THE SILKPOSTS ARE DEAD, LONG LIVE SILKSONG
I’m going to be straight with you, I didn’t think this day would ever come. After what feels like a literal lifetime, a period filled with more lies, broken promises, and desperate fan memes than an entire season of professional wrestling, Hollow Knight: Silksong is finally coming out on September 4th. It’s real. I can almost taste the digital silk, and it tastes like sweet, sweet victory. The sequel to the indie darling Hollow Knight has been the most wish-listed game on Steam for years now, and the small Australian team behind it all, Team Cherry, dropped the news in a trailer today.
The Secret of Silence
So why the hell did it take six years to get here? According to the co-founders, Ari Gibson and William Pellen, there was no catastrophic mismanagement or developer burnout. The whole thing was apparently a "joyful process" for them. I know what you’re thinking: That sounds like some corporate bullshit, but they claim the delay was simply due to their meticulous nature and a desire to make the game they wanted. The core gameplay for the protagonist, Hornet, was designed to be slick and responsive from the get-go. As a result, the team found it easy to keep piling on new ideas, bosses, and gameplay systems, making the world just as big, if not bigger, than the original.
It’s almost a little too wholesome. Gibson even said he had to force himself to stop sketching new ideas because he realized if he didn’t, the game would take 15 years to finish. It seems their development process was just too much fun for its own good. They deliberately went radio silent after 2019 because they felt like they’d just be bothering people with repeated "we're still working on it" updates. They also wanted to be extra careful about spoilers, since discovering secrets was a huge part of the first game's charm. They thought it would only be a year or two, but it, well, wasn’t.
The Perks of Being a Bestseller
In a world of late-stage capitalism and endless corporate layoffs, it’s refreshing to hear that money was never an issue for this small team. The original Hollow Knight has sold a staggering 15 million copies to date. All that sweet, sweet cash allowed them to work on the sequel indefinitely without worrying about funding. This is a studio that once lived on free leftover sandwiches from a neighbor's office. Now they have the luxury of taking their time to perfect their craft, a privilege lost on most of the industry. The downside, of course, is that they apparently never felt the need to use project management software like Jira, which they didn't even recognize by name. Good for them. Seriously.
The Future is Now, Or Something
Even with the September 4th release date looming, Team Cherry seems to have no plans of slowing down. They're already cooking up ambitious plans for future content additions to the game. So while we all get to finally play the damn thing, the developers are already happily toiling away on more weird, wonderful, and probably soul-crushingly difficult things for us to find. Gibson says the most interesting thing now is figuring out what they can add next. It seems like we all get to eat, but they’re not done cooking yet. Godspeed, you magnificent bastards.