Hollow Knight: Silksong was one of the most anticipated games of the decade. Aside from GTA VI, it’s probably the most attention and discussion a game’s development has received before launch. Will and Ari, the two primary developers at Team Cherry, said there weren’t any hiccups or snags in development. It took seven years because they were having too much fun. They could’ve gone another seven, they said. I’ll link that article in the description because it’s a fascinating interview.
The game is out, and now we get to have as much fun with it as Will and Ari did for the past seven years. It’s a different kind of fun, of course. They were sketching concepts, writing dialogue and hatching ideas for new areas. They made a joke about a character or enemy at breakfast and had a playable concept by dinner. I can see how infectious that development energy must have felt. I’m glad they finally got the game to a state they were happy releasing, and I don’t fault them for the time it took to reach that point. I could’ve waited another seven years if it meant these two were thriving and delivering the best game they could make.
That said, how does Silksong fair in the real world after a near-decade of being an idea? It’s unreasonable to expect the game to be twice as good as Hollow Knight just because they took about twice as long to make it. For the development of the original Will and Ari were eating stale, donated sandwiches from the office beside their studio. They were crunching against a very real threat of bankruptcy if the game didn’t start making them money. Nobody should have to work in those conditions, and such conditions will always lead to a “faster turnaround.”
With all the money in the world for such a small team, Silksong could’ve taken thirty years without them running out of money. That left them with an effectively infinite amount of time to make the game they wanted, and I was so excited to see that vision in action. Every year the game went without releasing, only excited me more. I wondered what they could be doing, what ideas they could be implementing. As a diehard fan of the original, I wanted them to cook until the buffet was done.
Like I said, I didn’t expect the game to be twice the size of Hollow Knight. That would’ve been unreasonable. …but it probably is twice the size, and it’s definitely twice the length.
Montage of death and action.
Silksong sees Hornet stumbling into a new kingdom with new threats around every corner. While Hallownest was a dead Kingdom being animated by disease, Pharloom is very much alive. Something is lurking in the shadows, and it feels like you’re always being watched by a fierce predator. From the Hunter’s March to the Citadel, the kingdom of Pharloom is more dangerous and cunning than Hallownest could ever dream.
This becomes painfully clear to the player when enemies regularly deal double damage in the very first area. Hollow Knight had a few giant foes that could deal two masks of damage with their slow, heavy attacks. Most areas didn’t have these types of enemies, and it was obvious when something posed a bigger threat to the player.
Silksong hands out double-damage attacks like it’s candy. Random spiders crawling in the shadows can deal as much damage as Absolute Radiance in the first game. Almost every enemy has some critical attack that deals two masks to Hornet, and every encounter has a few that’ll deal that much punishment from bumping into them. It’s a bloodbath far beyond any challenge the original threw at you.
In addition to the boosted damage, every enemy moves with more strategy and cunning than before. Even inconsequential fodder will dodge, parry and flip around Hornet with a surprising will to live. Nothing is guaranteed in this game, and you have to fight tooth and nail for every strike against your opponents.
The residents of Pharloom aren’t the only threat. It feels like the world itself is trying to eat you. Multiple environmental hazards deal double damage for falling into them, the most basic quality of life necessities can be locked behind large quantities of the game’s currency, and the few things that are supposed to be safe might just kill you too.
The moment I really came to understand Silksong was right here. I’d been limping my way through the Hunter’s March for half an hour at that point, fighting for my life around every corner as I tried to map out the sprawling area in my mind. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew I’d gone pretty damn far since my last bench. Benches serve as checkpoints, fully healing the player when they rest, and it’s where Hornet goes when she’s defeated in combat. I didn’t want to have to run through the Hunter’s March again after fighting so hard the first time, so when I found a sign pointing to a bench, I felt such relief.
After finding the bench I was so exhausted. In my bedroom alone for no audience, I said the words “Gimme a break, this was such a long stretch without a bench.” Just as relief set in, I was struck by a trap set by the area’s ruthless enemies. The bench itself was a trap. It doesn’t heal you, it doesn’t set your respawn location, it just hurts you. That was the moment I understood Silksong. It’s not trying to be fun. It’s not trying to be enjoyable. It is maxing out atmosphere and world-building at the expense of everything else a game is supposed to be.
Silksong was not fun. I did not have a good time. I still think it was an incredible game. Can these statements all be true? Is it a game’s job to be fun?
My first playthrough took about fifty hours to get the true ending. I played the game every waking moment I wasn’t pooping or working for over a week. I was in a near-constant state of stress, anxiety, and fury for Team Cherry from start to finish. I cursed Will and Ari’s names, posted several joker-level rants on bluesky about various moments in the game, and generally had a no-good-terrible time with the game. One thought kept bouncing around my mind like a DVD logo. “This isn’t fun. I’m not having fun. This isn’t even supposed to be fun.”
