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.

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

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.

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”

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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

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 :/

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.

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.

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.

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

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 :)

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 KZfaq, 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

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

lower beings, these words are for you together

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?

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.

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)

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

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

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

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.

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

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..

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)

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

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

Deadass saw the not-the-hunter in the thumbnail and was like ":O new Silksong news" it looks like it would fir effortlessly in the Mosst grotto

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

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

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.

It's a valid opinion that Hollow Knight is the best Metroidvania game ever, but it definitely isn't the most influential. Metroid and Castlevania are the most influential Metroidvania games.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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"

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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)

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

I wouldn't be surprised if the coding for literally EVERY enemy, move, ability, etc, is coded identically to Hollow Knight.

1:14 no that would be Super Metroid smh

-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

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

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.

at the beginning,that guy said "ah another deviator" and for me,that was "ah,another vessel" that's another similarity some may have missed

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

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

Don't get me wrong but if it wasn't look like Hollow Knight, no one would have talked about their game indies who don't have the funding struggle to get our attentions,..

It sucks because games who are just using the format with original ideas are called copies in the same breath as games like this. They basically hide in the obscurity.

Silk song tomorrow?

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.

The thing I like about this game is the character itself, I made a texture pack with it for hk, now I have no reason to play deviator

Like there were PLENTY of well made, entire original animations here that are a lot smoother than hollow knights. They’re clearly very talented with animation, idk why they’d waste it like this

"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.

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.

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)

The artist who made the playable character did a really good job. I like how the animation for attacking is a full animation and not just an effect like in Hollow Knight. They definitely have the potential but from what it seems like they don't have the motivation. Edit: Also, the character has such a cool design! The rotating circle face and the cloak is so unique and I really wish they could apply their talents to work on the environments and other character designs!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

As an animator myself, I see ALOT of hard work and talent at play here... but holy shit how it HURTS to my core to see how much is just blatantly copied. Like, as an artist, how is not a part of your soul DYING every hour (and believe me its alot of hours) put into just mimicking like that? 😭

I think the vials are something also from dead cells where there are upgrades which you can get with cells you can get weapons upgrades but the vials upgrades are for more heals like this game it has vial upgrades similar to dead cells which grant hp but for this one these vials heal 1 hp but for the ones in dead cells they can heal 50-75% hp. ( disclaimer I am not a advertiser)

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

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

The problem is it honestly looks like it’s going for something slightly different, having the parry mechanic opens up a very different kind of combat that could be explored and having separate resources that play into each other is pretty cool, based on the style of the character this game would do great as a pseudo-sci fi, I’d love to see this character matched by some sort of city setting, fighting though ally ways and across rooftops with more solid geometry to encourage the dueling style of combat

"Hey can i copy your homework" "Yeah just dont make it too obvious" The work:

I love the character design of the main character so much, i wish they were in a more original game 😢

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.

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%

KZfaq auto-marking the game as HollowKnight

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)

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

Ok, so similarities I notice are… the health mechanic seems really similar, although not much to variate there, but similar nonetheless. The green path setting, enemies, etc, obviously similar as you covered in the video. The weapon seems to be exactly like the nail but sometimes blue, and the elevators function exactly the same. I’ll edit later with more additions. Particles in the air to add ambience isn’t easy to make your own but the way they implemented it didn’t even *try* to make it different. Floating platforms, glowing thing leading the way, path revealing itself as you walk along it, I could never *dream* of there being anything similar. Player sprite when absorbing energy is almost exactly the same as in hollow knight. Wow. Oh, and the ability received screen is the same too, apparently. Ah, the three dream- oh nvm he said it in the video. Soul. That’s it. Soul. The UI barely even looks different. Now that I think of it, the health is the same shape as the masks, just upside down. Geo rocks. Pogo??? But without downslash?? Vengeful spirit, but a bit dif. Charms. Damage screen is just like in hollow knight Dash isn’t even slightly different.

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.

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

"RIP Fandom" we can only hope

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.)

Can you do a video on Aestik? Theres been a bunch of people saying its a clone or it copied stuff. I think it'd be cool to see your opinion.