@@kaizuhrrx1551 Honestly, even if this was just a reskin it would still be a lot of work. Don't underestimate what they have done, you won't find anything close to that in Hollow knight. Of course it would maybe be more fair to market it as a reskin of Hollow knight, but we don't quite know yet what they intend to do with the game.
I agree, the artstyle was really great and in a good hollow knightey style without being a complete rip-off, so it seems like the few original things they have could be pretty good, let's hope there's more to the game than the trailer and descriptions show
@@kaizuhrrx1551 No it isn't lol. The eastern motifs are very distinctive and unlike anything in HK. Unless this is stolen from somewhere else as well, it does make me think they could have something more interesting if they didn't stick so close to the HK mold otherwise.
Another red flag about the game you didn't mention is the inconsistency with the artstyle. The character and the backgrounds look exactly like hollow knight, but the enemies look like they're from a completely different game.
aside from being a HK clone, its very clear that theres a style problem with this game, take the main character and the enemies as an example, the main character has bold outlines while the enemies has thin outlines, this happens with the background as well, thats why the spikes looks so "out of place".
Also the main character's moves are hand-drawn, and enemies' animations are made with puppetry animation technique. I still like the way the game looks (I'm a huge fan of grayscale artstyle), but geez, it could be SO much better....
I find the funniest part about this is that when it shows the "knight" of this game dying, the health bar is the exact same as it was in other scenes, showing that they didn't even bother trying to make the "knight" take damage and show that damage being taken away from the health bar. Just a funny detail.
The death animation was the last drop for me, I was like: "Well, this looks really similar to Hollow Knight, maybe they can redeem themselves by making something ne-... **exactly the same death animation from HK** ...yeah this is bad".
Especially because they have a flower girl, they could do so much with that. Like she could wilt away into nothing or something like that, why did it *need* to be the void explosion?
This game is either going to look completely different when it comes out, or it's not going to come out at all. That trailer looks less like a game and more like a proof of concept. The sprites that aren't just traced over from Hollow Knight look and animate like scribblenauts characters. Also, I can't help but notice that the hud stays exactly the same during the whole trailer, even during the shot where the player dies. You know, where the health bar should be empty? (Unless you're trying to tell me that neither of those two meters are health bars, in which case.... I don't believe you?) All that plus the broken english and way too similar story and title make me think of crappy mobile games that try and make you think they're other games, only to download them and realize your mistake. Maybe they will actually make something different out of it, but I doubt it.
Thanks for noticing that! I was astonished by the visuals and animations of characters that I've completely didn't notice that "apparent" GUI is not changing through the entire trailer. It feels like this GUI was posted just to look of it, but it is completely just an images.
I also thought that it's a showcase of their abilities. But it's whole trailer for a game that has already release date and steam page. It's not early development like, You can see how Ori and the Blind Forest looked before it became what it is now. Such things You don't show for public, but make the game when You sculpted something unique. I really doubt they want to make something different, but would be nice if they do. Maybe if they get convinced that they could make great game if they just make some good idea, then they do change it, but I think it's a fat chance...
Yup this one does for sure. Other games, nah. I love HK don't get me wrong it's probably my fav game ever. But at the end of the day, it's a game, in a category of games. This game is obviously a copy, but when people say Ori copied HK I'm like bro, maybe they took a feature from HK but compare the 2 man lol. Every game ever can be called a copy, in the end... HK if you strip it down, is just a copy of different games put together. Maps aren't unique to HK, neither are charms, weapon upgrades. It's the combination and innovation of how they combined it that makes it unique. Dream nail for example seems very unique, but if you think about it, it's just a mind reading/entering mechanic. Mind entering is basically just hacking. It's hacking in the bug world, but the dream nail itself and the way they did it is unique. But the idea of mind reading isn't like innovation beyond our world haha. So people gotta chill with the craziness of every game is a HK copy because they have this! It's okay to copy their charm system honestly, it's a good system. If I played a game with 40 charms but all of them were completely different and unique interacting with their world in a different and unique way that HK didn't do... I'm not gonna say ''you copied HK'', that's the difference between inspired and plagiarism. And I think a lot of HK lovers jump to plagiarism instead of just, inspired. But yeh this game, obviously a total rip off lol.
For me, the more damning thing for this that pushes it past just "derivation" and into more "copying" is the fact that, with the similarities already pointed out, even the title screen is similar. They named it "Lotus Knight" in a font eerily similar to Hollow Knight's with a character that looks like a flower version the main character from Hollow Knight. If it was called "The Adventure of the Lotus Girl", it immediately starts to separate itself and gives it more room to breathe as a game inspired by Hollow Knight
I don't really like that title, Lotus Knight just kinda rolls off the tongue better. But I see what you mean, they should at least have a different font or something.
Yikes, the artist has so much talent. It would be completely fine if they didn’t rip so many animations/gameplay features. The artstyle isn’t team cherry’s, but their animations are.
I love the fact the enemies look like they don't even belong in this game because of the radically different outline thickness between the main character and the enemies.
In general the enemies are all over the place and don't fit into a cohesive picture. In Hollow Knight you lived in a world inhabited by bugs. So, your enemies were bugs. But what's going on here? Where are we and why are there skeleton dogs and evil ballerina dolls trying to fight us?
I think this is because they probably just traced the frames for the Knight's animations and then made the enemies on their own and didn't consider outline thickness. Also with them not making sense in the game, absolutely agreed on that I have no idea why they wrote game lore (as in wrote I mean tweaked a few things about Hollow Knight's lore) about how people got infected by a plague and turned into plants and then you proceed to fight anything but plants.
I feel like they made it with a mix of rented or stolen assets, I kinda wonder if everything else was a copy paste too, just from something unrecognizable to us. The entire thing is a scrapebook, nothings original.
Lotus Knight: Dude i forgot my homework at home, can i use yours? Hollow Knight: Shure , just dont do the same thing and change up a little bit Lotus Knight:
This doesn't look to me like they just used Hollow Knight as a reference. This looks like they painted their own art over Hollow Knight frame-by-frame. Same with the environment; it looks like they took Hollow Knight tiling and painted over it
@@RadiantSharaShaymin and a good one at that! These people definitely have enough talent to do something great, and yet they use it to make an almost copy of hollow knight. The spike sprite (which, oddly, there’s only one of) looks like a scaled down version of the one from hollow knight.
At some point, it stops being an inspiration and turns into plagiarism. These devs are asking for Team Cherry to sue them into oblivion. Or a cease and desist, at the very least.
@Travis Newsome lol? are you pretending this isnt plagiarism ? imma creat a yellow creature called fikachu and it will look identical to a certain yellow mascot. whats the problem ?
Unfortunately I bet even if they'd wanted to they couldn't do it. Not because they don't have a case. But they'd have to make a HARD case. Even if they traced the Hollow Knight to help make their char, there's still the cheap enemy sprites which is lil doubt homemade. As long as there's no true stolen assets or anything these cases are so hard to prove and so expensive. Cease and desist to scare them maybe yeah. Might even be in their best interest if the internet doesn't get pissy about that. I mean they did steal a lot but heck maybe they'll be able to spend a story on how they were just fans making an inspirational game out of looooooove. Pretty scary stuff if I was Team Cherry I'd just let them set on their cheap ass game. any whoo I'm just some random guy on the internet who read waaay to much law shit on internet and now likes to say. Well you see it depends.......
It's so weird to me how vastly different the main character looks to the enemies. Like one of them doesn't belong. The main character has thick black lines around them, just like in Hollow Knight, but in Hollow Knight all the enemies had that too. Here the enemies don't have that.
The thing I find interesting about this is that the animations and characters that aren’t directly translated from hollow knight look very off compared to the stuff that is, like the big panda thing with the trident looks like it belongs in a different game and the way that the enemies are animated looks a lot more interpolated and like it’s animated on a rig where the player character just like the knight is animated at 12 FPS (I think I’m not a professional so take this with just a side dish of salt) but my point being the game seems to be in conflict with itself.
Someone else pointed out the line thickness being very different... I don't know how they achieved that and didnt at least notice something was off. But they did. In fairness, I didnt realize it was the line until I'd read that, but still. I could tell something was different.
Was thinking the same thing. The fluid motions of the Knight do not at all match the animations of the enemies, which are much more awkward and more obviously puppeted. And the art styles definitely don’t match.
@@goldenfennekin I think in this case it’s traced since they look exactly like the Knight. Most likely everything else was animated by the developer, but the PC was traced.
Hi there, it might interest you that the devs changed the description after people called them out on the similarity in the story. It now says: A long, long time ago, there was a kingdom that was not recorded inside any literature. It is said that the king married a princess from the East, and after the arrival of this Eastern princess, strange things began to happen, creatures grew leaves and be controlled... Then what happened no one knows, only that the kingdom just disappeared. Also, the developer has no website that can be found via google when you use English and with the name "Stinky Tofu Games" it's pretty obvious, this is a Chinese rip-off company 🙃
What's weird is that the enemies have a different art style from the main character; for example, the lines aren't as thick. The animations for them also feel really stiff.
Someone else said they're probably just parts that were rigged to a skeleton instead of done in actual animation like the player character. Usually done to speed up production, but also way worse to look at if it's not done right. Think of it like seeing an animated CGI model in an otherwise entirely 2D TV show (Looking at you, Eternatus in Pokemon Journeys). It just looks plain ugly and out of place.
was about to point that out, the artstyle looks completely out of place and it comes off as every lazy looking chinese knock off. The way the lineart looks, looks like they had traced it from something else and lazily put it together for animation
Aside from the obvious game issues, the windows movie maker scene transitions with default text animations slamming singular half-related words into our faces is probably my favorite part of the whole trailer. FIGHT. DEADLY. WISHLIST (now). Super clean, big fan
This is honestly a common thing if you bother to look into video game history, the really successful ones will get a bunch of clones. You just don’t hear about it very often because the original articles are the ones that beat the test of time, and all the imitations get dunked on and forgotten.
