Team Cherry's Hollow Knight is a moody, atmospheric Metroidvania game set in a world of bugs and other small creatures. Players control The Knight, a small bug on a mysterious journey through a fallen kingdom and uncover the mysteries of what happened to cause its downfall. Along the way, The Knight will have to overcome dangerous terrain, deadly enemies, and even the sometimes confusing layout of Hallownest itself — a daunting task made easier by a steady flow of upgrades and powerups the player gains on the journey.
Not every player interacts with the game in the same way, however. While most are content to play the game at their own pace, pick up whatever boons the game gives them, and take the time to fully explore the sprawling map, some seek to challenge themselves by speedrunning the game under various restrictions. Such runs might seek to complete 100% of the game as quickly as possible or reach an ending regardless of how much of the game is played. Some might allow glitches, while others seek to speedrun with no glitches whatsoever.
By far, the most difficult of these restrictions is the low-percent Godhome run: the player must get the minimum number of items possible to complete the game while also achieving the Godhome ending, facing a gauntlet of the game's most difficult bosses with the bare minimum of The Knight's capabilities. To achieve the Godhome ending, a player must fight a sequence of 42 bosses in a row in the final stretch, revisiting old fights now scaled up in power and HP. The game assumes the player can deal 21 damage with a normal attack at this point; however, in a low percent run, the player can only deal 5 damage per swing, necessitating a level of knowledge and a degree of consistency that most simply don't possess.
Two bosses, in particular, the Flukemarm and the Collector, are the real reason for the run to be so difficult, as they consistently create small enemies that a fully-equipped player would have little difficulty clearing. However, for a player doing only a quarter of the expected damage, these fights become truly nightmarish. To beat them under such restrictions, a player needs adaptability, snap reflexes, full-screen concentration, and nerves of steel as messing up can mean the loss of over an hour of progress in an already-long run.
In addition to the difficult fights, an in-depth knowledge of what the game considers as "completion percentage" is required to get the maximum efficiency out of the smallest amount of content in the game. For example, one point in the run requires the defeat of a boss, but by cleverly timing a save-and-reload, the player can trigger the flag needed to complete the game while leaving the arena before the game counts the percentage for the win, allowing a lower percentage of the game to be technically completed.
This run was, in fact, so difficult as to be thought impossible — until one dedicated player decided to prove otherwise. After weeks of practice and failed attempts, Hollow Knight speedrunner General Milky walked away with the first (and so far, only) successful completion of the low percent Godhome Ending category. While this run could potentially be done faster — by their own admission, they even did some minor unnecessary content for fun — the complete and utter magnitude of the task means that even a 7-hour run is likely to stand as the world record for quite some time.
Still, accomplishments like these are what push these niche communities to ever-greater heights in their understanding of and skill in their chosen games. With a previously-thought impossible run shown to be practically achievable, the possibility of another player managing to improve upon run is quite likely — a challenger could try for a better time or, this being a low percent run, could lower the percentage of game completed and beat the record even with a longer time. As such, General Milky's success, rough though it may be, is bound to create a surge of new excitement and engagement in the community, which is something Team Cherry is likely quite grateful for as it continues to work on its sequel game, Hollow Knight: Silksong.
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