 Ari Gibson and William Pellan had absolutely no idea what they were doing. The pair were working on a Game Jam project and were desperately trying to throw together a functional video game in just three days. They were very much out of their depth. Neither Ari nor William had experience making games professionally and they were grasping at straws as they tried to finish their amateur project. It was down to the wire. They pushed and pushed and pushed and ultimately failed. The deadline for game submissions for the contest passed and their project, Hollow Knight, simply wasn't ready in time. But the pair weren't willing to give up on what they'd made just yet. This little game had potential, they could feel it. Rather than trying again for another Game Jam, the pair began putting their effort into building their small prototype into a fully fledged commercial release. It would take nearly four years of work, but eventually Hollow Knight would finally see the light of day. Both William Pellan and Ari Gibson had been avid Nintendo fans when they were younger and had both fallen in love with the simple genius of early NES titles. William's life had changed forever, the moment that his dad helped him to find the hidden wingboots in Zelda 2, while Ari's first love was a little more obscure. The first game he'd ever rented was the fantasy platformer Faxonado and he'd been hooked ever since. Growing up, the pair were eager hobbyists when it came to game design, modding games and building their own prototypes and amateur projects. But neither of them pursued this as a career. Ari became an animator, even running his own studio named Mechanical Apple. Meanwhile, William worked in web design. Ari and William had been friends for years before they decided, just for fun, to start pooling their hobbyist game design talents in order to create a Game Jam. Ludham Dare is one of the largest and longest running game jams in the world. Entrants are given just 48 hours to create a game on a given theme, as a way of flexing their creative muscles and throwing together a solid gaming experience in a very short period of time. As the 27th Ludham Dare approached, William and Ari decided that they'd give the contest a try. The result was Hungry Night, a top-down survival game that drew a lot of inspiration from the Legend of Zelda, in which the titular player character must rush around, killing and eating bugs, in order to stay alive. The game was, by the pair's own admission, not very good. They'd tried their best, but they were new to this kind of game development, and it showed. But Ari and William had enjoyed themselves and they were eager to try again. When another Game Jam came up not long after, they geared up for a second attempt at creating a game at speed. Again, this Game Jam was fun, but their creation wasn't anything groundbreaking. It wasn't until their third and final Game Jam that something magical clicked into place. This three-day Game Jam had the theme of Beneath the Surface. The pair set to work coming up with an idea that would tie into this theme and that would make something special. They started dreaming up a platformer where a character dove deep underground, exploring ruins and caverns, and finding the remnants of a long dormant race of insects. Working on a Game Jam meant cutting corners wherever possible. The pair used sprites from Hungry Night to create their new game's protagonist. They'd always liked his dark, round eyes and bright, skull-like face. This design also served as the inspiration for all the new characters, both friendly and dangerous, that would fill this new game world. The benefit to creating a game about insects was that they were a lot quicker and easier to draw than humans, and every corner the pair could cut would shrink the development time and help them get their game ready before the deadline. This bled into everything else about the new game as well. The art style was dark and monochrome. This meant no need to spend a lot of time colouring environments, and it meant that big, black patches could be used to hide areas that didn't have the most intricate background art. If there was a way to speed things up, the small team took it. But ultimately, it didn't matter. Their fledgling game, Hollow Knight, was completed, but not until after the deadline for the game jam had already passed. So, what to do now? Ari and William actually really liked what they built with Hollow Knight. They thought they were on to a winner here, and they were having a lot of fun with it. So, instead of trying their luck with a fourth game jam, they decided to keep working on this project. The miniature version of Hollow Knight that they built in 72 hours served as a prototype for what they would ultimately create. They were going to take the time they needed to expand this game and create a fully fledged commercial release. And to do so, they were going to turn to Kickstarter. The mantra for Hollow Knight going forward was keep it simple. How well the pair managed to stick to this was debatable. The only reason they'd managed to get a version of Hollow Knight ready for the game jam had been because they were willing to work quickly, and they