Even then, when people trace right, they at least try to add a spin to it, make it unique, this is literally "you can copy my homework, just don't let the teacher know you did"
yeah, if it was "inspired by" and not "literally traced" it would be better. I great example of "inspired by" is Fran Bow and Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Both games have the same theme, but the art style is totally different. Both games are great tho!
@@Ehh0.0 Another good example is how Crowsworn seems to have used Hollowknight and Bloodborne as references. Using two different games as references is completely different from copying one and trying to hide it with a different colour pallet.
of all things, the fact that "Lotus Knight" is in almost the exact same font as Hollow Knight is in their page artwork is what really sets it off as a clone lmao
And the animation, especially dying. And how the wall jump works. And the forgotten kingdom that the king and his knights sacrificed so much to save. And the physic of enemy remains. (Like Mawlek/Nosk's Knight head after dying)
It feels so weird you got the smooth animations that were copied to look like hollow knight but then the enemies move like they were an early newgrounds animation or something along those line.
thats becouse the lotus girl was made using traditional 2D animation (the same team cherry used in the whole hollow knight game) wich means that every frame is hand drawn BUT the enemies were made using rigged sprites, essentially pieces of an image that have been attached to a posable skeleton. This is a faster and lazier way to do it but it can look horribly bad and robotic if it's not executed in a good way
I think stylistically, their PC feels alot less like any of the other art in this trailer, and more like that in hollow knight. the lines are thicker, closer to the lines of the knight, rather than the thinner lines of the enemy dog thing and bosses.
Thank you for pointing out what I couldn't realize was bothering me. How I didn't notice it was the line thickness, I don't know... The remains of the dog skeletons even have the same physics as HK, like when Mawlek explodes, or hitting Nosk's knight head. Did they go as far as using the same engine for a more accurate ripoff??
@@Khorn1996 As far as I know, Hollow Knight is Unity. So if they wanted to make ripping it off the easiest possible, they would use Unity as well. ...I'm a bit dumb. Is there a place that already says what engine Lotus is using?
Unity isn’t a unique engine that only hollow knight uses. It’s a very popular and easy to learn engine that lots of new developers use to make their games. Hell even some big studios use unity for games. So by saying because they use the same engine it’s ripping off hollow knight you’re showing you don’t know the basics of game developing. Engines don’t just grow on trees. They take lots of time and money to make something small indie studios don’t have which is why unity is extremely popular and useful for game development.
@@RadiantSharaShaymin unity is a extremely popular engine that’s easy to work with if you’re interested in developing games. Creating new engines is hard very expensive so it’s not something indie studios can do
You know, there's something about seeing a cheap knock-off of a good game that makes you really appreciate the talent and effort that went into the original. I never really thought about how the subtleties of Hollow Knight's animations gave it such a satisfying gamefeel until I watched this game using basically the same animations but without those little touches.
Honestly might get this just to see how similar it is? Like beyond the assets. The HUD looks a bit different and there's probably some cooler stuff. Of course it might just be the exact same but I'm actually fairly curious
Tbh I would legit watch someone buy and play this game just to see what it’s like. I’m really hoping it’s not a ripoff but it looks way too similar for me to risk it. Anyways if you're gonna play it you might want to post a couple gameplay videos as well?
I don't really have problem with game inspired by hollow knight, but this one is just too similar. Crossworn (to use the most obvious comparison) is clearly inspired by hk too, but not to that point. The most problematic part to me is the fact that Lotus Knight have a completely white color skin and black eyes, like the knight, whereas on the artwork she clearly have blue eyes and a more light-pink skin. They modified their character appearance on her sprites just too look more like hk.
Tbh Crowsworn looks sick. It’s obviously inspired by HK but doesn’t come nearly close enough to be called a copy. This does. I don’t see anything different from HK in this game. Right now Lotus Knight has gone has just gone way to far to be called inspired and instead is the plain copy that everyone says it is. I think it’s fine to see games inspired by HK, that just shows you just how good HK is. A blatant copy though? Condemn it. (Also, totally gonna play Crowsworn, it seriously looks awesome.)
The wall jump especially gets to me. My knowledge is comparably limited, though - but how many games have a wall jump that looks/works like that? I bet if you replaced Lotus' sprite with the Knight's sprite it would easily pass as a HK clip.
@@xelith6157 Theme, more "disgusting horror things melded together" monsters, and GUN. lot more bloodbourne than hk for sure. Also you can see the DMC inspiration because, wow, those animations are way too stylish.
Despite the story talking about leaves growing in infected and turning them into plants, i only see bone related enemies that has a paper style animation and their death animation reminds me of Skul. The enemies in the trailer seen to be no threat.
if you have an eye for animation or just art, you can tell that the enemy designs and everything else are a huge clash. The character and assets look clean and like hk but the enemies look like something from a 14 year old's custom game
Hiya, working game artist here. Just wanted to point out that the main character is made using traditional 2D animation, meaning every frame is hand drawn (most likely traced from the knight). The enemies, however, are rigged sprites, essentially pieces of an image that have been attached to a posable skeleton. This is a faster way of animating 2D, and can look terrible when not executed elegantly, which is why the enemies look so rigid and derpy. The fact that they couldn't even be bothered to keep the same animation style for their own creature concepts, and instead opted for the lazy approach, speaks volumes to me about the lack of originality and creative talent. This game is a cheap copy, and it sets a harmful precedent when you say it is okay for games like this to exist. This isn't a fan-made free game or a mod, this is theft. Just because this game likely won't be stealing much revenue, doesn't mean it is moral. It didn't just "take inspiration", it copied the story 1:1, traced the character animations, stole the core gameplay loop and even the fucking title. Art-wise, one of the hardest parts in the early stages of a game is establishing and maintaining an art style. Hollow Knight has one of the most unique art styles I have ever seen in any game, and they clearly took inspiration (actual inspiration and not theft) from other media they adored, to give us something unique and special. This game even has the nerve to try to steal the entire artistic vision, going as far as to trace some of the environment (the greenpath elements you pointed out). I get you don't want to start a hate train, but please stop sitting on the fence and start disapproving of these unethical practices. It is NOT okay for games like this to exist.
the art problem pisses me off really, art style is one of the top three most important things in a game along with gameplay and story if you mess up the art style than no one will play the game because even if it has hollow knight level gameplay hitboxes will be hard to recognize and there will be no immersion.
Also crazy how the player and enemy art/animation styles are so different. Almost like one was heavily referenced while the other was made from scratch.. 🤨
This is my main concern as well. The main character is drawn by hand but the enemy looks like it was made by Unity, plus both have different animation frames
I might have to get this game just so that I can peak at the code. I have a sneaking suspicion that it'll have some similarities under-the-hood as well lol
HK is code generated based...so if they used the same plugins in unity...well te generated code will be 100% the same. Making a game like HK is very simple regarding to the code, they is not a ton of code really, that would explain why 2 non game designers nor programers dudes built this great game in 2 yrs or so
tbf in regards to the story, a lot of metroidvanias pull the plague/illness zombie thing bc it's the most convenient justification for a lot of enemies being hostile towards you. hk was far from the first to do it. regardless of how derivative it is, i wish the dev a good learning experience from this if anything :)
Yeah the plague/illness/blight is a really normal and in my opinion good metroidvania plot but then you can also have many variations on that point and the description here suggests a plot very similar to HK (an example of a plot which is also a plague but instead turns things into undead with warped desires is Ender Lillies Quietus of the Knight)
I call it "metroid fusion síndrome" , that game in particular feature a virus that mimics the creatures it absorbs, i find it the most primitive example of "hostile infection" that a lot of metroidvanias do.
Not only that, but a backstory where efforts were taken to seal away the plague also helps to justify why so many paths are blocked of at the start thus necessitating the player's need to find keys and abilities to unlock or circumvent those obstacles.
For me it seemed ok with the melee atacks brcause they are pretty standart animations ngl but the death animation and the lore were too much cntrl c cntrl v + flower
I disagree. The attack animation is such a copy of HK and is actually pretty unique. The very "snappy" nature of the attacks and even the slight kickback with standing attack isn't something you see in many games. It's identical.
Story-wise I don’t mind the fact that it’s almost the same as Hollow Knight. Ender Lillies is another metroidvania that also follows that type of story, yet I still really enjoyed it. But Ender Lillies still had a super unique art style and different combat, which is something I think this game needs to have as well.
Indeed, it was the death animation that sealed the feeling as a copy to me, the story is perfectly fine and so is the artstyle, it’s the animation assets I’m 100% sure the reused
@@helo7690 Your probably right just my opinion Really though the bosses feel so stagnant and fluidless. The combat just feels like I'm waiting for a red light to turn green y'know
What i find really suspicious about the gameplay Trailer and images on Steam is that the two HUD bars never change even when the character seems to die, theres also only like five enemies that appear and they don't seem to have any real Animations unlike the Girl who looks so smooth and different from the Enemies i almost think it's just a resprite of the knight edited into a different atmosphere. Then there is the words in the Trailer that tell you about the game and two are just dangerous and deadly showing already known enemies and the Girl dying in a complete copy of the Knight's death animation. I personally think this is just a scam trying to jump on Hollow Knights fame with similar graphics and familiar mechanics. At least Crowsworn had more to show than enemies animated in powerpoint, a complete copy of sprites and Animations, and at least tried to adapt and change into an own identity than this complete ripoff.
