Hollowmere Guide: Combat, Votives, Levels and the Drowned Country

Published October 25, 2026

Hollowmere is our newest free game: a gothic action RPG drawn entirely in text glyphs. Every raindrop, candle, blade and cathedral wall on the screen is a character, lit in real time. You are a pilgrim on the Weeping Road to a drowned town, where a bell was rung a hundred years ago and the rain has not stopped since. Like everything on NoInternet Arcade, it plays in your browser with no download and keeps working offline after your first visit.

This guide walks through the game screen by screen, without spoiling what lies past the cathedral. Every picture is a real screenshot of the game.

Choosing your pilgrim

The ORIGIN screen: Pilgrim, Warden, Poacher, Choir Mystic, Sexton and Wretch listed in a frame, the Pilgrim selected, with its five attributes, its level and its kit under the list. — Six origins: only where you begin.

A new game asks two things. First, your origin: where your pilgrim starts, nothing more. Every weapon, attire and attribute stays open to every origin later.

Origin	Starts with
Pilgrim	The Vesper Hook, a flintlock and a coat: a little of everything, the intended start.
Warden	Plate and a long halberd: slow to fall, slow to tire, heavy in the hand.
Poacher	A thorn knife, a pistol and soft leathers: quick, and quicker to vanish.
Choir Mystic	A chain censer of live coals and the drowned choir’s vestments: arcana above all.
Sexton	A grave-digger’s cleaver and a blunderbuss.
Wretch	A rusted hook and nothing else, at level 1. For those who want it hard.

The DIFFICULTY screen: NORMAL selected over HARDCORE, with the line that it is chosen once for this pilgrim and can be lowered later, never raised. — Normal or Hardcore, once per pilgrim.

Then the difficulty. Normal is the pilgrimage as it is meant to be played. Hardcore makes foes hit half again as hard and press you harder, and limits healing: three tinctures (five at most), refilled only by resting at a votive, not by dying. Rare tincture vials refill one. You can lower a pilgrim’s difficulty later, never raise it, and the ASSIST setting is there for an even gentler road.

The screen at a glance

The pilgrim on the Weeping Road at night in the rain, tall grass bending in the wind. Top left: the red health bar and the green stamina bar in iron frames, under them the tinctures, the pistol shot and the weapon's form, and the current goal with an arrow pointing along the way. — The Weeping Road: health and stamina top left, the goal under them.

Health (red) and stamina (green) sit top left in iron frames, with a tick every quarter. When you are hit, the part you just lost lingers as a pale trail before it drains.
Under them: your tinctures (the red !), your pistol shot (the blue *), the form your weapon is in, and your ichor.
The goal comes next, with an arrow along the way. A small pale wisp drifts a few steps ahead of you along the path to it, and waits when you stop. You can switch the goal or the wisp off in SETTINGS > WAY HINTS.
The red edge of the screen tells you your health is low; under 15% you hear (and on a phone feel) your heartbeat.

Fighting

The pilgrim locked on to a hunched townsman in the tall grass, a red ring under the foe, a hound circling to the right. — Locked on: a ring under the foe, the camera keeps you both in view.

Combat in Hollowmere is about reading the foe:

Every attack is telegraphed. A foe glows red just before it strikes (gold or cyan if you set SETTINGS > ATTACK WARNING). That is your cue.
Roll through the blow, not away from it. A roll makes you untouchable for a moment. Rolling into the swing usually puts you behind the foe; rolling away too late gets you hit.
Strike in the openings. After a swing a foe needs a moment to recover. That is when to attack. Light attacks chain into a combo; a heavy attack staggers.
Parry with the pistol. Shoot a foe just as it raises its weapon: the blow breaks, the foe reels, and if you strike at once you land a visceral riposte, the hardest hit in the game. Not every attack can be parried.
Rally. After you are hit, part of your health glows orange for a few seconds. Hit back quickly to win it back.
Stamina pays for attacks, rolls and running. When the bar runs out it greys and flashes, and you cannot roll until it recovers.
Lock on to keep a foe in your sights (Tab, the right stick, or a tap on the foe on a phone).