still hadn't succeeded in meeting their deadline. With infinite time ahead of them, the project could, and ultimately did, stretch on for years. So, they took the path of least resistance. This was how Ari found himself drawing the art for Hollow Knight by hand, and then photographing it with his phone before dumping it into the game. A little bit of digital cleanup was necessary, but this was the quickest, easiest way to build up his vision, piece by piece. As for the sounds of the game, the pair turned to whoever could help. They pestered their friends and family into recording voices for characters, getting them to mumble or hum to create the necessary sounds to help little insects feel alive. William's mother voiced some characters, including Mamu, whom she also got to pick the final design for. Much later, William's dad would spend hours playing through the finished game, trying to find snippets of his wife's voice recordings. As for the game world, the pair started out with the hopes of being able to shortcut design through a randomly generated environment. If they built a load of rooms and then had the game assemble a fresh experience every time, they ought to be able to save some time. Alas, this didn't work out. As they played around with this version of the game, Ari and William realised that it wasn't actually fun, both from a narrative perspective and in terms of gameplay. So they instead began very carefully crafting a deliberately built game world, limiting the player's progression until they'd achieved certain goals or acquired items. It was only at this point that the game's backbone began to form. Eventually, the time came to seek funding for their project. Before putting together their crowdfunding campaign, Ari and William had already done a lot of work on Hollow Knight, creating the layout and much of the art for five sections of their large game world. They took to Kickstarter with the hope of raising $35,000 Australian dollars, which is $25,000 US dollars or about 20,000 British pounds. Before kickstarting the game, they'd already been working full-time on the project for several months, and they were hoping that some financial support would help them complete the project without running out of steam. But even as they were pitching this game to potential investors, they were being constantly reminded that they were still making this up as they went along. During a backer question and answer session, someone asked what would happen when the player died within the game. The pair acted coyly, saying that they wanted to keep this as a surprise, but after the session, they hardly started trying to come up with an idea. Beyond creating a death animation, they hadn't even considered some kind of consequence for failure. Nevertheless, it seems that people responded to their pitch, as Hollow Knight almost doubled its backing goal, earning $57,000 Australian dollars. This was enough to keep things afloat, and it allowed William and Ari to expand their newly formed studio, Team Cherry, to include a few other faces. They'd already been working with one other artist, Rohan Fraser, to help create background art for their game. Their additional funding meant that they could afford to pay a friend, David Kazi, to help program the game, and they could also get Christopher Larkin to create the music and much of the soundscape for the game. A few other artists contributed bits and pieces to the game, but the core team stayed very small. After a lot of work and some slight scaling back of areas, the game was finished in 2017, more than two years after its debut on Kickstarter, and four years after the initial game jam that inspired the original prototype of Hollow Knight. Even then, Team Cherry wasn't done, as they went on to add several pieces of generous downloadable content that further expanded the underground world they'd created. It was clear that gamers were responding positively to their work. Fifteen months after its initial PC release, Hollow Knight reached a million downloads. Then, when it finally debuted on the Nintendo Switch, it sold 250,000 copies in under two weeks. Ari and William had succeeded. They'd made a piece of art that they were proud of, and they'd taught themselves a lot of new skills along the way. Their experience with Hollow Knight had changed their lives forever. The moral of the story is that no matter what you've done in life, you can still learn new things. Team Cherry's mantra of keep it simple served them well, as they built a game that was fun to make, paid homage to their childhood favourite titles, and was relatively easy to put together. And they did it all with limited experience of making professional games, as you're striving towards your goals, be sure to work smart, as well as hard. Figure out what you want, make a plan to accomplish it, and do everything you can to simplify the experience. That said, don't rush yourself. Hollow Knight took four years to build. William and Ari took the time they needed to create something that they could be proud of. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right. If you're willing to work for it, and you're patient, you too can achieve your dreams.