Hollow Knight: Silksong releases on September 4
Hollow Knight: Silksong finally has a release date. Team Cherry's sequel to the hit metroidvania will launch on September 4, 2025.
Hollow Knight was released 8 years ago, on February 24, 2017. The 2D action-platformer was a super hit, thanks to the hand-drawn art style, captivating music, fast-paced hard-as-nails combat, fun exploration, characters and story. Team Cherry's game was the perfect metroidvania for many.
In February 2019, the Australian Studio announced it was working on Silksong. "Silksong when?" became a meme because fans have been asking for the game's launch date forever. 7 years later, it feels surreal just to have a launch date, it's just 2 weeks away.
Jason Schreier's article on Bloomberg sheds more light on the development of Silksong. Hollow Knight sold 15 million copies. That's quite an achievement for an indie studio. Silksong was originally meant to be a small story expansion focussing on one of the game's characters, Hornet. But the project grew bigger, and the studio decided to make it into a new game.
Silksong's plans were for a smaller world than Hollow Knight's, but the sequel features multiple towns, each with their own quests. The game wasn't delayed because of external factors, or internal challenges. Team Cherry kept adding more things to the game like elaborate bosses, gameplay systems and more interactivity, and polishing the game. It sounds like they were really enjoying themselves. The developers said they never read comments and memes on Reddit, YouTube, but appreciated that fans liked the game so much. They even joked that they might ruin the fun by releasing the game.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is set in the fallen insect kingdom of Pharloom! with a gigantic map to explore. You will be able to craft various tools to help you on your journey, solve quests and ancient mysteries, and engage in lethal acrobatic action. The game features over 200 types of enemies, over 40 bosses.
Watch the official Hollow Knight: Silksong trailer on YouTube.
Hollow Knight: Silksong will be released on September 4 for PC, macOS, Linux, (on Steam, GOG, day one on Game Pass), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.
Will you play the game?
I probably won’t play it. I mostly stick to 3D over the shoulder type games. Fallout, Clair Obcur, Crysis.
It looks a lot like Little Big Planet but with more combat from a quick look on steam.
I also don’t see the appeal of 2D sidescroller games today. They were appealing to me when I played on the Chinese fake NES console in 1998-2004 when I was a kid before I had a computer, but after that, I could only tolerate 2D isometric games like Age of Empires 2, Diablo 2, Heroes 3 and 3D games.
There is one very popular game, which I never tried, because it was a 2D sidescroller – MapleStory Online, I don’t see the appeal of that perspective anymore.
But I never liked 3D over-the-shoulder, it feels so forced and stupid. I prefer regular 3rd person games like Vanilla WoW, TES3 Morrowind where your character is centered and the camera is slightly panned above the character for better visibility. Over-the-shoulder seems like a cringy new fad to me, because it’s more limiting than traditional 3rd person. And I only enjoy it for fantasy games, the only ones I could tolerate like this was Mass Effect 1-3 and GTA5, only because the games and their story was so good. But if it’s a game set in modern times or futuristic, I prefer 1st person, it feels way more immersive.
I’m trying to finish Hollow Knight, the game is really difficult. But also kinda cute.
The sequel looks like it could be even more fast-paced, and hard. I don’t think I have the reflexes for that.