The game’s currencies aren’t particularly balanced. If you need a lifesaving bench, you’d better have rosaries to spare. If you died and lost your rosaries, guess you’re gonna die again. You can tie your rosary beads into strings which stay with Hornet even after she dies, but you lose about 20% of your beads during the conversion.
The second currency comes from most types of enemies, bone shards. You use these shards to craft lethal tools and weapons for combat. Hornet can only craft these tools at a bench, which is punishing enough. But if you run out of shards, you can’t make more. This means you’ll continue to craft the tools at your bench every time you die, but they eventually run out. If you fail an encounter enough times in a row, you won’t have access to some of your most essential survival tools anymore. This leaves you with two choices, continue grinding the fight without these powerful options, or leave the area entirely and grind shards for 10-20 minutes. Because that’s fun, right? It’s like the rain in Breath of the Wild. Sorry if you were doing something, but you have to leave now.
It’s a cruel system that punishes players who are struggling the most with the game’s brutal difficulty. Players who could benefit the most from these tools are paradoxically barred from using them. Players who are skilled enough to avoid death will enjoy these tools in every encounter, because they won’t ever run out. The rich get richer, and the poor suffer. That’s not me being dramatic, I think that’s literally the point. Pharloom is a cruel, inequitable society where most bugs toil in the mines until they die, and a select few enjoy the benefits of high society. Hornet is an outsider, she’s not welcome here. Everything is designed from the very start to be harder for her, and the game does this very well.
Hallownest felt like an empty husk the Knight could traverse with minimal resistance. Pharloom is designed by Team Cherry to kill you at every turn, bleed your resources dry, and frustrate you. It’s not supposed to be fun. The fun comes later. The only “fun” to be had in Silksong is through mastering its systems. When you die to a boss enough times, eventually you can avoid its punishing double-damage attacks. When you’ve run through an area ten, twenty, fifty times, you can avoid the hazards and don’t even need benches anymore. Just like the pilgrims scraping their rotting shells against the mountain, the player’s only salvation is in suffering. You’re supposed to fail hundreds of times, you are not supposed to win.
And much like the number of pilgrims in the Citadel is a mere fraction of those at the bottom, Silksong seems genuinely unconcerned with whether or not the individual player is capable of reaching the top. Basic accessibility features like difficulty sliders, damage multipliers or even a “story mode” that trivializes the game’s combat is nowhere to be found here. When the original Hollow Knight lacked these features, I gave the developers some slack. It’s basically two dudes making an entire Metroidvania, and I understand how labor-intensive these features can be. With Silksong, it’s different. They had the time and resources to implement basic accessibility and quality of life options, and they chose not to. This is intentional, and I find that fascinating.
This might be a controversial take, but I don’t think all art has the inherent responsibility of accessibility. We shouldn’t limit what an artist is allowed to create. Should a painter only stick to contrasts that can be appreciated by every type of color blindness? I don’t think so. Some things aren’t for everybody, and that’s okay. While I think the general increase of accessibility options in gaming is important, and in general most games should be accessible to the most players possible, I think there’s merit in some experiences being exactly what they are, even if it means leaving some players behind.
I also think those players who have been left behind have the right to be upset about that, and boy does Silksong leave players behind. The conversation gets a bit dicey when you bring money into the picture. Silksong isn’t a piece of esoteric art on display that you can either understand or ignore, it’s a $20 product that’s intentionally inaccessible and makes no compromises with its players. I don’t think it’s dramatic to say a great deal of people who bought Silksong will never be able to beat it, not for a lack of dedication or passion, but because they’ll never be able to perform at the level Team Cherry is demanding for success. If you paid $20 for Silksong and can’t even get past Act 1, that sucks. It really does, and I’m sorry for the trouble. I wish you had a difficulty slider, an invincible story mode button, or some other way to appreciate the beautiful art, story and music without putting yourself through all the trial and error the game demands. But at the time of writing, the only real difficulty adjustment Team Cherry has made is reducing these worm hazards to one mask instead of two. Really? Really? This hazard was the only place the game went too far? I really don’t understand.
Silksong’s world, characters and story are magical. It’s a story about growth, survival, and being the strongest. The game makes you earn that feeling, it doesn’t just hand the gratification over. To beat the threats of Pharloom, you need to genuinely struggle against them. It makes the victory sweet, but it also thins the herd. It’s not a game that’s concerned with getting everyone across the finish line, and it’s not a game that’s too worried about being “fun.”
