Silksong is finally here

The wait is finally over. To many, that phrase may mean nothing, requiring much more context to have any meaning. But, to a select few in the gaming community, those few words are enough. For those who are unaware, the long-anticipated video game Hollow Knight: Silksong has finally been released by indie game studio Team Cherry after more than half a decade since its announcement. While games often take years to develop, the exact circumstances of this game’s development and the culture surrounding it made its release feel that much more important. As someone who fell in love with the original Hollow Knight and waited patiently for this game, few things have compared to the hype around its release and the experience of playing it.

To understand why Silksong’s release had so much weighing on it, one must understand the impact the original Hollow Knight had on the gaming community. Released in 2017, Hollow Knight is a 2D action-adventure metroidvania, a genre of games focusing on non-linear exploration and gaining new abilities. Players control a nameless protagonist tasked with saving the kingdom of Hallownest. In doing so, they explore area after area, encountering jumps that are just out of reach and gaps that are just too long. Over time, the protagonist gains new abilities, like a higher jump and a dash, which remind the player of those obstacles they once thought were impassable. As they explore these new areas, they encounter new obstacles and find new ways to overcome them. This addictive gameplay loop greatly contributed to the game’s success, selling over 15 million copies since its release.

Another large part of Hollow Knight’s success came from its accessibility. In a climate of games costing upwards of $60, Hollow Knight took the market by storm with a price tag of only $15, with consistent sales after the game’s release bringing the price even further down below $10. Gamers were much more likely to take their chance on a cheap game like Hollow Knight than spend at least quadruple the amount of money on the next Madden or FIFA game. On top of this, Team Cherry made an effort to release free downloadable content (DLC) for the game post-launch, offering more hours of gameplay at no cost for the player. It was clear that Team Cherry had no intentions of gouging their playerbase for all they’re worth, and the players responded well.

The final key to Hollow Knight’s success was the sheer quality and effort put into it. To start, every asset in the game is entirely hand-drawn. From the massive cities that can be explored to the smallest blades of grass, no corners were cut in the game’s presentation. Coupled with the brilliant soundtrack, the kingdom of Hallownest came alive whenever players walked through it. Additionally, every nook of the game is filled with story and lore. While the kingdom is physically explored, its deep and complex history is slowly revealed to the player, and NPCs from every reach of the map have unique backstories and motivations discovered through conversation. While many may doubt video games as an artform, Team Cherry makes a compelling case for why they should be, as their passion is clearly displayed to anyone who plays the game.

Despite its popularity, accessibility, and quality, you may still be asking why its sequel is deserving of so much hype? Many high quality game sequels, not to mention movie sequels and new seasons of TV shows, come out all the time, so, what makes this any different?

Hollow Knight was funded via a Kickstarter, a website where creators can fundraise products or ideas and donors can contribute to see them come to light. One of the fundraising goals set up by Team Cherry for Hollow Knight was to add a second playable character with unique quests and abilities as a DLC. This character was Hornet, sister of the protagonist that clashed with them over the course of the story. After this goal was reached, Team Cherry, while implementing this DLC, had their ideas quickly grow outside of the scope of additional content for the original game, and decided to instead roll the idea over into a full-fledged sequel, with Hornet as the protagonist. In February of 2019, Team Cherry announced Hollow Knight: Silksong, alongside a gameplay trailer. Despite having just released the original game and plenty of DLCs, with Silksong likely running on the same engine and gameplay already being shown off, as well as a playable demo at a live event a few months later, fans were hopeful that the game would release soon. If you could not tell by the release date of this article, that assumption could not be further from the truth.

The small indie studio was not one to give constant updates about the game’s development, yet stretches of months, and sometimes years, went by without so much as a recognition that the game still exists. And even when we did get news, it was either insignificant or downright misleading. In a now infamous Xbox Games Showcase in June of 2022, a new trailer for Silksong was shown off, with the entire showcase focussing on games that will be “playable over the next 12 months.” Fans got excited that they finally had a release window to look forward to. Yet, 12 months later, they were unfortunately met with the news that the game was getting delayed, with no information on a supposed release date. These years marked a constant cycle of fans getting their hopes up, only to be disappointed.

Over these years of waiting, fans engaged in what can only be described as a form of mass hysteria while waiting for the release of this game. Consistently expecting news and being disappointed at radio silence led fans to poke fun at their own expectations. Before major events for Nintendo, Xbox, and Playstation, fans would draw doodles of the characters adorned in clown makeup and joke about how “today is finally the day,” despite having made that assumption for every previous event and knowing deep down it wasn’t true. During this time, in January of 2021, over 700 days since the game’s announcement, an ironic Youtube channel named “Daily Silksong News” popped up, promising to deliver daily updates to fans eagerly awaiting new developments. Every day, the creator published a short video where they announced the date, the news, and said goodbye. In over 97% of the videos, there were no updates, leading to over 1500 short videos that simply stated there was no news. I myself made a habit of checking this channel daily, and was often disappointed when I saw the 20 second runtime and bolded red “NO” in the thumbnail.

