I’ve Played 30 Hours of Hollow Knight and the Pogo Still Bullies Me

I have a confession to make: I cannot pogo. Not consistently, anyway. After 30 hours of Hollow Knight, after crawling through Deepnest’s nightmare tunnels, after turning the Mantis Lords into chitin confetti, and after spending so much Geo that the shopkeepers probably have a group chat about me, I still whiff the single most reliable damage technique in the game. It’s embarrassing. It’s humbling. It’s also weirdly funny, because every Hollow Knight veteran online talks about the pogo like it’s breathing.

What even is a pogo? It’s the move where you leap above an enemy, slash downward as you land on their head, and bounce back into the air. Do it again before you fall, and you’ve chained a pogo. If you’re really good, you can drift horizontally with a moving enemy, turning their skull into a trampoline. When a streak clicks, it feels better than sliced bread. Or better than ‘sects. Sorry, I had to.

I know the pogo isn’t new. It’s a classic 2D platformer trick from Shovel Knight and DuckTales. But in Hollow Knight, players treat it like a sacred rite. Need to beat the Watcher Knights? Pogo into Desolate Dive. Need to skip a tricky platform? Pogo on a flying bug. Need to feel like a god? Chain ten pogos on a poor Crawlid. The community says mastering the pogo is the difference between stumbling through Hallownest and dancing through it. And honestly? I believe them.

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