Hollow Knight Beta

The Hollow Knight Beta is a beta build of Hollow Knight which was first sent to Kickstarter backers in September 2015. It was also released as a sneak peek for Humble Monthly Bundle subscribers on the 3 February, 2017. The beta was released to everyone on 21 September, 2020, after being posted by Team Cherry on the Hollow Knight Discord server.

All of the major changes between the beta and the final release version of Hollow Knight are documented below.

The beta can be downloaded here.

Area differences
The beta only contains King's Pass, Dirtmouth, and the Forgotten Crossroads. Some parts of these areas have remained the same in the release version, while some were still incomplete and are missing certain aspects. The following is a list of most major differences in the beta areas compared to the areas in the release version of Hollow Knight.

Audio differences
Several audio changes were made in the release version compared to the beta, although overall most audio stayed the same.

Dialogue differences
Most dialogue of NPCs is different in the beta.

Enemy and boss differences
Several enemies and bosses have behaviour changes, location changes, or visual changes.

Gameplay differences
The gameplay of the beta has some notable differences, including different abilities and combat.

NPC differences
Some NPCs are missing from their location in the release version, or found in different locations. They may also have different behaviour in the beta compared to the release version.