I love how none of the art style meshes well with the rest, like how the enemies look like something out of a mobile game while the boss and the player looked like something out of a bad kid’s cartoon, and the background looks like they traced over textures from Hollow Knight
I'm hoping the people who made it are actually just trying things out, like getting heavy inspiration but I don't think they should be profiting off of a 'copy'. Like do it for fun and experience with coding and design.
I'm not sure how much marketing they're putting into it. If they were just experimenting I'd expect them to release a prototype on itchio or something, but they set up a whole steam page which makes me think otherwise.
I mean, if they come up with their own distinct lore then I think it's probably fine, but if even the plot is just a reskin of Hollow Knight's, then there's where the line should probably be drawn.
@le Zanji🇷🇺 well that depends on how much is reskinned. Given the plot synopsis given, it's a bit too derivative for my tastes in this case, but if it pushed itself a bit further out, I wouldn't mind using a similar art style for a game using a similar mechanics list. If you borrowed the mechanics list, and are using different art with a similar style, then all you need to do is put a tag noting "inspired by X", and I see no problem. They seem to need to work out a fully unique story first, but after that, if they were to add "inspired by Hollow Knight", I would have no complaints (you know, assuming they fixed the robot designs.)
@le Zanji🇷🇺 they didn't literally steal the art, they used the same style with their own new sprites. Now the robots clearly need redrawn before they fit the rest of the art, or the rest of the art needs redrawn to fit the robots, pick your poison, but I'm not gonna get angry at a game for using Mario run and jump on enemy to get kills mechanics on a platformer, and using a similar art style to go with it. That's just an homage to a series. The issue is when you add nothing after. Example: if instead of making new characters, the afformentioned theoretical platformer literally grabbed the Mario sprites from a recent game, along with all the block and enemy sprites, and then claimed it as a different set of characters. It'd be especially blatant if the level design is copied verbatim. We don't have a good enough view of this one to see if it has different level sets in some areas, just some similarities. Now since they seem to have also done the bare minimum homework change technique on the plot, that's what pushes it past a Hollow Knight homage/ attempt to make a HK into a subgenre of game, into just being a copy.
This does really make you appreciate how good it feels that the platforms in HK are slightly bouncy, so that it feels more realistic for hanging platforms. The lotus knight platforms are completely static which feels a bit weird. I do really like the increased spike pogos, it would be great as a HK custom map
Honestly though, the enemies that are supposedly original look out of place. They don't belong. They're not of the same quality, even. I have always detested people entirely copying other creations, and I think this crosses the line. There is no original premise. There is no, "based in the hollow knight universe" or "permission from Team Cherry." There is just, "We totally copied everything about the game and altered it slighty."
Wdym team cherry travelled through time, and then went back to re-create the masterpiece that is lotus knight year before it can even begin development.
Honestly, the levels themselves look kind of half-assed in places. If you look at 3:20, for example, the walls are literally just black squares, and the background is a distant blurry forest. The area shown right after is even worse. The background might as well be a blank wall. One of the most important parts of level design in a Metroidvania is making it feel like the levels are part of a cohesive world. There's no sense of that here. I know the game is still in development, but this is what they're showing off in the trailer. The whole point of a trailer is to show pieces of gameplay that give the audience an idea of what the finished product will look like.
I was so excited for lotus knight, but then team cherry decided to release their carbon copy of my most anticipated game delaying the release years. So upset with Team Cherry and the entire Hollow Knight fan base
Odd how inconsistent the animation is. The main character was traced frame by frame from Hollow night; The "rhinos" are animated in puppetry, with vector based sprites (that's why they look less blured in the colors edges); And others are clearly made in that GACHA app. It feels like the developer hired 2 or 3 low cost freelance animators and did not bother to keep artstyle consistent. And if so much inspiration was taken from Hollow Night (specially the tracing) they should put a "Inspired by Hollow Night" title card in the trailer, less be guilted of plagiarism.
I noticed this might be a Chinese knockoff due to the Steam page listing specifically those languages aside from English, as broken as it it is on the description page. I get the feeling that most sprites and backgrounds were just rotoscoped and drawn over the actual ones from Hollow Knight. If it is indeed a blatant Chinese knockoff, I doubt anyone can legally do anything about, unfortunately.
If "stinky tofu games" were really a Chinese company, hundreds of millions of people would consume and praise fake products, as they always do. This is because there is a culture in China that believes that a deceived person is wrong in any wrong case. In various cultural and historical debates, China has always cleverly disguised facts after winning with their large population at the forefront. With the development of the Internet, this behavior has turned into leaving numerous fake comments in modern times. Like those who are now defending "lotus knight" by forcefully denying numerous similarities.
Wow. The fact that people are trying to emulate the success of Hollow Knight is very funny and I think it won't get much recognition because Hollow Knight is already such a popular game and Lotus Knight won't get much notice.
It's not wrong that they want to base their game on the success of Hollow Knight. Many games did the same. The problem is that it's just copy paste with different sprites. Inspiration is okay, but inspiration means You make something own, unique, inspired by something else. It might be similar, but not the same.
@@Netsuki i don't get this paranoia of hollow knight fandom that every game even remotely close is a copy paste of hollow knight, by your standards, i could argue that hollow knight is just a copy paste of megaman
@@San-lh8us yea I don’t understand it either. Lotus Knight is copied from Hollow Knight very closely, but Crowsworn is simply following the metroidvania tradition of taking ideas and building it up with something new. Crowsworn looks really fun and I can’t wait for it.
If someone told me this was a mod I would believe it without a doubt. As a standalone game I think it actually is too intellectually close to hollow knight. Team Cherry if they wanted could probably send them a cease and desist.
A) no they couldn't, you can't copyright artistic style, only art assets, characters, very *specific* things B) Team Cherry would absolutely never do that. Going after another, smaller creator would cause them more harm than good, just from publicity alone
@@sams.975 No, they definitely can't copyright... But they can trademark, which is a whole other beast. I do agree though, it doesn't seem like something TC would do, they couldn't care less
If it wasn’t for the look of the enemies, I’d actually probably get it. The enemy design, movement and attacks just look really janky and all the fun combat I’m guessing won’t be anywhere.
Seems kinda like a boring version of hollow knight. Like, the background art is amazing, but it just doesn't seem like it would be fun to play since hollow knight already exists
One thing I noticed heavily during the whole trailer is, the health bar. It is always at 4 from 5 hearts, or atleast what SHOULD be the healthbar. But as the character dies, they are still at 4 hearts. So it seems a healthbar ain't a thing in this game other than to look cool
Someone posted the steam page in the hk discord the other day, and we spent like 2 hours laughing about how it was legit the exact same thing, the “dangerous” part was def our favorite lmaoo
This reminds me of that Cuphead clone people were talking about a few years ago. They were also using the old cartoon art style, and a lot of people were talking about that, but the real problem with that game was that the gameplay was the exact same. They got wizards as characters, they could have done anything with them, yet they still shot the same bullets the cuphead bros had. Even had the same jumping animation too. At least you could say they put in effort in their artstyle, 'cause holy crap, I'd be surprised if that lotus knight wasn't traced or at least heavily referenced. Hell, even the wall jumping animation seems incredibly similar. And like other people have pointed out, the fact they have thick outlines just like the knight while the enemies don't clearly sets them apart, other than the animation style for both being clearly different too. Even the DESIGN itself looks plagiarized from the knight, sure, it looks human, but the height, the flowing cape, being entirely white, two huge black dots as eyes... Yeah there's no way all of those details are a coincidence. And the story being practically the same is the icing on the cake. I also don't understand what's the point of telling us the whole story before we can play the game, why bother exploring it then, when we already know what happens? Definitely don't start a witch hunt because those tend to get really ugly, but yeah, this is a pretty shameless rip-off. And to think people were complaining about Crowsworn. xD
I think the thing that most bothers me about this is the fact that the animations that aren't a direct rip off of Hollow Knight are just so stiff. The way the enemies move vs the way the playable character has a bit more depth in movement makes it so clear that even the sprites were just directly stolen.
I have a sinking feeling they got the "Lotus" part of the title from Ender Lilies. They obviously got nice art direction, at least they could have made something that doesn't look overly similar. Look at Aeterna Noctis, it's essentially Hollow Knight + Ori but looks entirely different and makes every stage Path of Pain and every Boss Radiance
I just finished 100% aeterna noctis and man... Hollow Knight was child's play in compasiron. Insanity doesn't even begin to describe the late-game platforming and the optional end-game bosses :D
Ah, this is the kind of thing that always feels a little sad to me, because there *is* potential here. The art style is beautiful, and if you just took the setting and the character, fixed up the enemies to fit the game, you could totally make an interesting game with fun interactions, story, mechanics, all of it. It had some sort of potential. But it doesn't look, right now, like the game devs actually intend to do anything with that, which is super sad.
So I myself am pretty lenient on copy cats, bc they tend to produce very interesting results, just look at salt n sanctuary, it's very heavily invoking dark souls and even has its own blight Town area. But its only *inpsired* by DS. However just doing everything another game is doing and not changing a single thing about it asides the visuals is a lil bit yikes, if u know what I mean.
It doesn't even look like they changed the visuals much, just took each animation frame of the Knight and drew Lotus over it. Another comment pointed out that the line thicknesses aren't even consistent between Lotus and the enemies, and the enemies are more unique to their game... so there wasnt much to trace over, hence a different style. Maybe it's placeholder art...
