HKViz: Map-Based Analytics for Hollow Knight
Oliver Gstöttenbauer, Claire Dormann, Günter Wallner · 2024
Data-informed play practices are starting to be embraced by different subgroups of the player population. In the wake of this, interest in data tracking and visualization tools is growing. Player-facing visualizations often take the form of aggregated performance statistics. However, map-based analytics for players are still being comparable less explored due to the rare availability of detailed behavioral and movement data. Nonetheless, navigation is central in many games, among them, Metroidvania-like games which emphasize exploration and discovery. In this paper, we introduce HKViz, which consists of 1) a modification for Hollow Knight—a popular Metroidvania—to track players’ in-game data and 2) a website offering a dashboard for data analysis. HKViz is intended to enable user research on player-centric map-based analytics. We further present preliminary user feedback and discuss potential extensions.