At time of writing, it has been 2,395 days since Silksong was first announced on February 14, 2019. In the years since, spanning stretches of developer silence and shifting release windows, the Hollow Knight sequel was steadily warped into an inscrutable object of collective fascination. Silksong was less an upcoming game than it was a singularity of attention, continually accreting interest while emitting nothing back.
And now it’s out. You can play it. There are bugs in it and you can fight them.
After spending so much time experiencing the wait for Silksong as a shared fever dream, it only felt right for those of us playing it to pool our initial reactions in a collected package: Does it meet the expectations of our Hollow Knight diehards? What does it do for those of us who didn’t play the original? How does it feel to play something that you were never entirely sure existed? Are the bugs cool?
Silksong, after six years, is here. Here are our first thoughts.
Team Cherry is hitting harder than ever—but maybe it could pull a punch or two?
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Silksong’s hard as nails (I’m glad I stole that pun before anyone else could write it), but it’s also peak. Team Cherry hasn’t missed a step, still miraculously making an excellent metroidvania with a rich, textured, hauntingly-cosy atmosphere—and even though the diagonal air-spike took me a moment to get used to, Hornet moves so fluidly I’d find it hard to go back.
My only real complaint is that the game can feel cruel.
Compared to the knight, her mobility turns most fights into frantic melees, with enemy attack patterns forcing you to invent new fighting-game style combo routes on the fly.
My only real complaint is that the game can feel cruel, at times; pouring all of your upgrades, fast-travel unlocking, and map-getting funds into a single resource that can be lost upon death is a downright sadistic move. Every time I start getting close to saving up for an item, I have to blow 80 more orbs on a goddamn Bell Beast route. Which is only bearable because the Bell Beast is such a good boy, yes he is.
These prayer beads are so dang scarce, I can’t just leave them on the ground if I wind up somewhere stupid; I have to hard-commit to that stupid idea or consign myself to grinding bugs to make up for my hubris, and that doesn’t feel great.
But also, there are machines that convert your beads into stringed consumables that persist between deaths, and I’m starting to get more beads a mere handful of hours in, so that might just be a silk issue.
… Also, screw the Hunter’s March. That area sucks to be in, and I wanna have words with whoever put that bench there.
Silksong’s first notes ring a little hollow
Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: Feel free to dismiss me as a skeptical outsider—I’m mainly checking out Silksong to stay abreast of what’s popular—but is it legally permissible for me to say I’m not enjoying Steam’s most-wanted game?
I don’t think the movement and platforming (fundamental facets of this genre) are particularly interesting in the first couple of hours, especially compared to other platformers I’ve played extensively like Spelunky 2, Dead Cells, and older Metroids. I’m guessing the movement techniques become more intricate as you unlock stuff, but if Mario taught us anything, it’s that the basic moving and jumping should be joyful and something you want to repeat infinitely. I’m eagerly waiting for something like the Symphony of the Night backpedal move to show up.
Also: acknowledging fully that I’m only fighting basic enemies so far, do they get more interesting than this?
Silksong isn’t surprising so far, but I didn’t expect it to be
Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: To Evan’s point, I think Hollow Knight’s reputation has made it hard to approach Silksong without some warped expectations. Hollow Knight wasn’t great because it introduced some radical new take on the metroidvania, but because it’s the best-ever execution of the meat & potatoes version of this type of game. A game world that just keeps expanding and surprising—randomly breaking through a wall to discover the hidden fiefdom of The Hive, falling into the freaky Deepnest and being horrifically lost in the dark—and combat that’s quite simple in terms of inputs but far more demanding of skill and patience than its predecessors.
I can already tell the world is going to be huge.
From the first few hours, Silksong seems to be following the same path. Meeting pilgrims in the very first town who speak of the treacherous ascent to their holy ground foreshadows how far we have to go; I can already tell the world is going to be huge and connect up (both literally and narratively) in some fascinating ways that will make the traversing this world far more meaningful than, say, Dead Cells’ randomly generated sequences of rectangular killboxes. But Silksong doesn’t have the immediate juice of picking up a modifier for your fists in Dead Cells and then suddenly everything you punch exploding into glorious gibs. The juice is instead delivered via IV, slowly across dozens of hours, until at some point you realize you can no longer live without the raw chemical potency condensed from the guts of the 10,000 bugs you’ve slain while exploring the entire labyrinthine kingdom.
Anyway, what I’m saying is Silksong isn’t blowing my mind either. But it does seem very good.
Silksong’s perfected the metroidvania—which is why its popularity is so odd
Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: Silksong just feels like… more Hollow Knight to me. Sure, it’s enhanced, it’s prettier, and it’s certainly harder than the original, but under that shell it’s fundamentally the same game: the same slowly spreading map that infects your brain and has you pondering whether it’s worth sleeping when you could just explore Pharloom till the crack of dawn instead. After work yesterday, I spent six hours playing Silksong, which tells you something about its ability to rabbit hole players.
Team Cherry has really perfected the formula at this point. The only thing I find unusual is how popular the game is. Don’t get me wrong, it’s extremely good, but I was already a big fan of the metroidvania genre. Seeing this level of success from a metroidvania feels pretty noteworthy to me, especially as it likely speaks to the game’s ability to draw in new players who might never have even tried one.
Silksong’s hype and success is a strange kind of sorcery.
I played Hollow Knight on release back in 2017, but if you asked me then if I ever thought its sequel would have half a million concurrent players on Steam, there’s no way I would’ve believed you. Another extremely good metroidvania (and one my favorite games), Rainworld, also launched back in 2017—within one month of Hollow Knight. But their comparative success is stark, which feels strange to me as someone who holds them equally beloved.
Silksong’s hype and success is a strange kind of sorcery, and it’s honestly hard to tell if this will set a precedent or if it only happened because it’s been memed and hyped up for so long. Do I think it’s revolutionary for the genre from what I’ve played so far? No, though I’m open to being convinced by the remainder. Do I think it’s a great metroidvania fans of Hollow Knight will adore? Absolutely, and that’s all I ever wanted from Silksong.
I have never in my life been this thrilled with bugs
Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: I’m coming to Silksong as a Hollow Knight neophyte. I didn’t play the first game because I’ve always been incompetent with any kind of side-scrolling; the bugs seemed fascinating, but I was convinced the 2D combat would kick my ass. After watching Silksong hopefuls spiral ever deeper into their prerelease fugue state, however, I committed myself to jumping in when the day finally came. All the Silksanity had to come from somewhere, right?
Well, the day is here, the 2D combat is kicking my ass, and I’m fascinated by the bugs. Nobody could have foreseen this.
I appreciate how Silksong plays, even if it’s not entirely my speed—during the rare moments that my hands aren’t flailing against being confined to a meager two dimensions, I’m able to pull off some magnificent combat acrobatics. But however graceful Hornet is when she’s not placed directly onto lethal hazards, it probably wouldn’t be enough to keep my attention without Team Cherry’s ability to craft a compelling cadre of bugfolk. And I’m not even a bug guy. Ask anyone. I’m bug-neutral at best.
Silksong’s vibes are excellent. Both Hornet and Pharloom’s occupants alike are written, designed, and animated with a rich specificity of character, with mannerisms and stylistic quirks that believably imply particularities of habit and history. These are bugs from places! Places where things have happened! I’m repeatedly hurling Hornet into the meat grinder of my own incompetence just so I can enjoy the privilege of finding a new shelled weirdo to exchange a half-dozen lines of dialogue with.
I could’ve been thinking about bugs like these for years! We rob ourselves of countless joys.
How are you feeling about your first hours in Pharloom? Let us know how Silksong’s landing for you in the comments.
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