I think it could be really cool if their sprites were used to make a skin for Hollow Knight, especially given that that seems to be more or less what the game is already regardless
I mean, if somebody wants to use their time and talent to copy something this closely, then cool, make stuff if you want. I want people to make more fun games. But I hope they aren't charging for this game because that just means that they're taking somebody else's ideas and work and profiting off of it.
I feel like the aesthetic they have here is an amazing start, I sincerely hope the animations are just placeholders for the trailer. Because this could be a cute little HK-inspired Metroidvania, like an Ouroboros of game design. Personally I'd change the character's expression to be lighter, or graceful. They're rigid like the Knight because of the heavily referencd animations I feel like they could piourette or something like that whilst they swing down, or as a general idea for the character, give them extra in between frames to give the idea of fluidity or grace. The reliance on tweening on the enemies makes it look amateurish, which I hope is just because its an early concept trailer. I don't think I'd pay for it with how it looks right now, but I think it could definitely be a promising game if they really try to polish it into their own take on the Hollow Knight philosophy
sadly, it seems as though this is not a passion project by a fan and is just a money grab. no personality is intended to be put into this game, and neither is effort. its a shady company that saw the popularity of someone elses game and wanted some of the profit for themselves its unlikely this is any kind of placeholder. the only reason its a trailer and not the finished game is probably because they havent finished ripping off all the areas yet, if they even do that much.
Giving a little too much benefit of the doubt to these scumbags. I’ll admit some backgrounds look good and are unique, but it’s not like they don’t know exactly what they are doing.
Chinese knockoffs often look very good i'll give them that xd But damn its sad to see so many epic artists in china limited to just working at cheap copies of something popular instead of putting their own stuf out.
@@thatrandonamedrandy they mean this game, yknow, that the video is about. idk if it's actually Chinese but its a very common thing for popular movies/media to get cheaply recreated by companies in china to try to profit off of the original work's success... very similar to what """lotus knight""" is doing here lol. So it's a joke/analogy if that's what confused u :)
New skip: if you use the flower dash ability on purple path right next to the flower estation, you can actually break the game wich will send you directly in the flower knight, then you just spam flower spirit until it dies and there you go.
4:08 I appreciate your politeness, but as a non native speaker I must say if they didn't find time to ask someone native to read through their texts, it shows the overall laziness of how the product was made.
Try haiku the robot. It was different enough that it is fully its own game but similar enough to scratch my HK itch. Its a bit shorter and not HK perfection but good enough for me to 100% achievements which included a 2nd no manual heal (bench only) run for the only missable one . Took me 11h for all
@@OrangeIncarnate "A bit shorter" is a understatement lol. I just beat it 100% yesterday and it took just under 10hrs. However, Haiku a good game and I would definitely recommend getting it on sale! Honestly, Hollow Knight's price spoiled me lol. Despite how great Dread is, I still felt jipped cause I beat it 100% in like 14hrs compared to the 45hrs hollow knight took without even counting the pantheon stuff
The story being similar is saddening, I had hope until then 😂 This to me sounded like “I bet I can make a new hollow knight game before Silksong comes out” and, well, you did it, somewhat
1:53 couldve defenitly differentieted(like a change in pogoing or bounce as a Stab) but If that mechanic works and adds to the game again it's not that bad, maybe could've had something else but not terrible.
This is a friendly reminder that while the scumminess of ripping off popular media is debatable, the scumminess of making the above illegal is not. The same rulings that would, say, remove this game from the Steam storefront can and will also be leveraged by megacorporations to crush small creative projects uncontested! Consumer protections are for everyone, not just the people using them the right way. If you think stinkytofu is uncool for doing this, vote with your money to not support them, and vote with your ballot to defend their right to try.
@@annikapannika4681 despite it being a rip off we need to support the freedom to make these kinds of things so corporations don't eliminate creative indie studios.
@@annikapannika4681 Agree with Azzy here. Its bad. Like really bad, its more than clear that this is a complete clone/rip off. However, they have done the bare minimum to make it DIFFERENT enough to avoid being sued. And what the above comment is saying, is don't make petitions or such to get StinkyTofu in trouble with the law or to make what they've done 'illegal'. As there are many small indie dev's who borrow ideas or use other games for references and it's a slippery slope. We already know how hard Nintendo comes down. If StinkyTofu could get sued for this, then think about every single Monster Catcher game or mechanic that could just be wiped out in theory. That would just be the tip of the iceberg. Many small time dev's go on to create something in homage to as a way of getting started before they grow and eventually create their Magnum Opus. Don't buy the game if you feel like its just a shoddy rip off (which we can see it is). But allow them a World where shoddy rip offs are still legal, as many games will have elements of another game inside it. If we go over StinkyTofu, companies will then go after other games that simply have 'elements' and that's going to lead to a bad time for all.
In this case, it's probably not taking any money from Team Cherry. No one is going to buy this instead of buying Silksong. That said, Team Cherry could probably sue for royalties or something.
It’s too bad, this style and mood is actually pretty cool. If they just tried to come up with unique ideas past that, it might be a fun time.
The style and mood are good because it’s literally Ctrl C Ctrl V’d Hollow Knight lmao
@@kaizuhrrx1551 Honestly, even if this was just a reskin it would still be a lot of work. Don't underestimate what they have done, you won't find anything close to that in Hollow knight.
Of course it would maybe be more fair to market it as a reskin of Hollow knight, but we don't quite know yet what they intend to do with the game.
I agree, the artstyle was really great and in a good hollow knightey style without being a complete rip-off, so it seems like the few original things they have could be pretty good, let's hope there's more to the game than the trailer and descriptions show
just play it until silk song is out
then you can dump on it all you want
@@kaizuhrrx1551 No it isn't lol. The eastern motifs are very distinctive and unlike anything in HK. Unless this is stolen from somewhere else as well, it does make me think they could have something more interesting if they didn't stick so close to the HK mold otherwise.
Another red flag about the game you didn't mention is the inconsistency with the artstyle. The character and the backgrounds look exactly like hollow knight, but the enemies look like they're from a completely different game.
Whoa is that the legendary BlueMoth698?!
@@Xedlord why hello there
@@bluemoth6983 You are Blue.
Another big one, the enemies' animations look tweened, so anything that isn't ripped off is gonna look worse.
Especially the boss, who looks like it came out of gacha life
Something I noticed is that some of the enemies look like they were made in Gatcha Life
I noticed that too 😭 like omg it's so bad
Same
Especially that boss, looks like they just ripped them out of Gatcha Life
oh god not gacha life
that was my first thought 😭
aside from being a HK clone, its very clear that theres a style problem with this game, take the main character and the enemies as an example, the main character has bold outlines while the enemies has thin outlines, this happens with the background as well, thats why the spikes looks so "out of place".
Also the main character's moves are hand-drawn, and enemies' animations are made with puppetry animation technique.
I still like the way the game looks (I'm a huge fan of grayscale artstyle), but geez, it could be SO much better....
Only time I can think of this in HK is the Obble enemy
I gotta agree with you tbh
The enemies also just look incorrect. It’s almost as if they took a bunch of PNGS and “animated” them. It’s just ugly.
@@AJ-vr9hf they tried to look like the art style is different but now they just look ugly 😶
Man, I can't believe Team Cherry copied Lotus Knight. So disappointed.
Yeah what copycats
I was really upset when i discovered that so sad
Hollow knight so unoriginal smh.
Bruh what you talking about Lotus knight is bread
I have eternally lost faith in team cherry
I find the funniest part about this is that when it shows the "knight" of this game dying, the health bar is the exact same as it was in other scenes, showing that they didn't even bother trying to make the "knight" take damage and show that damage being taken away from the health bar. Just a funny detail.
The death animation was the last drop for me, I was like: "Well, this looks really similar to Hollow Knight, maybe they can redeem themselves by making something ne-... **exactly the same death animation from HK** ...yeah this is bad".
Especially because they have a flower girl, they could do so much with that. Like she could wilt away into nothing or something like that, why did it *need* to be the void explosion?
hahaha
Two oneshot profile encounters in one day I don't understand my luck
@@determinedhelicopter2948 I would call it unluck.
@@impossiblehanley2732 why, i love oneshot
This game is either going to look completely different when it comes out, or it's not going to come out at all. That trailer looks less like a game and more like a proof of concept. The sprites that aren't just traced over from Hollow Knight look and animate like scribblenauts characters.
Also, I can't help but notice that the hud stays exactly the same during the whole trailer, even during the shot where the player dies. You know, where the health bar should be empty? (Unless you're trying to tell me that neither of those two meters are health bars, in which case.... I don't believe you?)
All that plus the broken english and way too similar story and title make me think of crappy mobile games that try and make you think they're other games, only to download them and realize your mistake.
Maybe they will actually make something different out of it, but I doubt it.
Thanks for noticing that! I was astonished by the visuals and animations of characters that I've completely didn't notice that "apparent" GUI is not changing through the entire trailer. It feels like this GUI was posted just to look of it, but it is completely just an images.
I also thought that it's a showcase of their abilities. But it's whole trailer for a game that has already release date and steam page. It's not early development like, You can see how Ori and the Blind Forest looked before it became what it is now. Such things You don't show for public, but make the game when You sculpted something unique. I really doubt they want to make something different, but would be nice if they do. Maybe if they get convinced that they could make great game if they just make some good idea, then they do change it, but I think it's a fat chance...
Yeah the trailer straight up looks like a compilation of mockups
Yeah this thing looks like a college project gone wrong
Yes
I've seen a lot of games get wrongfully accused of being 'Hollow Knight clones'. But this one absolutely deserves that moniker.
