Just in time for Hollow Knight's 9th birthday, Team Cherry rolled out its first update in years, including better support for ultrawide monitors and the Steam Deck screen
As reported by GamingOnLinux, Team Cherry delivered its promised ultrawide update to the original Hollow Knight on February 5. The patch is Hollow Knight's first since 2022, and also comes just a few weeks before the ninth anniversary of its launch on February 24. Here are the brief patch notes:
- Added support for 21:9 & 16:10 resolutions.
- Game now pauses while in inventory menus.
- Upgraded to Unity Input System for broader controller support (original input system is still available, if preferred, via Options>Controller>Advanced Settings)
- Added dithering effect, and dithering options, to reduce colour banding.
- Fixed a softlock in City of Tears Grub room.
- Reduced Grey Prince Zote's stagger bounce height.
- Updated Sly's Great Slash collider to closer match visual.
- Salubra's Blessing now deactivates after reaching max Soul.
- Map panning is now smoother.
- Various performance improvements.
- Various smaller fixes and tweaks.
The aspect ratio additions are definitely the biggest change, though the bugfixes are certainly nice. Prior to this, there were mods on the Nexus for ultrawide support, but it's always preferable to not futz around just to properly use a display you paid bonkers bucks for. Proper 16:10, meanwhile, means no more annoying black bars when playing on Steam Deck, the scourge of on-the-go gamers everywhere.
Usually, a rising tide lifts all boats when it comes to arbitrary aspect ratios: Speaking as an obnoxious CRT guy, I love when a game gets ultrawide support, because that usually means it'll squash down to 4:3 nicely as well. That doesn't appear to be the case with Hollow Knight, but thankfully there are mods for both games that look like they get the job done.
That's a pretty niche use case, though, while the 16:10 fix makes sense for how a lot of people are probably checking out (or revisiting) Hollow Knight: On Steam Deck. I first played it on the original Nintendo Switch, and its lightweight nature makes it a good fit for handheld. With new Silksongers likely looking backwards after rolling credits, more love for the Deck just makes sense.
The ultrawide support was put on Hollow Knight's beta branch back in December alongside the announcement of Silksong's Sea of Sorrow expansion. While Silksong didn't nab Game of the Year 2025 at The Game Awards (or here, but I promise we really loved it), Silksong did prove the people's champion in the Steam Awards.
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