There are a ton of fun moments! Hornet’s an awesome character and seeing her interact with the wacky residents of Pharloom can be a ton of fun. Slapping weird kissy bugs, striking a pervert watching her in the bath, there’s no shortage of comedy and levity. But you only get these moments if you struggle through the rest of the game.
I’ve seen a lot of people I really respect saying this is a good thing. That in a market with so many games to choose from, it’s fine for a game to prioritize atmosphere, growth and challenge ahead of basic quality of life features. The lack of these things is intentional, I’m not arguing that. Team Cherry could’ve had a baby mode where enemies deal half damage, it probably would’ve taken a week or two of testing tops. Fans of the difficulty point out that it’s… the point? That the Citadel is meant to grind most bugs down, that you need to feel Hornet’s desperate struggle for survival firsthand, that it’s a good thing you’re having so much trouble with the game.
At the end of it all, I can tentatively agree. I concede a certain level of satisfaction at the top of the mountain. I can look around and admire all the hard work it took to get here. I feel accomplished, to an extent. But I remember how I felt on the climb up. I remember my distressed Bluesky threads, my raving monologues to my roommate about basic game design, and how much I just wanted the game to be over. The motivation that kept me going at the end of Act 3 wasn’t a desire to surpass the challenges before me. It was a desperate need to be finished with Silksong. I didn’t want to win, I wanted the game to be over. I wanted to be able to say I finished, that I didn’t quit… but ultimately I wanted the game to stop. These are recreational activities at the end of the day. I think there are fewer damning things you can feel about a game than wishing for it to be over already. And God did I want this bullshit to be over.
The encounters are well designed, but immensely frustrating. The Bilewater combat arena is genuinely ridiculous. If you don’t know about the hidden bench, it’s like three minutes of running through the game’s most hazardous area before you get another try. Even with the secret bench it takes tricky platforming and three minutes of fodder combat before the boss appears. I wanted to post my winning clip of this arena to Bluesky as a celebration, but it was eight minutes long. That’s too much for one fight! This took like four hours.
The Coral Tower can die in a fire too. Four levels of fodder combat before the boss appears, are you kidding? There’s a checkpoint before layer four, if you even notice it’s there, but that’s still over thirteen minutes of combat you have to retry until you get there. GOD I hated that entire area. I didn’t feel satisfied when it was over, I was just relieved I didn’t have to play it anymore. I’m sure that’s how Hornet feels too, so if you’re prioritizing immersion above all else, mission accomplished.
I know some of this is on me. I played the game a lot without taking breaks. I didn’t want anything to be spoiled, so I kinda barreled through at mach speed. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as frustrating if I’d just taken more breaks. I understand that half the responsibility is mine to bear. But that doesn’t change the root of the issue here. I truly, genuinely believe Hollow Knight: Silksong doesn’t care if you’re having fun, and it doesn’t care if you win. It is what it is. Beat it or don’t. But it’s not going to help. I can make peace with that, but I don’t have to like it. Tensions are still high, I’m writing this script eight days after launch. Maybe I’ll feel differently in a month, I really hope I will. I hope I’ll be able to beat this game on Steel Soul as effortlessly as the original someday. But these feelings still matter. The frustration I felt for these fifty hours of gameplay will always be my first experience with the game. And let’s be honest, most people only play a game once. Maybe I’ll master it, but this negative experience is all most people are going to get. And that’s the point? I just can’t wrap my head around it. That’s the entire point. You’re supposed to feel this way? If this is really how I was supposed to feel, then I don’t know how to feel about that. I loved Silksong, but I did not have fun with it.
I know these were scattered thoughts, it’s not really a review of the game. Just an exploration of some raw experiences I had on my first playthrough. I don’t want it to sound like I hate the game or anything, maybe in six months I’ll release a glowing video about how everything clicked into place for me. Maybe this will end up my favorite game of all time, the original is definitely a contender for that role. I hope I feel that way someday. I want to feel that way now. I just wish the game could meet me in the middle. I wish the game wanted me to like it.
Thanks so much for listening to these feelings, everyone. I hope there’s a productive discussion in the comments. Please refrain from personal insults or generic “get good” platitudes. Those will just be ignored like the bait they are. But if you think I’m wrong and have substance to offer, please share you thoughts below. I kind of want to be wrong, I’d love to see the light. Maybe there’s something I’m just not seeing. Maybe a second playthrough will completely recontextualize the game, and I’ll love it even more than I already do. But remember the Pilgrims we lost on the climb. There will never be a second playthrough for those who didn’t survive the first. Thanks for watching.