 reviews' worth of people who got good.
Tunic
An isometric Zelda-like where the real metroidvania item is knowledge — the game manual itself, found page by page. For the player whose favourite Hallownest moment was understanding, not fighting.
FAQ
Is Silksong harder than Hollow Knight?
Yes, and from earlier in the game — the 89% Steam rating against the original's 97% is largely players hitting that wall. Nothing in it is unfair, but Hollow Knight veterans should expect to be humbled for the first few hours.
What is the best metroidvania if I found Hollow Knight too hard?
Ori and the Will of the Wisps — same genre, gorgeous, and tuned so that persistence always wins. Bloodstained is the other soft landing: over-levelling your way past a wall is a legitimate strategy there.
Does Animal Well really have no combat?
Effectively none — threats exist but the verbs are movement, items and thinking. It replaces boss anxiety with puzzle obsession, and it is the only game here that made players organise to crack its secrets together.
Nine Sols or Silksong first?
Silksong if exploration and movement are your core; Nine Sols if boss fights are. Nine Sols is more linear and more story-driven, Silksong is a bigger world with more to find.
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