Yup this one does for sure. Other games, nah. I love HK don't get me wrong it's probably my fav game ever. But at the end of the day, it's a game, in a category of games. This game is obviously a copy, but when people say Ori copied HK I'm like bro, maybe they took a feature from HK but compare the 2 man lol. Every game ever can be called a copy, in the end...
HK if you strip it down, is just a copy of different games put together. Maps aren't unique to HK, neither are charms, weapon upgrades. It's the combination and innovation of how they combined it that makes it unique. Dream nail for example seems very unique, but if you think about it, it's just a mind reading/entering mechanic. Mind entering is basically just hacking. It's hacking in the bug world, but the dream nail itself and the way they did it is unique. But the idea of mind reading isn't like innovation beyond our world haha.
So people gotta chill with the craziness of every game is a HK copy because they have this! It's okay to copy their charm system honestly, it's a good system. If I played a game with 40 charms but all of them were completely different and unique interacting with their world in a different and unique way that HK didn't do... I'm not gonna say ''you copied HK'', that's the difference between inspired and plagiarism. And I think a lot of HK lovers jump to plagiarism instead of just, inspired.
But yeh this game, obviously a total rip off lol.
For me, the more damning thing for this that pushes it past just "derivation" and into more "copying" is the fact that, with the similarities already pointed out, even the title screen is similar.
They named it "Lotus Knight" in a font eerily similar to Hollow Knight's with a character that looks like a flower version the main character from Hollow Knight.
If it was called "The Adventure of the Lotus Girl", it immediately starts to separate itself and gives it more room to breathe as a game inspired by Hollow Knight
I don't really like that title, Lotus Knight just kinda rolls off the tongue better. But I see what you mean, they should at least have a different font or something.
i think Noble Lotus would make for a good name instead of Lotus Knight
@@JustZal yea I agree.
@@JustZal or maybe Princess From a Lotus
Or just “The Lotus”
Yikes, the artist has so much talent. It would be completely fine if they didn’t rip so many animations/gameplay features. The artstyle isn’t team cherry’s, but their animations are.
The artist is probably hired by the person who actually nade the game and has no say in how the rst if the game is made
@@Bram_Duin yeah, kind of a waste of talent. Very good art though
Art looks shit imo
@@t.m.2415 What are you talking about this looks legit really good.
I know right?
I love the fact the enemies look like they don't even belong in this game because of the radically different outline thickness between the main character and the enemies.
In general the enemies are all over the place and don't fit into a cohesive picture. In Hollow Knight you lived in a world inhabited by bugs. So, your enemies were bugs. But what's going on here? Where are we and why are there skeleton dogs and evil ballerina dolls trying to fight us?
I think this is because they probably just traced the frames for the Knight's animations and then made the enemies on their own and didn't consider outline thickness. Also with them not making sense in the game, absolutely agreed on that I have no idea why they wrote game lore (as in wrote I mean tweaked a few things about Hollow Knight's lore) about how people got infected by a plague and turned into plants and then you proceed to fight anything but plants.
it does feel out of place. i don't like it either.
Yeah , like why tf is there a six eyed rhino skeleton in a room ? Lmao 😂
I feel like they made it with a mix of rented or stolen assets, I kinda wonder if everything else was a copy paste too, just from something unrecognizable to us. The entire thing is a scrapebook, nothings original.
Lotus Knight: Dude i forgot my homework at home, can i use yours?
Hollow Knight: Shure , just dont do the same thing and change up a little bit
Lotus Knight:
This is actually incredibly funny to me lmao
I bless you with my 69th like
Hollow Knight vs. Lotus Knight = Naruto vs. Naburo
This doesn't look to me like they just used Hollow Knight as a reference. This looks like they painted their own art over Hollow Knight frame-by-frame. Same with the environment; it looks like they took Hollow Knight tiling and painted over it
Yeah, it really feels like a big HK reskin pack...
@@RadiantSharaShaymin and a good one at that! These people definitely have enough talent to do something great, and yet they use it to make an almost copy of hollow knight. The spike sprite (which, oddly, there’s only one of) looks like a scaled down version of the one from hollow knight.
@@Periwinkleaccount yeah I agree. If this was a mod or fan game then this would’ve 100% been a little more better.
@@Periwinkleaccount not really, did you see the animations from the original enemies?
@@Periwinkleaccount tbh, it depends if they did the sprites or the enemies because wow, those enemies look shitty designed.
At some point, it stops being an inspiration and turns into plagiarism.
These devs are asking for Team Cherry to sue them into oblivion.
Or a cease and desist, at the very least.
I really don't think Team Cherry will do that even if they can
I don't think they can sue them at all and even if they could team cherry won't bother
@Travis Newsome lol? are you pretending this isnt plagiarism ? imma creat a yellow creature called fikachu and it will look identical to a certain yellow mascot. whats the problem ?
@Travis Newsome you're definitely not a lawyer if you think fikachu wouldn't be plagiarism 😂
Unfortunately I bet even if they'd wanted to they couldn't do it. Not because they don't have a case. But they'd have to make a HARD case. Even if they traced the Hollow Knight to help make their char, there's still the cheap enemy sprites which is lil doubt homemade. As long as there's no true stolen assets or anything these cases are so hard to prove and so expensive.
Cease and desist to scare them maybe yeah. Might even be in their best interest if the internet doesn't get pissy about that. I mean they did steal a lot but heck maybe they'll be able to spend a story on how they were just fans making an inspirational game out of looooooove.
Pretty scary stuff if I was Team Cherry I'd just let them set on their cheap ass game.
any whoo I'm just some random guy on the internet who read waaay to much law shit on internet and now likes to say. Well you see it depends.......
It's so weird to me how vastly different the main character looks to the enemies. Like one of them doesn't belong. The main character has thick black lines around them, just like in Hollow Knight, but in Hollow Knight all the enemies had that too. Here the enemies don't have that.
The shadows on the enemies are also very different to the rest
Maybe they took them from somewhere
Yeah, not to mention the main character is animated frame by frame, while the enemies are all very clearly done using tweens.
@@FlamingFoxProd wtf is a tweet
@@EvilSantaTheTrue I think they meants tween, as in motion tweening
The thing I find interesting about this is that the animations and characters that aren’t directly translated from hollow knight look very off compared to the stuff that is, like the big panda thing with the trident looks like it belongs in a different game and the way that the enemies are animated looks a lot more interpolated and like it’s animated on a rig where the player character just like the knight is animated at 12 FPS (I think I’m not a professional so take this with just a side dish of salt) but my point being the game seems to be in conflict with itself.
Someone else pointed out the line thickness being very different... I don't know how they achieved that and didnt at least notice something was off. But they did.
In fairness, I didnt realize it was the line until I'd read that, but still. I could tell something was different.
It definitely feels like two different art styles clashing against one another
Was thinking the same thing. The fluid motions of the Knight do not at all match the animations of the enemies, which are much more awkward and more obviously puppeted. And the art styles definitely don’t match.
conflicting art styles show how disorganized the artists are with each other (or it's traced but idk)
@@goldenfennekin I think in this case it’s traced since they look exactly like the Knight. Most likely everything else was animated by the developer, but the PC was traced.
Hi there, it might interest you that the devs changed the description after people called them out on the similarity in the story. It now says: A long, long time ago, there was a kingdom that was not recorded inside any literature.
It is said that the king married a princess from the East, and after the arrival of this Eastern princess, strange things began to happen, creatures grew leaves and be controlled... Then what happened no one knows, only that the kingdom just disappeared.
Also, the developer has no website that can be found via google when you use English and with the name "Stinky Tofu Games" it's pretty obvious, this is a Chinese rip-off company 🙃
As if the problem was the fucking description. I have already flagged the game.
Of course its chinese
_The Chinese are back at is again_
@@r3ll282 it's always the chinese
How did you know it’s Chinese?
What's weird is that the enemies have a different art style from the main character; for example, the lines aren't as thick. The animations for them also feel really stiff.
I honestly love you.
Someone else said they're probably just parts that were rigged to a skeleton instead of done in actual animation like the player character. Usually done to speed up production, but also way worse to look at if it's not done right. Think of it like seeing an animated CGI model in an otherwise entirely 2D TV show (Looking at you, Eternatus in Pokemon Journeys). It just looks plain ugly and out of place.
@@azoman7407 the only thing they cant copy is Hollow Knights bank account. Theyre rich, these developers are NOT.
was about to point that out, the artstyle looks completely out of place and it comes off as every lazy looking chinese knock off. The way the lineart looks, looks like they had traced it from something else and lazily put it together for animation
@@IsraelLlerena it's been said Hollow Knight was done on a shoestring budget, the three devs just cared a lot and worked nonstop
Aside from the obvious game issues, the windows movie maker scene transitions with default text animations slamming singular half-related words into our faces is probably my favorite part of the whole trailer. FIGHT. DEADLY. WISHLIST (now). Super clean, big fan
This is honestly a common thing if you bother to look into video game history, the really successful ones will get a bunch of clones.
You just don’t hear about it very often because the original articles are the ones that beat the test of time, and all the imitations get dunked on and forgotten.
Like the billion super mario and mario kart clones over the years. Or the smash bros clones released lately 🤣
In the art world, there's a line between using a reference and tracing
This game crosses that, seemingly shamelessly
Even then, when people trace right, they at least try to add a spin to it, make it unique, this is literally "you can copy my homework, just don't let the teacher know you did"
yeah, if it was "inspired by" and not "literally traced" it would be better. I great example of "inspired by" is Fran Bow and Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Both games have the same theme, but the art style is totally different. Both games are great tho!
@@Ehh0.0 It's not literally traced though, they drew the same poses but it's not traced.
