Hit the mushrooms !

[crpl]

Omg, I was stuck for like 1h30 in this game, cause i couldn't find how to jump on the mushroom... shame on me.

I don't really like games holding hands, but I had to read it somewhere on this forum to get this.
I stupidly tried to jump while bouncing to get higher (pretty common on most platform games)

May be just there should be just a small tip, at least in the command list, to know this king of thing.

Just my 2 cents.

[Wondercrab]

Originally posted by 4thQueen:

Ten or so people complaining on the forums isn't really comaprable to the silent masses who just play the game regularly and never even think to comment, especially when they have no negative issues. Do you also think that the Trial of the Fool should be easier just because two guys took 20 hours to beat it and posted on the forum about it?

I was confused by the bouncy mushrooms for a while myself, as was a friend of mine and several of the people in the playthroughs of Hollow Knight I've watched. It's something I've seen mentioned several times on the forums here, so I think it's safe to say it's at least a somewhat common issue. This isn't a hardcore optional challenge, it's just a case of understanding how the game's mechanics work to progress through a very basic segment. I can't see any harm in the game explaining this more clearly. One great solution would've been to force the player into a situation where they have to learn how to bounce on mushrooms to escape a pit, because as it stands it's very easy to reach them, think "oh well, I can't get through there yet," and then run around in circles for a while before trying them again.

[Desticler]

Thank you so much. I had no idea what to do, I looked everywhere in the game to find something to help, and the only things I didn't find require me to know to hit the mushrooms.

[xdvdwx]

It didn't take me that long, but I still spent about an hour there. I was thinking I needed an ability I hadn't acquired yet lol. I think the game should have you try the downward slashes more often before that area.

[avil]

Whoa, I thought, like, every single person hits everything all the way everywhere they come just to look, how breakables break. I was wrong!

[[TdT]Astral_]

Wait until you realize that you can jump at the SIDE of a mushroom, slash downwards, and go up !

[Snubb]

I really wish you could hold the jump button instead, slashing downwards while trying to steer at the same time is super clunky.

[Sencored]

Originally posted by Crapal:

Omg, I was stuck for like 1h30 in this game, cause i couldn't find how to jump on the mushroom... shame on me.

I don't really like games holding hands, but I had to read it somewhere on this forum to get this.
I stupidly tried to jump while bouncing to get higher (pretty common on most platform games)

May be just there should be just a small tip, at least in the command list, to know this king of thing.

Just my 2 cents.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this. I was so pissed when I was fighting and hit one by accident. I saw myself fling backwards (which usually happens when you hit stuff) but it was really far. I sat for a second and then wanted to pull my hair out because I felt so dumb.

[SonicBoomNFA]

I cannot beLIEVE that this is a common issue... Like, I'm tempted to ask "Have any of ya'll ever played a video game before?", but I know that that's unfair and rude, but come on now. Hitting literally any object in the game makes you bounce; there's no reason for you to NOT assume that the object that already makes you bounce will make you go even higher if you strike it.

[benjamincarylewis]

It's absolutely non-intuitive behaviour to expect to be able to bounce higher off a trampoline by hitting it with a sword rather than just ... jumping on it.

Even in video games in my experience it's more typical to be able to jump higher off bouncy objects by pressing the jump button right when you land (i.e essentially just like you'd do IRL). I watched 3 different experienced streamers play this game and they ALL tried to do it this way before eventually figuring out that down-attacking is necessary.

[SonicBoomNFA]

Originally posted by benjamincarylewis:

It's absolutely non-intuitive behaviour to expect to be able to bounce higher off a trampoline by hitting it with a sword rather than just ... jumping on it.

It's also non-intuitive to assume that going a several hours without eating is okay, but we're able to assume that eating food isn't required in a lot of games. Don't apply real world logic to video games. Why would you do that? You can't do that, man; you just can't. Also, in real life, you wouldn't begin your jump right when you land because that would cancel out your inertia; in actuality, you would jump after you land as you come on your way up, so that defeats your argument since you're trying to apply physics to prove your point on why striking the shrooms is unintuitive.

Trying to jump on the shrooms to gain height as you would in other games is fine; that's a smart first thing to do because that's a mechanic that can be found in other games; you're not at fault for not immediately figuring out how the shrooms work. What I'M saying is that it makes no sense to say that striking the shrooms is unintuitive; in a game where you strike, like, everything (and, as I said, gain height from slashing everything), it makes perfect sense to assume that you can hit them to go even higher. This is using video game logic, not real world logic. Just because you didn't immediately figure it out doesn't mean it's unintuitive

[benjamincarylewis]

I'm saying this case is even non-intuitive for video games. This is obviously a more subjective statement, but clearly (based on this thread, and from observing other play-throughs) a lot of other people besides me think so.

Personally I find the shroom jumping to be one of the more unnatural mechanics in the game, much more so than pogo-ing off spikes (which for the record I'm totally fine with though you can't do that in real life either). I don't think a little help text would hurt, especially given that they provide help text for jumping out of a pit in the tutorial area.

[SonicBoomNFA]

I think "A lot of other people" might be a bit generous; a very small minority of people had this issue, and I bet some of the people you watched struggle didn't go, "well that's bull; how was I supposed to know?"; they probably went, "Oh, why didn't I try that?" but that's just me assuming.
You're right; it's subjective, but it's certainly not the Dev's faults that people got stuck for hours on something that was supposed to be quite obvious. I'm not gonna get all mad and go "Ugh, you babies are the reason games these days are bla bla bla!" if they add help text there, but I don't think it's something we need to press on them.

This is a minor thing, but you mentioned the game telling us how to jump out of a pit. That was just explaining a button command; that's pretty standard for games. Smacking shrooms, though, requires a button command that was already taught to you and expected to be used to experiment; these are 2 different circumstances, my guy.

[benjamincarylewis]

You're right, all the existing help text is to explain key controls, not the circumstances in which to use them. A better way to teach something like this naturally in game might be to show an enemy/npc performing the same move.

And to be clear, I'm not trying to say the devs are at fault for anything, it just feels like it could use a slight improvement to me. Just as a small comparison, when I saw platforms hanging from vines I thought "ooh, I bet I can cut those down", and was pleased when I found I could. On the other hand, when I tried jumping on bouncy-sounding mushrooms to no effect, and the tried hitting one and found in contrast it caused a huge rebound, I thought "oh, okay, that's random".

[SonicBoomNFA]

Okay, I can level with that.

[Antomas]

Even after I learnt about “downslash propelling up” feature, I still can't get it to work reliably — on three-in-a-bunch mushrooms at least there's a second (third, fifth) chance, because I can manage to stay on it after a failed jump. Single mushrooms though are showstoppers for me.

Getting up the well from the bench near Mantis village takes me ages, mostly falling back to wall jump :(

10 hours in, this is the only disappointing thing about the game. Love it otherwise, amazing world, enemies, and controls.