Trick weapons

Every weapon has two forms. The Vesper Hook you start with unfolds into the Reaper, a long scythe that sweeps wide. Change form at any time, even in the middle of a combo (F, the Y button, or hold GUN on a phone). Further weapons have their own pair of forms: a cleaver that opens into a headsman’s blade, a knife that unwinds into a whip of thorns, a greatsword that fights from inside its sheath, and more you will find on the way.

Controls

Action	Keyboard and mouse	Phone	Gamepad
Walk	WASD (the mouse aims)	The stick	Left stick
Attack / heavy	Left click or J / right click or K	Tap ATK / hold ATK	RB / RT
Roll, hold to run	Space	ROLL	B
Pistol (parry)	Q	Tap GUN	LB
Change weapon form	F	Hold GUN	Y
Tincture	R	HEAL	X
Lock on	Tab or middle click	Tap the foe	Right stick click
Use	E	USE (when in reach)	A
Bag / character / map	I / C / M	Pause menu	Back

Keys and buttons can be remapped in SETTINGS > KEYS AND GAMEPAD.

Votives

The Wayside Votive menu over the grass: LEVEL UP with a count of the levels ready, TRAVEL, BAG and LEAVE, with the pilgrim's level and ichor at the bottom. — Rest at a votive: level up, travel, change your gear.

A votive is a shrine of candles. Light one and rest there to heal, refill your tinctures and pistol shot, and save. Resting also brings the foes you killed back to their posts, so the road you cleared fills up again.

LEVEL UP spends ichor on your attributes.
TRAVEL takes you to any votive you have lit, listed by area.
If you fall, you rise at the last votive you rested at. Your ichor stays where you fell: go back and take it. Fall again on the way and it is gone.

Levels and attributes

The LEVEL UP screen: Vigor raised from 10 to 12, Endurance, Strength, Skill and Arcane listed under it, the ichor cost and what is left, CONFIRM with the number of levels, and the health and stamina each change gives. — Raise several attributes, see what they do, then confirm.

There are five attributes:

Attribute	What it does
Vigor	Health
Endurance	Stamina
Strength	Damage with heavy weapons (by their Strength scaling)
Skill	Damage with quick weapons (by their Skill scaling) and the pistol
Arcane	How much a tincture heals and how much ichor you find

Every level costs a little more than the last. Early on, Vigor is rarely a bad choice.

Gear

The BAG: the equipped weapon, pistol, attire and two charm slots on the left with the items carried under them, colour-coded by rarity, and on the right the selected Vesper Hook with its attack, scaling and description. — The bag: weapon, pistol, attire and two charms.

You carry one weapon, one pistol, one attire and two charms. Foes drop gear, and better pieces lie in out-of-the-way corners. Names are coloured by rarity: fine pieces carry one extra property, rare ones two, relics three. Heavy attire takes more blows but slows your roll; charms add things like extra damage, faster stamina or more ichor.

The forge

Past the cathedral you will meet a smith who tempers weapons. Each step raises the weapon’s attack; the first five take bell-bronze shards, the last five rarer metal. Shards turn up all over the drowned country.

The people of Hollowmere

A conversation with Sister Wenna, her words written out in a panel, with two answers to choose from. — The few who are left have things to say, and things to ask.

Hollowmere is not empty. A handful of people survived: a nun, a ferryman, a smith, an old woman who sells what the drowned won’t miss. Walk up and talk. What they say changes as the world does, so go back to them after a big fight. Some of them need something from you; helping them changes more than you might think.

The map

Open the map with M or from the pause menu. It shows what you have seen, area names, the votives, the fog doors and your goal.

Regions

Lowgate: the pilgrim in a street of dark houses, lamps glowing on posts, the rain over the cobbles. — Lowgate, the town under the cathedral.

The first part of the journey runs from the Weeping Road through Lowgate and the Mourning Yard to the Cathedral of the Drowned Bell. Each area has its votives, a shortcut or two back to them, and a boss behind a wall of fog.

The first bosses (no spoilers past the cathedral)

Ten bosses wait behind walls of fog. Each has a body of its own, attacks you can learn by their wind-ups, and a second phase that changes how it fights. Here are the three of the first part of the journey, as you meet them; the rest you will find for yourself.

