How Hollow Knight was Beaten Blindfolded

all right let's set the scene this may look like a perfectly normal explosion Pogo to you but what if I told you the person doing it cannot see the game this is my pet Cactus he's a hollow Knight speedrunner challenge Runner and well he's very very good at the game a few days ago he became the first ever person to beat Hollow Knight blindfolded under his belt he also has a hitless Pantheon 5 player and multiple top speed run times a blindfolded completion of hollow Knight is an amazing Feast that requires a lot of memorization problem solving awareness patience and practice the more you think about it the more ridiculous the idea of attempting it even becomes in Hollow Knight so much of the game is based on the visuals the platforming the boss attack telegraphs etc etc so much of this game is designed and balanced around well being able to see the game so how was it that Cactus was able to overcome this seemingly insurmountable challenge there we go well that's what we're taking a look at today in this video I'm gonna break down and analyze cactus's run and showcase some of the clever solutions that he came up with I'll also be asking him some questions directly on that note let's start the video but before we do I highly recommend you check out his full run it's posted on his YouTube channel and it is wow yeah just wow let's get into it [Music] while playing the game with a blindfold on WE encounter some pretty big issues some more obvious than others for starters it's really hard to know where on the screen you are you also can't know how far you're walking how high you're jumping and you just have to depend on your memory now luckily Cactus has a trick up his sleeve to mitigate a lot of these issues and you can see him utilize this right at the beginning of the run when he drops into King's pass what I'm talking about of course is The Game's audio design notice for example how he slashes around himself to identify whether he is close to a wall or not in this way the feedback audio of the nail hitting different objects assists him in deciphering where in the room he is other than that he uses a lot of consistent setups such as positioning himself against the wall doing full jumps etc etc using strategies such as these he's able to get himself all the way to the Aspen Arena but how do you handle combats if you can't see the game well in the case of the aspit Arena Cactus is able to find a consistent setup that allows him to manipulate the aspids in a way where he can consistently strike them even false Knight is Trivial for cactus to take down because it's a fight that doesn't require much thinking or positioning at all even while seeing the game speedrunners barely look at the false Night Fights because it's so simple he fully defeats false Knight picks up City Crest and the Geo and then grabs the vengeful Spirit now this is gonna sound a bit weird but the early parts of the Run are one of the hardest parts when it comes to traversal and that is because he doesn't have a consistent way of moving unless there's any walls or Corners that he can slash at to know where he is he has to basically count how far he's walking only when he picks up the Mothman cloak is he gonna have a consistent way to move with one dash always moving you the same distance but more on that after greenpath now after slowly but steadily making his way up through the Grazer room killing the Baldur and jumping across the Acid Pits Cactus makes his way into greenpath now before we continue I need to remind you of the logistics of attempting something like this Cactus has spent hours upon hours lobbying out strategies planning routes and memorizing the different segments of the run and he needs to remember all of this no visual references no additional information just pure memory keep in mind it's not a short run either this is going to take him four hours to complete roughly greenpath really turns it up a notch it's a lot more punishing than Crossroads because of the large Acid Pits that cover the ground in a lot of the rooms so he needs to use some clever strategies to mitigate the risk consistent positioning landmarks once again hail Supreme with walls and ceilings and other stuff that you can slash at or position yourself against he also uses full gems as much as possible because they give a consistent height small Taps of the left and right buttons will have to do for precise positioning for now now to save himself roughly 40 minutes of memorized routes down in lower Green Path Cactus decides to go for the fireball skip to do this he gathers full soul from the birds and then sets up a consistent position by hugging this left wall after this it's all timing first try easy now I'm gonna skip forward to the Hornet fight so that this video isn't ages long but now that I've shown you what type of tactics he uses the rest isn't super hard to imagine now Hornets as opposed to false Knight is an actual fight that requires some clever strategies to beat so after benching at greenpath stag he begins to fight now I'm not entirely sure if this fight would even be possible if it weren't for the hero that is Makoto Koji Hornet's voice actress this is because cactus's entire Strat revolves around standing in the rightmost corner and jumping