Yet, while most mornings were met with disappointment, when there was news, or even a “maybe” that hinted at an update, myself and other viewers got excited. The consistent disappointment made those small achievements feel that much better.

That being said, many in the community began grasping at straws during the particularly long droughts of news, clawing for any semblance of an update. People made a habit of checking the metadata on some of the game’s websites, and when an asset was updated or a line was slightly modified, preached how it was a guarantee of a release date coming soon. In my personal favorite story around this time, after one of the developers changed their profile picture on Twitter to a chocolate cake, many in the community took this as an obvious clue towards a release date. Reverse image searching the photo led fans to find a recipe posted the year prior on April 2nd, which just so happened to be the date of a Nintendo event later that year, leading some to see this as confirmation to an update if not a release. How people began along this train of thought is beyond me, but seeing fans desperately search for anything was hilarious to say the least.

When all hope was lost in the summer of 2025, and many, including myself, started to question if the game would ever be released, a light shined at the end of the tunnel. In August, gamescom, the largest annual gaming event, was being held, and the host for the event, Geoff Keighley, teased fans with a photo of himself with a clown nose with the caption “First time?” Fans were quick to connect this to their own jokes about being clowns, but were so used to disappointment that they didn't expect much. Then, after years of waiting and countless conspiracies on updates, the impossible happened, and a release trailer was shown. On September 4th, the long awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong would be released.

To say this was monumental would be an understatement. The years of waiting were finally over, and the weeks between the announcement and the release were full of energy. At this time, Silksong was the most wishlisted game on Steam, a popular game storefront, with 4.8 million users indicating they wanted the game, beating second place by more than 2 million. Several other indie developers who had release dates planned for that week postponed their projects, knowing that they could never compete with the hype of this game. In fact, on the morning of September 4th, the influx of users looking to purchase the game simultaneously crashed Steam, the Playstation Store, the Xbox Store, and the Nintendo eShop.

People often referred to the game as being in "development hell,” a common phrase in media and software development to describe a project that is stuck at early stages due to creative differences and lack of inspiration. Team Cherry would later push back against these ideas, saying that they were simply having too much fun making the game and kept adding content, leading to many now referring to it as having been in "development heaven.” Having played the game and just recently having achieved 100% completion, I can attest to this description.

Everything that made the original game work is back in full swing. The exploration is addictive, the art is beautiful, and the story is complex, all for an affordable $20 price tag. The game also improves upon its predecessor, with much more customization to tailor to different play styles, a higher skill ceiling that forces you to understand the mechanics, and overall more content. The years of waiting was well worth it, and the game has quickly soared to one of my favorites I’ve ever played. I wish I could tell you more, but I would be robbing you of the blind experience which I had. If anything I have said thus far sounds interesting, I implore you to check out this game and/or the original Hollow Knight.

I was 11 when the original Hollow Knight came out and was still in middle school when Silksong was first announced. I spent the entirety of my time in high school waiting for this game to be released, and am now in my second year of college finally able to play it. I think back to my younger self, who got the original game as a Christmas present years ago. I was so excited to try out a new game and had so much fun playing it. I wanted nothing more than for the sequel to come out. Despite how much I’ve changed in the near decade since loading the game up for the first time, my anticipation for this sequel always stuck with me. 11-year-old me could never have seen the long and windy road to this point, full of hope and disappointment and everything in between. And now that I can actually play it, it brings me back to those years I spent playing video games as a kid: waking up on Christmas morning to a new game, bonding with my brothers over Mario, and making friends at school over Minecraft. This little indie game that took a while to come out has allowed me to remember what video games mean to me and how much they have affected my life.

If it isn’t already clear, I see video games as an art. They can tell magnificent stories, bring people together, and offer an escape from the real world. As a child, I fully embraced these aspects and played to my heart's content. Now that I’m an adult and have to focus on starting my career, I struggle to find the time to play video games as much as I used to. But it’s games like this one that I make time for and remember the meaning and magic that games brought to my younger years.

Like all other forms of art, video games take time to make. The release of Hollow Knight: Silksong is a testament to the sheer quality and power it has, as well as the medium as a whole. Playing this game brought me back to a simpler time and reminded me how important video games are to me. In the future, even as I further my career and I get less and less free time, I will fight for my few hours of time to play video games; it's what 11-year-old me would have wanted.