Mawgrin, the Gate Hound, a gaunt giant hound with a crown of quills round its neck, facing the pilgrim in Gate Square, its name and health bar at the bottom of the screen. — Mawgrin, the Gate Hound: bites in pairs, a raking paw and a long pounce.

Mawgrin, the Gate Hound guards the way into town. Its bites come in pairs, so roll the second one too; when it crouches low, it is about to pounce across half the square.

Ossian, the Bell Warden, in bronze-and-iron plate with a bell for a helm, swinging a lantern on a chain at the pilgrim in the roofless chapel. — Ossian, the Bell Warden, and his lantern-flail.

Ossian, the Bell Warden keeps the chapel in the Mourning Yard. His lantern swings wide on its chain: watch which way it is drawn back, and when it goes up over his head, get out from under it.

The Pale Chorister floating above the flooded floor of the apse, a pale mask with a bell-shaped mouth under a halo of cold candle flames, her long arms reaching for the pilgrim. — The Pale Chorister, in the Bell Apse.

The Pale Chorister sings in the apse at the top of the cathedral. Her toll rings out in a wave you can roll through; her choir sends wisps after you. What she does when her song breaks, you will see.

Learn a boss’s first phase on your first tries; you will need it in the second.

When the bell falls silent, the floodgates open. Without spoiling too much:

The Sunken Ward: half-drowned houses on silt, green lamps on posts, puddles everywhere. — The Sunken Ward, where the flood came first.

The Lantern Cisterns: brick causeways over black water lit by pale green lamps, a rat swarm and a skull on the edge of the light. — The cisterns under the Ward.

The Witchwood Mire: a boardwalk through drowned trees and bog, reeds and witch-light mushrooms. — The Witchwood Mire.

The bailey of Castle Vesper at night: lamp posts and torches, barracks walls, crates and puddles on the cobbles. — Castle Vesper, on its crag.

And somewhere along the way, a cloister that the votives lead to, where nothing hunts:

The Sanctuary of Wicks: a candlelit court, the pilgrim beside the tall hooded Wick-Keeper with a flame burning on his head, candles on posts round the court. — The Sanctuary of Wicks.

There is more than one ending. What you find, and who you help, decides which ones are open to you.

On a phone

Turn the phone sideways (portrait works too). The stick walks. ATK strikes (hold it for a heavy blow), ROLL rolls (hold it to run), GUN shoots (hold it to change your weapon’s form), HEAL drinks a tincture, and USE appears only when there is something to use. Tap a foe to lock on. SETTINGS has a larger button size and a left-handed layout; the keys give a short buzz when pressed (VIBRATION in SETTINGS).

Settings worth knowing

The SETTINGS screen: sound volumes (master, music, effects, ambience), then the picture settings: graphics, brightness, camera, rain, blood. — Sound, picture, accessibility and controls.

Brightness, and camera distance: near, default, far or farthest (near gives bigger glyphs on small screens, farthest shows the most of the fight).
Lightning flashes: full, soft or off. Blood and screen shake can be turned off.
Attack warning colour: red, gold or cyan.
Text speed for conversations, from slow to all at once.
Assist: foes hit softer and tinctures heal more, if you came for the story.
Keys and gamepad can be remapped.

Saves

Hollowmere saves at every votive and every few seconds on the way. SAVE SLOTS on the title screen holds three pilgrims. You can export a slot to a .hmsave file and import it on another device or browser; the file is checked first, and a damaged or foreign file is refused without touching your saves.

Tips

Lightning forking down through the rain over the pilgrim, the whole scene lit white for an instant, shadows thrown away from the strike. — The storm never ends. Lightning lights up what the dark hides.

Don’t heal in their faces. Drinking takes a moment. Step out of reach first.
Shoot the wind-up, not the foe. The pistol does little damage; its worth is the parry.
Pull every lever. Shortcuts loop back to votives you already lit.
Strike walls that look wrong. Not every wall is real.
Come back with more health. If a boss beats you three times, an hour elsewhere and a few levels change everything.
Talk to the people again after every boss.

Ready? Play Hollowmere, or try another free game such as Pixel Vigil or Splat Swords.

← All posts