or slashing whenever years Hornets scream her screaming Shaw or Edina or whatever indicates that Hornet has jumped and is Dashing towards the player's Direction Cactus jumps whenever this happens and that's basically the fight it's very slow requires a lot of attention and may not even work consistently but you know that's basically the summary of a blindfolded Hollow Knight run he picks up the mothering cloak and now he's off to get claw but before he does that he has to face off with the greatest enemy of all the main menu to do this he's very careful and moves the mouse really far away and then slowly Maneuvers through the menu there may or may not have been times in previous runs where he accidentally shut down the game as I mentioned earlier his playstyle has changed quite a lot now that he has Dash he can now use the dash to count distance which becomes increasingly useful because the rooms get bigger the platforms get smaller etc etc once again positioning against walls and other landmarks is really important see for example how he uses the big walls on the side of this room to position himself however remembering exactly where you are in a big room like this especially when you fall into a few Acid Pits along the way is not exactly easy and he decides to quit out once he gets lost the quid out is one of his best tools in case he gets in a pickle because if he messes up a segment he can simply restart the entire sequence from the beginning now on the very next try he makes it all the way down and then goes on to kill the shroomal ogres for the charm Notch having more notches is going to be really important for his strategies later due to the charms he's going to be using now Cactus is not one to do things the easy way and that's why he learned the explosion Pogo blindfolded now how's this possible well it's all about setup for starters he does two neutral dashes to line himself up with a wall and then once he lands he does three full jumps this lines him up to Pogo right before the Spore explodes and due to his positioning he gets hit to the left where he and just Pogo and dash again oh after slowly but steadily making his way through the mantises in the upper mantis Village Cactus is able to pick up the Mantis claw and there we have it good now despite getting the city Crest Cactus actually is entering the city of Tears through the Blue Lake this mainly has to do with the patch he's running on he's doing this run on patch 1221 which means that the lever skips still exists most notably there is a lever skip you can do with Dash slash where you can get the shade Soul without the elegant key dashlash will also help him make his way through sanctum which is an area that probably wouldn't really be possible if it weren't for this also it's gonna allow him to buy some charms on the way which is good and he gets the flex by doing a blindfolded shade skip which I can't really blame him for that another unexpected example of something that becomes really difficult when blindfolded is the salubra charm shop menuing believe it or not if Cactus isn't careful and doesn't pay attention to what he's doing he might buy the wrong charm and kill his run but he actually has a really clever solution for this in the shop menu he works himself from the bottom up knowing that he hasn't unlocked the notches and doesn't have enough Geo for quick Focus this safely lands him on Shaman Stone without running the risk of buying the wrong charm and killing the run these small little Creative Solutions are really the backbone of this run from here Cactus rescue Sly and sets up the shade skip just like the other speedrunning skips in this route there are consistent ways to time and position yourself using dashes jumps and nail hits that being said it's still quite impressive just a little bit further ahead I want to highlight the way Cactus approaches the dream platforms while there is no inherent risk of dying or ending the run here this segment is really tricky and could waste him a lot of time which makes it crucial to come up with a good strategy so that he doesn't waste his brain power on it keep in mind there's still around three hours of gameplay to go so he really needs to optimize after clearing each chunk of platforming cactus dashes off the big platforms this is because there's a new Hazard checkpoint set with each one of them this allows him to start the next segment from a consistent position after getting the dream nail Cactus makes his way all the way down to Kenny station he gathers a few relics and kills the gorgeous husk before setting out leftwards as previously mentioned he wants to get Dash slash but he simply doesn't have enough Geo for it yet which means that he needs to go sell to Lem he uses the watcherspire lever skip to get up and then sets his bench over at cornifer this bench is going to be really important later as he needs to return near a few times now after selling to Lem he travels back to King station manually and goes down to Kingdom's Edge after getting dashlash from Oro he returns back to the corner for bench and goes into sanctum before he does any of the actual sanctum he goes to the left and does the dash slash lever skip to get shade Soul early this lever skip is really important because it allows him to get shade Soul before