@@Ehh0.0 Another good example is how Crowsworn seems to have used Hollowknight and Bloodborne as references. Using two different games as references is completely different from copying one and trying to hide it with a different colour pallet.
Also, while tracing is good for practice. You definitely shouldn't claim that it's your own orginal art
of all things, the fact that "Lotus Knight" is in almost the exact same font as Hollow Knight is in their page artwork is what really sets it off as a clone lmao
And the animation, especially dying. And how the wall jump works. And the forgotten kingdom that the king and his knights sacrificed so much to save. And the physic of enemy remains. (Like Mawlek/Nosk's Knight head after dying)
Have you heard of the prequel to this? I think it's called hungry lotus. Maybe we'll get a sequel after a few centuries. They could call it lotusong
It feels so weird you got the smooth animations that were copied to look like hollow knight but then the enemies move like they were an early newgrounds animation or something along those line.
thats becouse the lotus girl was made using traditional 2D animation (the same team cherry used in the whole hollow knight game) wich means that every frame is hand drawn
BUT the enemies were made using rigged sprites, essentially pieces of an image that have been attached to a posable skeleton. This is a faster and lazier way to do it but it can look horribly bad and robotic if it's not executed in a good way
I think stylistically, their PC feels alot less like any of the other art in this trailer, and more like that in hollow knight. the lines are thicker, closer to the lines of the knight, rather than the thinner lines of the enemy dog thing and bosses.
Thank you for pointing out what I couldn't realize was bothering me. How I didn't notice it was the line thickness, I don't know...
The remains of the dog skeletons even have the same physics as HK, like when Mawlek explodes, or hitting Nosk's knight head. Did they go as far as using the same engine for a more accurate ripoff??
@@RadiantSharaShaymin Doesn't HK use Unity though?
@@Khorn1996 As far as I know, Hollow Knight is Unity. So if they wanted to make ripping it off the easiest possible, they would use Unity as well.
...I'm a bit dumb. Is there a place that already says what engine Lotus is using?
Unity isn’t a unique engine that only hollow knight uses. It’s a very popular and easy to learn engine that lots of new developers use to make their games. Hell even some big studios use unity for games.
So by saying because they use the same engine it’s ripping off hollow knight you’re showing you don’t know the basics of game developing. Engines don’t just grow on trees. They take lots of time and money to make something small indie studios don’t have which is why unity is extremely popular and useful for game development.
@@RadiantSharaShaymin unity is a extremely popular engine that’s easy to work with if you’re interested in developing games. Creating new engines is hard very expensive so it’s not something indie studios can do
You know, there's something about seeing a cheap knock-off of a good game that makes you really appreciate the talent and effort that went into the original. I never really thought about how the subtleties of Hollow Knight's animations gave it such a satisfying gamefeel until I watched this game using basically the same animations but without those little touches.
Honestly might get this just to see how similar it is? Like beyond the assets. The HUD looks a bit different and there's probably some cooler stuff. Of course it might just be the exact same but I'm actually fairly curious
From the trailer I doubt it's the "exact same". It obviously is trying to go in another direction with some of the gameplay.
Tbh I would legit watch someone buy and play this game just to see what it’s like. I’m really hoping it’s not a ripoff but it looks way too similar for me to risk it.
Anyways if you're gonna play it you might want to post a couple gameplay videos as well?
I don't really have problem with game inspired by hollow knight, but this one is just too similar. Crossworn (to use the most obvious comparison) is clearly inspired by hk too, but not to that point. The most problematic part to me is the fact that Lotus Knight have a completely white color skin and black eyes, like the knight, whereas on the artwork she clearly have blue eyes and a more light-pink skin. They modified their character appearance on her sprites just too look more like hk.
Tbh Crowsworn looks sick. It’s obviously inspired by HK but doesn’t come nearly close enough to be called a copy. This does. I don’t see anything different from HK in this game. Right now Lotus Knight has gone has just gone way to far to be called inspired and instead is the plain copy that everyone says it is.
I think it’s fine to see games inspired by HK, that just shows you just how good HK is. A blatant copy though? Condemn it.
(Also, totally gonna play Crowsworn, it seriously looks awesome.)
The wall jump especially gets to me. My knowledge is comparably limited, though - but how many games have a wall jump that looks/works like that? I bet if you replaced Lotus' sprite with the Knight's sprite it would easily pass as a HK clip.
Crowsworn seems much more similar to something like bloodborne, considering its really fancy attack animations, two syllable name and *gun*
@@godricktheminecrafted3113 Lmao what
@@xelith6157 Theme, more "disgusting horror things melded together" monsters, and GUN. lot more bloodbourne than hk for sure. Also you can see the DMC inspiration because, wow, those animations are way too stylish.
Despite the story talking about leaves growing in infected and turning them into plants, i only see bone related enemies that has a paper style animation and their death animation reminds me of Skul. The enemies in the trailer seen to be no threat.
if you have an eye for animation or just art, you can tell that the enemy designs and everything else are a huge clash. The character and assets look clean and like hk but the enemies look like something from a 14 year old's custom game
Ok glad I'm not the only one who saw that
You don't even need an eye for art, you just need an eye.
Yeah the last enemy look like a gatcha pre made puppet 🫣
I swear if this game will cost more than hollow knight I will literally die of laughter.
For the enemies, the bit they chose not to reference HKs animation, they look animate like a bunch of jiggly bones glued together.
Hiya, working game artist here. Just wanted to point out that the main character is made using traditional 2D animation, meaning every frame is hand drawn (most likely traced from the knight). The enemies, however, are rigged sprites, essentially pieces of an image that have been attached to a posable skeleton. This is a faster way of animating 2D, and can look terrible when not executed elegantly, which is why the enemies look so rigid and derpy. The fact that they couldn't even be bothered to keep the same animation style for their own creature concepts, and instead opted for the lazy approach, speaks volumes to me about the lack of originality and creative talent.
This game is a cheap copy, and it sets a harmful precedent when you say it is okay for games like this to exist. This isn't a fan-made free game or a mod, this is theft. Just because this game likely won't be stealing much revenue, doesn't mean it is moral. It didn't just "take inspiration", it copied the story 1:1, traced the character animations, stole the core gameplay loop and even the fucking title. Art-wise, one of the hardest parts in the early stages of a game is establishing and maintaining an art style. Hollow Knight has one of the most unique art styles I have ever seen in any game, and they clearly took inspiration (actual inspiration and not theft) from other media they adored, to give us something unique and special. This game even has the nerve to try to steal the entire artistic vision, going as far as to trace some of the environment (the greenpath elements you pointed out).
I get you don't want to start a hate train, but please stop sitting on the fence and start disapproving of these unethical practices. It is NOT okay for games like this to exist.
if it was free and pointed out it was a hollow knight fangame this would be fine but they just have to say its original. its sad, really.
the art problem pisses me off really, art style is one of the top three most important things in a game along with gameplay and story if you mess up the art style than no one will play the game because even if it has hollow knight level gameplay hitboxes will be hard to recognize and there will be no immersion.
@Favesoe bit late?
@@theomnibenevolence not very
The character even moves exactly the same in terms of speed jump height fall speed and everything it’s so shameless
Also crazy how the player and enemy art/animation styles are so different. Almost like one was heavily referenced while the other was made from scratch.. 🤨
Agreed. The enemies look like their from a completely different game compared with the lotus knight.
This is my main concern as well. The main character is drawn by hand but the enemy looks like it was made by Unity, plus both have different animation frames
"With great legends always comes a horrible deceiver"
I might have to get this game just so that I can peak at the code. I have a sneaking suspicion that it'll have some similarities under-the-hood as well lol
HK is code generated based...so if they used the same plugins in unity...well te generated code will be 100% the same.
Making a game like HK is very simple regarding to the code, they is not a ton of code really, that would explain why 2 non game designers nor programers dudes built this great game in 2 yrs or so
You can just download the cracked version, this game does not deswrve your money
tbf in regards to the story, a lot of metroidvanias pull the plague/illness zombie thing bc it's the most convenient justification for a lot of enemies being hostile towards you. hk was far from the first to do it.
regardless of how derivative it is, i wish the dev a good learning experience from this if anything :)
Yeah the plague/illness/blight is a really normal and in my opinion good metroidvania plot but then you can also have many variations on that point and the description here suggests a plot very similar to HK (an example of a plot which is also a plague but instead turns things into undead with warped desires is Ender Lillies Quietus of the Knight)
I call it "metroid fusion síndrome" , that game in particular feature a virus that mimics the creatures it absorbs, i find it the most primitive example of "hostile infection" that a lot of metroidvanias do.
Agreed, but the similarities are just too many and this adds to them.
Not only that, but a backstory where efforts were taken to seal away the plague also helps to justify why so many paths are blocked of at the start thus necessitating the player's need to find keys and abilities to unlock or circumvent those obstacles.
"Mom, can I get Hollow Knight?" "We have Hollow Knight at home." The Hollow Knight at home:
For me it seemed ok with the melee atacks brcause they are pretty standart animations ngl but the death animation and the lore were too much cntrl c cntrl v + flower
what did 'o' ever do to you
ctrl*
I disagree. The attack animation is such a copy of HK and is actually pretty unique. The very "snappy" nature of the attacks and even the slight kickback with standing attack isn't something you see in many games. It's identical.
@@xSayPleasex I agree to you. I think even the flower idea didn't come from them. All I see is Delicate Flower turned into a character like bruh...
Story-wise I don’t mind the fact that it’s almost the same as Hollow Knight. Ender Lillies is another metroidvania that also follows that type of story, yet I still really enjoyed it. But Ender Lillies still had a super unique art style and different combat, which is something I think this game needs to have as well.
