I still remember the exact moment I stumbled into the Mantis Lords' arena in Hollow Knight. The music shifted from the fungal wastes' uneasy hum to a tense, ritualistic percussion, and three silhouettes stared down at me from stone thrones. Today, as I sit here in 2026, still clinging to the faint hope of a Silksong release date that keeps slipping through my fingers like sand, that memory has taken on a new dimension—literally. The Hollow Knight community has been coping through interminable delays by modding Shrek into the Forgotten Crossroads and designing their own DLC, but the latest creation from solo developer Poly Knight has hit me with the force of a Great Slash: a fully 3D remake of the Mantis Lords boss fight.
I have seen many fan projects bloom in this drought, but this one feels different. Watching the video posted on the Hollow Knight subreddit, I felt like a parched traveler glimpsing an oasis—except this oasis was tangible, crafted in Unreal Engine with painstaking fidelity. The familiar spinning projectiles, the synchronized dive attacks, the way the first sister bows out before the other two join the fray; every beat is present, but now it unfolds with a diorama-like depth. The knight's evasive movements, once constrained to two dimensions, now weave through space with a balletic grace that reminds me of a leaf navigating a three-dimensional current. It is slower, yes, but that slowness is the wise caution of an insect learning to inhabit a new world.
Poly Knight spent two months building this encounter from the ground up. Every asset and model—save for the sound, music, and menu graphic—was hand-sculpted, a fact that humbles me as someone who once spent an entire afternoon just trying to align a single sprite in GameMaker. The miniature diorama aesthetic gives off strong Tunic and Death's Door vibes, as if Hallownest had been compressed into a tiny, delicate music box. This isn't the first time Poly Knight has breathed a third axis into a 2D classic; earlier they tackled Undertale's Asgore fight, but the Mantis Lords translation hits closer to home. The angular architecture of the Mantis Village, the echo of chitin on stone, the way the lantern light now casts dynamic shadows—it all feels like a forgotten prototype that Team Cherry might have dreamed up before committing to their hand-drawn 2D vision.
The most surreal moment arrives when both Mantis Sisters are on screen simultaneously. Their coordinated attacks gain a spatial complexity that pushes the fight into a new kind of chaos—a beautiful, deadly dance where you can now sidestep an incoming blade by mere inches, feeling the rush of air as it passes. The project serves as a reminder that fan creativity is not merely filler between releases; it is the lifeblood of a community that refuses to let its beloved world gather dust. I cannot help but see Poly Knight's work as a type of kinetic lighthouse, beaming a signal across the sea of silence: we are still here, still nurturing these characters, still believing.
Of course, 2026 brings its own bittersweet flavor to this experience. We have long passed the point where release date rumors are treated as gospel; now every new hint or tease is met with a collective flinch, as though the fanbase has developed an immune response to disappointment. In this environment, projects like Poly Knight's become more than just technical showcases. They are the hollowed-out shells left behind by anticipation, repurposed into something unexpectedly beautiful. I have replayed the original Hollow Knight so many times that I can recite the Mantis Lords' rhythm in my sleep, yet this 3D rendition forced me to sit forward and pay attention as if I were a newcomer again.
What strikes me most is the trust Poly Knight places in the source material. There is no urge to "improve" the fight by adding flashy new mechanics; instead, the faithful translation argues that Hollow Knight's design language is so robust it can survive a dimensional shift intact. This is the highest compliment a fan can pay, and it leaves me wondering: what would the City of Tears look like with real volumetric lighting? Could Deepnest's crawling horrors become too much to bear in first-person? The imagination reels, and that, perhaps, is the point. While we wait for official news, we build our own kingdoms.
I do not know if Silksong will arrive this year. I do not know if the Bamboo Knights Tavern rumour has any weight, or whether the “March 2027” placeholder on a random retailer site is anything more than algorithmic noise. What I do know is that somewhere out there, a solo developer has recreated one of gaming's most iconic bug duels in three dimensions, and it has made the wait a little more bearable. Maybe that is the secret of the Hollow Knight fandom: we have become like the vessels themselves, carrying an endless emptiness that we fill with art, music, mods, and these tiny, perfect shrines to what we love.
If you haven't seen the video, I recommend seeking it out on Poly Knight's YouTube channel. It runs for only a couple of minutes, but those minutes stretch into something far more nourishing than dozens of speculative news articles. And as you watch the knight leap and slash in three dimensions, consider this: the Mantis Lords once challenged us to earn their respect through combat. Poly Knight has earned our respect in a different way—by reminding us that even a kingdom buried in silence can still thrive underground.
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