even going to Crystal Peak or doing sanctum this is gonna mitigate a lot of the pain and suffering that comes with soul sanctum RNG that he otherwise would have a really really hard time with not that sanctum is particularly nice like this either before Cactus enters sanctim proper he gets the simple key from storerooms which is going to be useful later sanctum proper is a really really tricky area this is especially the case when you're blindfolded because now not only can the Soul Twisters teleport anywhere you also don't know where they are this is the first place in the run where Cactus takes to death oh I wasn't too health I need to teleported in front of me I got it I was on top of the lever but I got bad RNG and he teleported in front of me it's not that big a deal we can get back there easily due to the nature of sanctum RNG this is pretty much unavoidable for cactus but he manages to rescue his shade and save the run as I mentioned earlier the dashlash is really useful in Soul sanctum because it allows you to do certain lever skips that skip the trickiest parts of sanctum for example this room dubbed the hell room by speedrunners due to how bad RNG wise it is can be completely skipped with a dash slash so Cactus makes his way to the soul Master Arena after the soul Twisters let him through he enters the arena and Begins the fight but how do you fight Soul Master blindfolded well as Cactus Begins the fight he takes refuge in the bottom right corner once again just like with Hornets the game's audio design ends up making this fight possible it allows him to listen for the Fireballs watch out for the horizontal dashes and even Dodge the Dives since they never actually hit him directly allowing him to jump over the Shockwave but as you might notice he's not dealing any damage to the boss and that's because Cactus is waiting for the orb spinning attack once this happens he dashes out with a consistent setup of movement and shoots Fireballs for double hits along the boss's pattern due to picking up shade Soul he's able to deal a lot of damage this way and the boss doesn't take very long to die oh don't recovery holy crap the second phase is quite similar to how speedrunners do it because the boss always drops on top of you allowing you to move out of the way once Cactus escapes sanctum he goes all the way down to the waterways with the key that he got earlier because well it's time to get fluke Nest as you might know fluknist is extremely broken on almost every patch of the game on 1221 the spell is just really powerful to shorten it down if you're curious about flukna's history of being broken I have a full video about it on my channel not to plug myself too much but he gets fluke nist because of its Incredible strength with an entire 112 damage per full Shaman Stone cast as opposed to the shade Soul's usual 40. once fluke marm is defeated Cactus climbs all the way up to the Watcher's Spire because it's time to fight The Watcher Knights for this 5T actually over charms Shaman Stone twister and it's Lucas the reason for this will become pretty apparent as soon as you see the boss fight also note how he refreshes the menu each time to make sure he's equipping the right charms The Watcher Knights unlike Hornets or soulmaster for example aren't really as predictable in the same way so the only way to make this reasonably doable is to just kill them before they can kill you and luckily with flukness that is no problem since each Watcher has 220 HP and the flukes as I said earlier deal 112 you can easily kill a Watcher in two cases however his setup and timing needs to be perfect so that he gets all the Dream Nails he needs and kills the bosses before they can escape their starting position after Cactus gets to Geo rewards he doesn't get lurian I'll just let him explain this okay now normally in a speed run you would go get Larry in right now but because we're blind um and we have to go through Crossroads multiple times after this and after you get a dreamer the crossroads become infected which means enemies become more aggressive and there's more of them it's it's just generally a bad time um so we actually don't get Lori in right now and we save him for last so we'll go so we have we go get manaman and Hera first and then before the final boss we Loop all the way back here to get lorian uh just to be safe so he returns to King's station goes to Dartmouth buys the Lantern and then returns to the crossroads stag because it's time for the hardest and most mind-blowing part of the run but first Cactus needs to get through this Crossroads room now I think before we go into Crystal Peak I'm just gonna let this Crossroads room play out to really put it into perspective how difficult this challenge is you know what's really funny like if we didn't know he was blindfolded this would just look like the gameplay of one of those like mobile game scam ads where it's like only 0.01 of players can beat this level and it's like the worst gameplay you've ever seen actually I'm gonna make one of those real quick one second here we go [Music] anyway after Cactus overcomes the incredibly difficult harrowing Crossroads room it's time to enter a crystal Peak this is easily the most challenging part of the run and alone I think makes this one of the most incredible