A sequel to one of the greatest games of all time is announced. Stunning art, phenomenal music, and unique places to explore are all shown off. The developers tease its release with a date. The date passes. It’s been seven years since the original announcement. Then, suddenly, it appears on store shelves practically overnight. This is how it felt to be a follower of the highly anticipated game Hollow Knight: Silksong.
Hollow Knight comes from Team Cherry, an Australian indie game studio. The game was released in 2014 after a widely successful Kickstarter.
Set in a world of magical sentient bugs, the player travels through the diverse world of Hollownest, fighting a variety of foes with some of the tightest combat I have ever played. Although I generally don’t play platforming games, Hollow Knight captivated me with its combination of astonishing gameplay and style.
Many players agree with me, which is how Hollow Knight earned the “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam. This meant that, naturally, fans wanted more.
Silksong production began sometime during 2017. Originally planned to be an expansion to the original game, the developers ultimately created a separate game to fully realize the character of Hornet.
After Team Cherry gained over a million backers on Kickstarter, the fanbase was met with near radio silence for seven years until 2025, when the company announced the game was slated to release in two weeks on Sept. 4.
The surprise launch of one of the most anticipated games of recent memory, next to Deltarune and GTA VI, forced several other developers to delay the release of their own games so as to not get overshadowed by the release of Silksong.
Hype for Silksong was so great that game distributors such as Steam and Nintendo ended up crashing from the unprecedented levels of internet traffic.
Getting my hands on the game a day after launch and clocking in about 15 hours so far, I can declare that the long wait was worth it.
The first thing that greets players upon entering Silksong is the fantastic art. The original Hollow Knight was already a great-looking game, but Silksong’s shading and more detailed assets further enhanced the style set by its older brother.
The new player character, Hornet, feels familiar to fans of the original game with their own spin. One seemingly minor movement change drastically affects gameplay: the addition of diagonal downward slashes. “The parkour is more difficult. The sideways slashes are pretty hard to time sometimes,” Senior Bryson White said.
Difficulty seemed to be a major pain point for many players. Quickly after release, an update to Silksong was put out that turned down the challenge on many of the enemies.
As a day one player, this was a welcome change. For example, minor optional boss Savage Beastfly could deal over half of the player’s health in one attack. Coupling that with the giant hitbox and summoning ability made the fight an unfair pain, and nerfing the damage was a based thing to do.
Overall, Silksong has been very well received, holding a 95% positive rating on Steam and a 91% on Metacritic. “They should add skins to the game. Yeah, battle pass. Yeah, that’s going in the article,” Bryson said after reiterating he greatly enjoyed the game.
With the wonderful gameplay, art, and story, I would highly recommend Silksong for Hollow Knight and platformer fans that don’t mind a good challenge.
