This Hollow Knight Competitor Releases Today With a 90 on OpenCritic

Well Dweller, the metroidvania from developer Kyle Thompson, is out today, September 22, on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Reviews went live a day early, on September 21.

The game holds 90 on OpenCritic with a Mighty rating, a 100% critic recommendation and a place in the 99th percentile of the titles the aggregator scores. Console Creatures gave it a 10. Gamer Social Club and Loot Level Chill both put it at 9.5. Cubed3, IGN Spain, Analog Stick Gaming, The GameSlayer and Pizza Fria landed on 9. Nothing published so far scores it under 8.

Numbers like that invite suspicion, and the reviews themselves supply the counterweight. Gamer Guides scored it 84 while stating the game offers no original ideas. Gameliner found Thompson's earlier work more inventive. Pizza Fria asked for more variety in combat and called healing laborious. The GameSlayer pointed out that Well Dweller drops the punishing difficulty many genre fans expect.

Analog Stick Gaming wrote that few metroidvanias feel this good to control. Cubed3 credited the tools the game hands you for making completion less cryptic than the genre norm. Seasoned Gaming called the combat simple and fun, and put the real charm in the world design and the writing.

Thompson writes his own Steam updates in the first person and signs them with his first name. When players said the bubble traversal felt frustrating in the demo, he rebuilt its onboarding twice in four days: gentler level design, redesigned rooms, aim assist in the finicky spots, extra healing points in optional challenge rooms far from save points. The same run of updates added a postbox where characters write to you and the option to replay time trials.

"I'm really proud of this game and I can't wait for you all to play it."

— Kyle Thompson

I spend most of my playtime in games about crossing space rather than winning fights, so a metroidvania that puts traversal puzzles ahead of combat reads as the right shape for me. I think the 91 measures polish rather than novelty, and polish is usually what decides whether I finish something in this genre. I need a game that lets me wander without a countdown behind me, and nothing in these reviews suggests Well Dweller hurries anyone.

The game follows Glimmer, a small bird armed with a matchstick, whose siblings are taken from their home in a rotting kingdom ruled by a Queen. The slide doubles as the dodge and makes Glimmer invulnerable while it runs. Bubbles carry him across gaps and fire him off in any direction. The match sticks to surfaces like a slingshot shot and turns into a springboard. Enemy attacks are telegraphed in pink, and a Looter NPC sells Trinkets that change how Glimmer fights. One sanctuary asks you to bring back 20 Spirits.

But I need to admit that I'm someone who needs to discover the origin before playing games that call '-like', so I will give Hollow Knight and its sequel, Silksong, a second chance, especially because Eneba offers a 5% discount! Check these links (above) to get a pleasant price cut for keys with our promo code EGW5.

Read also: Slay the Spire 2 made more money in its first 14 days of early access than Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades 2 earned on Steam in their lifetimes, with Alinea Analytics putting the figure at $92 million against $83 million for the other two. Mega Crit built it with 10 employees over five years, roughly the same scale as Team Cherry's four-person Silksong team.