achievements in Hollow Knight history think about it conveyors that constantly move you so you can't stand in a consistent position laser cycles that repeat over and over again with audio effects so loud that it's incredibly difficult to discern where you are in the cycle tall vertical rooms and yeah you can imagine for each one of these rooms Cactus needs to refine his strategy to Perfection to be able to pull it off he's found consistent ways to regain health and soul in case he messes up so that he doesn't have to save and quit every time he fails but really what makes these big climbrooms possible is the fact that he has picked up shade Soul because shade Soul travels through walls he's able to kill some of the crystal crawlers from safety considering this it's no surprise that this entire section takes over 15 minutes for cactus to get through but all of the challenges of Crystal Peak pale in comparison to the very last room the Crystal Heart cycle room is a humongous room and it really has everything a giant Spike pit laser Cycles the flipping platforms conveyor belts everything about this room is designed to screw you over if you are blindfolded this is Cactus just repeating his strategy in his head big jump hold right one thousand tap off dash full jump Dash left into the wall jump right into the next wall wait a minute second Dash left break the walls go to the right dashboard times wait for the crystal Cycles man oh man and the very worst Parts is that once you get to the middle point there is no going back there is no getting more Soul you have to put it off first try again so Cactus takes a deep breath and he goes [Music] even a slight misposition will result in tumbling into the spikes below and that's exactly what happens but Cactus doesn't give up he still has 4 HP and if he plays perfectly he might just pull it off however it's even harder to catch on to the correct cycle here because the noise of the lasers is just active all the time so he gathers his courage and he goes [Music] oh my God yes yes dude oh my God believe all you gotta do is believe oh but just because the hardest area of the game is over it doesn't mean it gets easy from here now can cats does something a little bit strange here because he's gonna go get ismas and getting ismus is not the weird thing about this it's just the way he goes about it you know because he just picked up C Dash you would think that he would just do the acid skips to ismus and yeah he does but he also goes to King's pass to get to lifeblood only to travel to waterways to fight young Defender for no reason and then does the acid skip anyway uh what yeah turns out he just routed in a completely useless boss uh enjoy the tongue Defender music I suppose however the ismoskips themselves require some pretty finicky timing and therefore are very impressive Vermeer announced Cactus returns to Crossroads and goes down to fog Canyon because it's time to fight umu now the fight itself isn't that complicated because he has flutenist and is able to kill umu in one cycle so I'm not gonna go into that too much out of all of the bosses in the run this one is probably the safest one so he picks up monomon and then moves on as usual from here on Cactus has two different ways to get to Hera either you go through Queen's Gardens or you go through deep Nest the speedrunner's usual pick Queen's Gardens is way way too difficult when you're blindfolded with the toggling platforms and difficult enemies it's just not viable so Cactus instead opts for the deepest route and this allows them to bench at the hot spring and deep nest and get himself a handy checkpoint to quit up to and quit out he does quite a lot of times because deepness is a very treacherous area especially when you can't see the game despite having Dash and C Dash it's really hard for a cactus to get across the big pits consistently because the spacings are all really awkward what also doesn't help are the spiders that shoot projectiles as well as the ones that spawn on the walls as well as the floors that break into Spike but you get the point whatever despite all this Cactus slowly but steadily makes his way through deep nest but perhaps even more terrifying is the giant distant Village pit because if you fall here you have to redo the entire area so Cactus C dashes from the wall and [Music] no but Allah's not lost he quits out and does the entire area once again and on the second try he does get across Now All That Remains is beasten going up to get lurian and then fighting the hollow Knight now before I covered this very last part of the run I wanted to ask Cactus some questions directly about well why the hell he attempted this so we hopped in a call in Discord and here's what he answered hello so I just had a few questions regarding the Blindfolded run uh if you don't mind I guess the first one is well why did you decide to try this that's a good question I think it was someone in chat I was like I was like I was like out loud I was wondering like what what else what other challenges can I do because like I was having fun with it and then someone was like blindfolded [Music] I was like you know what not a bad idea he just went and did it casually like that and and regarding that run like how the hell do you learn a five hour long blindfolded run