Hollow Knight: Silksong, the sequel to 2017’s classic Hollow Knight, was supposed to have been released around about now. It hasn’t, and now it won’t be either, because the team have decided to take some extra time making the game as good as it can be.
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The following statement was released on Twitter earlier today:
Hey gang, just a quick update about Silksong. We had planned to release in the 1st half of 2023, but development is still continuing. We’re excited by how the game is shaping up, and it’s gotten quite big, so we want to take the time to make the game as good as we can. Expect more details from us once we get closer to release.
That’s fine! Take all the time you need! It’s been six years, what’s another few months to, as they say, “make the game as good as we can”. Especially with the news that it’s all “gotten quite big”.
To recap, we reviewed the original in 2018, a little while after its initial release, and found it to be very good:
Team Cherry has kept working on Hollow Knight since it launched last February, putting out patches and free DLC that add new dialogue, characters, enemy behavior, bosses, abilities, and story missions, all of which greatly expand the world of Hallownest. Several of the bosses I defeated on Switch weren’t in the game at launch, and only in one case—a beehive area where the trek from the save-spot to the boss room was overly long and treacherous—was the addition at all inelegant. I’ve since polished off almost everything in the main game aside from a couple of collectable charms and a handful of optional rematches against juiced-up versions of the main game’s bosses. Team Cherry is working on more free DLC for later this year, which will add even more new bosses, enemies, areas, characters, and even a new game mode. I can’t wait.
The world of video games has a pronounced bias toward the new. Every year it seems like dozens of games push things forward both technologically and creatively. Hollow Knight is not one of those games, and in fact consistently avoids chasing innovation for its own sake. It does not reinvent; it refines. It does not rebuild; it polishes. It contains few ideas that I haven’t seen in other games, yet it feels fresh all the same due to how much care has been put into every character, every battle, every frame of animation, and every square inch of its massively minuscule subterranean civilization.