1031: Hollow Knight

The morning of October 31, 2022 (Halloween), arrived with global anticipation. Fans stayed up late in New Zealand (Team Cherry’s time zone) to be the first to see the drop.

Nothing happened.

No announcement. No trailer. No Twitter post. Not even a blog update. The "1031" branch remained private, and October 31st came and went as just another day in the long, painful wait for Silksong. hollow knight 1031

So what had gone wrong? Three popular explanations emerged:

For over five years, Team Cherry’s masterpiece Hollow Knight has been dissected, analyzed, and celebrated by millions of players. From the haunting melodies of Greenpath to the brutal precision of the Pantheon of Hallownest, the game’s secrets have largely been unearthed. Yet, for a vocal pocket of the community, a single number haunts the discussion boards and Discord servers: 1031. The morning of October 31, 2022 (Halloween), arrived

Searching for "Hollow Knight 1031" yields a strange mix of technical glitches, modding lore, and obsessive speculation. Is it a secret room? A cut boss? A hidden coordinate that proves Silksong is launching tomorrow? Let’s dive into the deepest, dirtiest rabbit hole in Hallownest.

First, let’s separate fact from fiction. There is no official "Hollow Knight 1031" Easter egg confirmed by Team Cherry. The number does not appear in any item description, piece of dialogue, or background texture in the base game. No announcement

Instead, "1031" refers to a specific event ID or object ID found when datamining the game’s Unity assets or, more commonly, a persistent error code that PC players reported between 2018 and 2020. When the game crashed to desktop, a small percentage of users would see a log file ending with error_1031.

The original bug (real bug, not Vengefly) typically occurred in the Royal Waterways or during the Colosseum of Fools third trial. Community programmers traced 1031 to a memory allocation failure tied to particle effects—specifically, the spore clouds from defeated Flukemon enemies.

So, technically, "Hollow Knight 1031" began as a crash log signature. But as with anything surrounding this game, the internet turned it into a legend.