Folks, I have seen some games like Hollow Knight in my day. Until this afternoon, I would've told you that the iconic Metroidvania's closest relative is probably Crowsworn, which proudly blends Hollow Knight's style with action games like Devil May Cry to make something that appears meaningfully different. But Crowsworn has now been dethroned by Deviator, a 2D Metroidvania that looks so uncannily similar that I genuinely thought we'd gotten new Hollow Knight Silksong screenshots for a split-second.
Deviator's new trailer incidentally coincided with the release of Pokemon-like survival game Palworld, which has drawn some criticism for overlap with creature designs from the actual Pokemon games. But Palworld wishes it could rip something off this hard. Deviator does not simply look like Hollow Knight. It assimilated Hollow Knight like The Thing. It put Hollow Knight through a vegetable sheet cutter and clothed itself in layers of Hollow Knight peelings.