Indeed, it was the death animation that sealed the feeling as a copy to me, the story is perfectly fine and so is the artstyle, it’s the animation assets I’m 100% sure the reused
Nah ender lillies combat sucks
nah I think ender lilies combat was great and unique, imo it was pretty fun
And Ender Lillies combat system is similar to Bloodstained actually.
@@helo7690
Your probably right just my opinion
Really though the bosses feel so stagnant and fluidless. The combat just feels like I'm waiting for a red light to turn green y'know
This literally looks like it could be some crazy mod for hollow knight. Like I could see this just being the base game with a new coat of paint.
What i find really suspicious about the gameplay Trailer and images on Steam is that the two HUD bars never change even when the character seems to die, theres also only like five enemies that appear and they don't seem to have any real Animations unlike the Girl who looks so smooth and different from the Enemies i almost think it's just a resprite of the knight edited into a different atmosphere. Then there is the words in the Trailer that tell you about the game and two are just dangerous and deadly showing already known enemies and the Girl dying in a complete copy of the Knight's death animation. I personally think this is just a scam trying to jump on Hollow Knights fame with similar graphics and familiar mechanics. At least Crowsworn had more to show than enemies animated in powerpoint, a complete copy of sprites and Animations, and at least tried to adapt and change into an own identity than this complete ripoff.
I love how none of the art style meshes well with the rest, like how the enemies look like something out of a mobile game while the boss and the player looked like something out of a bad kid’s cartoon, and the background looks like they traced over textures from Hollow Knight
It’s a shame they couldn’t just copy hollow knights bosses and enemies am I right? /j
The boss looks like something from gatcha life, like I'm 99% they used it for the boss
Man, Lotus Knight: Linensong is going to come out before Silksong
I'm hoping the people who made it are actually just trying things out, like getting heavy inspiration but I don't think they should be profiting off of a 'copy'.
Like do it for fun and experience with coding and design.
And then it comes out for 50 dollars 💀
I'm not sure how much marketing they're putting into it. If they were just experimenting I'd expect them to release a prototype on itchio or something, but they set up a whole steam page which makes me think otherwise.
I mean, if they come up with their own distinct lore then I think it's probably fine, but if even the plot is just a reskin of Hollow Knight's, then there's where the line should probably be drawn.
@le Zanji🇷🇺 well that depends on how much is reskinned. Given the plot synopsis given, it's a bit too derivative for my tastes in this case, but if it pushed itself a bit further out, I wouldn't mind using a similar art style for a game using a similar mechanics list. If you borrowed the mechanics list, and are using different art with a similar style, then all you need to do is put a tag noting "inspired by X", and I see no problem. They seem to need to work out a fully unique story first, but after that, if they were to add "inspired by Hollow Knight", I would have no complaints (you know, assuming they fixed the robot designs.)
@le Zanji🇷🇺 they didn't literally steal the art, they used the same style with their own new sprites. Now the robots clearly need redrawn before they fit the rest of the art, or the rest of the art needs redrawn to fit the robots, pick your poison, but I'm not gonna get angry at a game for using Mario run and jump on enemy to get kills mechanics on a platformer, and using a similar art style to go with it. That's just an homage to a series. The issue is when you add nothing after. Example: if instead of making new characters, the afformentioned theoretical platformer literally grabbed the Mario sprites from a recent game, along with all the block and enemy sprites, and then claimed it as a different set of characters. It'd be especially blatant if the level design is copied verbatim. We don't have a good enough view of this one to see if it has different level sets in some areas, just some similarities. Now since they seem to have also done the bare minimum homework change technique on the plot, that's what pushes it past a Hollow Knight homage/ attempt to make a HK into a subgenre of game, into just being a copy.
This does really make you appreciate how good it feels that the platforms in HK are slightly bouncy, so that it feels more realistic for hanging platforms. The lotus knight platforms are completely static which feels a bit weird. I do really like the increased spike pogos, it would be great as a HK custom map
3:42 similar games you played hollow knight 585 hours on record
Honestly though, the enemies that are supposedly original look out of place. They don't belong. They're not of the same quality, even. I have always detested people entirely copying other creations, and I think this crosses the line.
There is no original premise. There is no, "based in the hollow knight universe" or "permission from Team Cherry." There is just, "We totally copied everything about the game and altered it slighty."
Wdym team cherry travelled through time, and then went back to re-create the masterpiece that is lotus knight year before it can even begin development.
Obviously
I cannot lie her design looks absolutely adorable
Honestly, the levels themselves look kind of half-assed in places. If you look at 3:20, for example, the walls are literally just black squares, and the background is a distant blurry forest. The area shown right after is even worse. The background might as well be a blank wall. One of the most important parts of level design in a Metroidvania is making it feel like the levels are part of a cohesive world. There's no sense of that here. I know the game is still in development, but this is what they're showing off in the trailer. The whole point of a trailer is to show pieces of gameplay that give the audience an idea of what the finished product will look like.
Honestly all the levels look half-assed.
Imagine if this was just another kingdom in the Hollow Knight universe and the Radiance destroyed it because it was cringe.
That means the Radiance is a hero
I guess for once even the Radiance can be right.
@@soulmaster9481 A broken clock is right twice a day, who's to say a giant moth god doesn't work the same way?
@@aboogala4678 *goddess, I think.
@@dustinnabil798 that's probably right yeah
1:15 lean path
Crap I was one year late ;(
I was so excited for lotus knight, but then team cherry decided to release their carbon copy of my most anticipated game delaying the release years. So upset with Team Cherry and the entire Hollow Knight fan base
Odd how inconsistent the animation is.
The main character was traced frame by frame from Hollow night;
The "rhinos" are animated in puppetry, with vector based sprites (that's why they look less blured in the colors edges);
And others are clearly made in that GACHA app.
It feels like the developer hired 2 or 3 low cost freelance animators and did not bother to keep artstyle consistent.
And if so much inspiration was taken from Hollow Night (specially the tracing) they should put a "Inspired by Hollow Night" title card in the trailer, less be guilted of plagiarism.
I noticed this might be a Chinese knockoff due to the Steam page listing specifically those languages aside from English, as broken as it it is on the description page. I get the feeling that most sprites and backgrounds were just rotoscoped and drawn over the actual ones from Hollow Knight. If it is indeed a blatant Chinese knockoff, I doubt anyone can legally do anything about, unfortunately.
If "stinky tofu games" were really a Chinese company, hundreds of millions of people would consume and praise fake products, as they always do. This is because there is a culture in China that believes that a deceived person is wrong in any wrong case. In various cultural and historical debates, China has always cleverly disguised facts after winning with their large population at the forefront. With the development of the Internet, this behavior has turned into leaving numerous fake comments in modern times. Like those who are now defending "lotus knight" by forcefully denying numerous similarities.
Wow. The fact that people are trying to emulate the success of Hollow Knight is very funny and I think it won't get much recognition because Hollow Knight is already such a popular game and Lotus Knight won't get much notice.
It's not wrong that they want to base their game on the success of Hollow Knight. Many games did the same. The problem is that it's just copy paste with different sprites. Inspiration is okay, but inspiration means You make something own, unique, inspired by something else. It might be similar, but not the same.
Also when silksong comes out all investigations of similar hk games will be dropped for a week because EVERYONES hanging out for silk
@@Netsuki i don't get this paranoia of hollow knight fandom that every game even remotely close is a copy paste of hollow knight, by your standards, i could argue that hollow knight is just a copy paste of megaman
@@San-lh8us yea I don’t understand it either. Lotus Knight is copied from Hollow Knight very closely, but Crowsworn is simply following the metroidvania tradition of taking ideas and building it up with something new. Crowsworn looks really fun and I can’t wait for it.
@@nicholasrestrepo2555 same with haiku the robot!
If someone told me this was a mod I would believe it without a doubt. As a standalone game I think it actually is too intellectually close to hollow knight. Team Cherry if they wanted could probably send them a cease and desist.
The character could easily be a custom knight
A) no they couldn't, you can't copyright artistic style, only art assets, characters, very *specific* things
B) Team Cherry would absolutely never do that. Going after another, smaller creator would cause them more harm than good, just from publicity alone
Um... That's not how copyright works.
@@sams.975 No, they definitely can't copyright... But they can trademark, which is a whole other beast. I do agree though, it doesn't seem like something TC would do, they couldn't care less
@@ghostwizard7597 TC is like the most chill dev team out there along with Re-logic lol
"yo bro, can i copy your homework?"
"sure, but don't make it too obvious"
The homework:
Man, what I wouldnt give to see a live reaction of Team Cherry watching this trailer.
If it wasn’t for the look of the enemies, I’d actually probably get it. The enemy design, movement and attacks just look really janky and all the fun combat I’m guessing won’t be anywhere.
BRUH 0:13 the music is SOOO similar to the Hollow Knight trailer music! They can’t even make their own music lol
Someone needs to make a lotus knight skin for hollow knight
Just copy her animation frames. It's already made-
soo lotus knight
It looks like they went out of their way to make a trailer that demonstrates all the ways in which they ripped off Hollow Knight.
3:36 Lmfao even Steam knows-
I was giving them the benefit of the doubt until that death animation 😭
Seems kinda like a boring version of hollow knight. Like, the background art is amazing, but it just doesn't seem like it would be fun to play since hollow knight already exists
Man, this takes me back to the 90's where Chinese palette-swap copies of popular games were commonplace.