like what was your strategy for memorizing the run I mean I'm a theater kid so like I've been memorizing stuff since high school it's easier to memorize it when you're going through it where you can see so that's what I did basically is I tried to plan out um like movement for that room and see if it would work um and then like get it consistent and then I would try and do it blindfolded it's like uh like it's kind of like the extreme version of learning dark rooms like you do it with Lantern and then you do it without Lantern yeah yeah pretty much yeah and you barely had any memory slips either just like one or two yeah other than that like 30 minute one at the end of The Run yeah uh-huh [Music] yeah and uh another question that I figured I should ask what was the hardest part because I'm gonna guess it's Crystal Peak TP because yeah is the hardest part of the Run um for sure only because of that last room um I don't think that was the hardest to route though because I will say it took me a long time to figure out how to beat thk because even Wes um with fluke Nest on one two two one um it's still like pretty much wasn't possible with with 5 HP so why did you fight dung Defender by the way so Random okay I forgot it's part of the route I just I didn't those the two and two didn't add up okay so how does it feel to be the only person to have beaten hot blindfolded um literally anybody can do this I was just stupid enough to like dedicate like a month of my life to actually doing it how long did it take by the way to learn everything I want to say like seven months and a half probably I was like six hours a day for like a month and a half ish anyway yeah thanks for thanks for answering the questions Gigi's on the Run um thank you thank you later anyway back to Beeston on paper seems quite scary there's really tight corridors spiders that shoot projectiles and of course the devouts which deal double damage and therefore can really easily mess you up is what I would have said if this wasn't patch one two two one and Cactus didn't have flukes because they die in one cast God this charm is so Opie oh my God that being said though the traversal is still really scary because the spiders can really easily knock you into spikes if they hit you allowing you to take double damage from that as well because of that he ends up on one HP once and has to quit out but other than that he makes it through relatively easily he collects Hera and moves out of Beast then this is where we run into a problem memorizing a five hour long run room for room is really difficult and Cactus finally has a memory slip he forgets the movement from distant Village to the distant Village stack and he is in trouble this on paper is a completely risk-free room but if he can't remember it the run is dead minute after minutes time passes by and Cactus is getting more and more nervous but he's racking his brain and it's just not working just these few little small platforms are pretty much what stand in his way right now and he just can't do it so he tries and he tries and eventually he pulls it off even simple little platforming rooms like that are run Killers if you can't remember how to do them it's absolutely crazy now that that close call is out of the way practice Stags to King's station goes up to lure and collects well the real stretch and now there's only one thing standing in his way the hollow Knight is the only thing that remains blocking him from being the first ever person to beat Hollow Knight blindfolded even with fluknist being so powerful on this patch Cactus has no chance against thk with only 5 HP they are way too unpredictable of a fight and you can't out damage them in any way shape or form like you can like The Watcher Knights so what he does instead is pretty interesting Cactus goes on a lifeblood gathering tour Cactus gathers lifeblood in greenpath and in King's pass he also gets stuck here for five minutes which is understandable and without taking damage slowly but steadily makes his way back to the hollow Knight Arena we can do this you can do this we can do this stay positive we can do this eliminate let me do this and then he begins the fight all he has to do is damage the boss enough to get to the second phase where he can get a few opportunities to heal so Cactus starts the fight once again he uses the rightmost corner as a reference to try to get some soul from the fight but once again what matters is trying to kill them before they kill you the boss's attacks are way too random to reliably be dodged but slowly but steadily he whittles down their health and paints hits some attacks he actually manages to dodge whether it be timing or luck I don't know and finally as he's getting low on health the screen comes and he's into the second phase I'm just gonna let it play from here [Applause] [Applause] uh let's go dude let's go yes oh yes thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed the video uh I do a lot of more Hollow Knight content so subscribe if you want to and of course check out Cactus his links are in the description thank you so much I'm still [Music]

Channel: BlueSR

Views: 429,300

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Id: Cq3NGmd5EJc

Length: 29min 14sec (1754 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023