One of the rooms literally looked like the pathway up to the City Storeroom. Like, down to the positions of the platforms.
the animations of the ‘knight’ look so much like the ones in hollow knight the main character might aswell be a skin for hk
4:28 Developer : Stinky Tofu Games xD
One thing I noticed heavily during the whole trailer is, the health bar. It is always at 4 from 5 hearts, or atleast what SHOULD be the healthbar. But as the character dies, they are still at 4 hearts. So it seems a healthbar ain't a thing in this game other than to look cool
Someone posted the steam page in the hk discord the other day, and we spent like 2 hours laughing about how it was legit the exact same thing, the “dangerous” part was def our favorite lmaoo
This reminds me of that Cuphead clone people were talking about a few years ago. They were also using the old cartoon art style, and a lot of people were talking about that, but the real problem with that game was that the gameplay was the exact same. They got wizards as characters, they could have done anything with them, yet they still shot the same bullets the cuphead bros had. Even had the same jumping animation too.
At least you could say they put in effort in their artstyle, 'cause holy crap, I'd be surprised if that lotus knight wasn't traced or at least heavily referenced. Hell, even the wall jumping animation seems incredibly similar. And like other people have pointed out, the fact they have thick outlines just like the knight while the enemies don't clearly sets them apart, other than the animation style for both being clearly different too. Even the DESIGN itself looks plagiarized from the knight, sure, it looks human, but the height, the flowing cape, being entirely white, two huge black dots as eyes... Yeah there's no way all of those details are a coincidence. And the story being practically the same is the icing on the cake. I also don't understand what's the point of telling us the whole story before we can play the game, why bother exploring it then, when we already know what happens?
Definitely don't start a witch hunt because those tend to get really ugly, but yeah, this is a pretty shameless rip-off. And to think people were complaining about Crowsworn. xD
I think the thing that most bothers me about this is the fact that the animations that aren't a direct rip off of Hollow Knight are just so stiff. The way the enemies move vs the way the playable character has a bit more depth in movement makes it so clear that even the sprites were just directly stolen.
I have a sinking feeling they got the "Lotus" part of the title from Ender Lilies. They obviously got nice art direction, at least they could have made something that doesn't look overly similar. Look at Aeterna Noctis, it's essentially Hollow Knight + Ori but looks entirely different and makes every stage Path of Pain and every Boss Radiance
I just finished 100% aeterna noctis and man... Hollow Knight was child's play in compasiron. Insanity doesn't even begin to describe the late-game platforming and the optional end-game bosses :D
Ah, this is the kind of thing that always feels a little sad to me, because there *is* potential here. The art style is beautiful, and if you just took the setting and the character, fixed up the enemies to fit the game, you could totally make an interesting game with fun interactions, story, mechanics, all of it. It had some sort of potential. But it doesn't look, right now, like the game devs actually intend to do anything with that, which is super sad.
So I myself am pretty lenient on copy cats, bc they tend to produce very interesting results, just look at salt n sanctuary, it's very heavily invoking dark souls and even has its own blight Town area. But its only *inpsired* by DS. However just doing everything another game is doing and not changing a single thing about it asides the visuals is a lil bit yikes, if u know what I mean.
It doesn't even look like they changed the visuals much, just took each animation frame of the Knight and drew Lotus over it. Another comment pointed out that the line thicknesses aren't even consistent between Lotus and the enemies, and the enemies are more unique to their game... so there wasnt much to trace over, hence a different style.
Maybe it's placeholder art...
I think it could be really cool if their sprites were used to make a skin for Hollow Knight, especially given that that seems to be more or less what the game is already regardless
1:08 holy shit leanpath! 10/10 bying right now
Wow, Lotus Knight is such an original, creative game! I love it!
1:08 holy shit it’s leanpath
If every Hollow Knight clone was instead just an entirely original Metroidvania, the Metroidvania genre would be so advanced by now
I mean, if somebody wants to use their time and talent to copy something this closely, then cool, make stuff if you want. I want people to make more fun games. But I hope they aren't charging for this game because that just means that they're taking somebody else's ideas and work and profiting off of it.
I feel like the aesthetic they have here is an amazing start, I sincerely hope the animations are just placeholders for the trailer. Because this could be a cute little HK-inspired Metroidvania, like an Ouroboros of game design.
Personally I'd change the character's expression to be lighter, or graceful. They're rigid like the Knight because of the heavily referencd animations
I feel like they could piourette or something like that whilst they swing down, or as a general idea for the character, give them extra in between frames to give the idea of fluidity or grace.
The reliance on tweening on the enemies makes it look amateurish, which I hope is just because its an early concept trailer.
I don't think I'd pay for it with how it looks right now, but I think it could definitely be a promising game if they really try to polish it into their own take on the Hollow Knight philosophy
sadly, it seems as though this is not a passion project by a fan and is just a money grab. no personality is intended to be put into this game, and neither is effort. its a shady company that saw the popularity of someone elses game and wanted some of the profit for themselves
its unlikely this is any kind of placeholder. the only reason its a trailer and not the finished game is probably because they havent finished ripping off all the areas yet, if they even do that much.
Giving a little too much benefit of the doubt to these scumbags. I’ll admit some backgrounds look good and are unique, but it’s not like they don’t know exactly what they are doing.
Its so much a CNTR-C CNTR-V that youtube thinks is hollow knight.
"you can copy my homework but don't make it obvious"
"Ok"
*The homework:*
You know you've got something truly special when even the _literal Chinese knockoff_ looks this good.
Chinese knockoffs often look very good i'll give them that xd
But damn its sad to see so many epic artists in china limited to just working at cheap copies of something popular instead of putting their own stuf out.
chinese knockoffs do look good, from a distance
I am out of the loop, what Chinese knockoff are you talking about?
@@thatrandonamedrandy they mean this game, yknow, that the video is about. idk if it's actually Chinese but its a very common thing for popular movies/media to get cheaply recreated by companies in china to try to profit off of the original work's success... very similar to what """lotus knight""" is doing here lol. So it's a joke/analogy if that's what confused u :)
@@stratozphere oh, I thought about a different game. Whoops.
7:19 watching you choke up trying not to laugh is giving me life
Can't wait to see him Speedrun this game if he decides to; lol!
New skip: if you use the flower dash ability on purple path right next to the flower estation, you can actually break the game wich will send you directly in the flower knight, then you just spam flower spirit until it dies and there you go.
4:08 I appreciate your politeness, but as a non native speaker I must say if they didn't find time to ask someone native to read through their texts, it shows the overall laziness of how the product was made.
theres also a walljump you didnt mention but it looks almost the exact same 2:15
no hate, just wanted to mention that walljump
I mean i'll play any game that is like hollow Knight at this point
They're gonna make money off of the silksong deprived HK fanbase lol
@@panickal so true, hahah
Try haiku the robot. It was different enough that it is fully its own game but similar enough to scratch my HK itch. Its a bit shorter and not HK perfection but good enough for me to 100% achievements which included a 2nd no manual heal (bench only) run for the only missable one . Took me 11h for all
@@OrangeIncarnate "A bit shorter" is a understatement lol. I just beat it 100% yesterday and it took just under 10hrs. However, Haiku a good game and I would definitely recommend getting it on sale!
Honestly, Hollow Knight's price spoiled me lol. Despite how great Dread is, I still felt jipped cause I beat it 100% in like 14hrs compared to the 45hrs hollow knight took without even counting the pantheon stuff
The story being similar is saddening, I had hope until then 😂 This to me sounded like “I bet I can make a new hollow knight game before Silksong comes out” and, well, you did it, somewhat
"I just wanted to have a quick giggle" *plays Nosk music in the background*
Video idea: HK but a random enemy spawns every second.
enemy randomizer: chaos edition
@@rraaiin Y E S. Absolute Chaos.
this game visually looks great, the enemies feel a bit out of place though. i wish the game just had more original ideas and sprites.
1:53 couldve defenitly differentieted(like a change in pogoing or bounce as a Stab) but If that mechanic works and adds to the game again it's not that bad, maybe could've had something else but not terrible.
10 comments ? Seriously?
This is a friendly reminder that while the scumminess of ripping off popular media is debatable, the scumminess of making the above illegal is not. The same rulings that would, say, remove this game from the Steam storefront can and will also be leveraged by megacorporations to crush small creative projects uncontested! Consumer protections are for everyone, not just the people using them the right way. If you think stinkytofu is uncool for doing this, vote with your money to not support them, and vote with your ballot to defend their right to try.
huh?
@@annikapannika4681 despite it being a rip off we need to support the freedom to make these kinds of things so corporations don't eliminate creative indie studios.
@@annikapannika4681 Agree with Azzy here. Its bad. Like really bad, its more than clear that this is a complete clone/rip off. However, they have done the bare minimum to make it DIFFERENT enough to avoid being sued. And what the above comment is saying, is don't make petitions or such to get StinkyTofu in trouble with the law or to make what they've done 'illegal'. As there are many small indie dev's who borrow ideas or use other games for references and it's a slippery slope. We already know how hard Nintendo comes down. If StinkyTofu could get sued for this, then think about every single Monster Catcher game or mechanic that could just be wiped out in theory. That would just be the tip of the iceberg. Many small time dev's go on to create something in homage to as a way of getting started before they grow and eventually create their Magnum Opus.
Don't buy the game if you feel like its just a shoddy rip off (which we can see it is). But allow them a World where shoddy rip offs are still legal, as many games will have elements of another game inside it. If we go over StinkyTofu, companies will then go after other games that simply have 'elements' and that's going to lead to a bad time for all.
In this case, it's probably not taking any money from Team Cherry. No one is going to buy this instead of buying Silksong.
That said, Team Cherry could probably sue for royalties or something.
yeah, plagiarism is bad but copyright law is already awful and absolutely does Not need to be made worse