On the evening of Thursday 4th September (or early on Friday the 5th in most Australia), Steam, a large online gaming retailer, went down. So was Nintendo’s eShop. And then the PlayStation Store. And it all had something to do with the release of a small Australian-made game called Hollow Knight: Silksong.
You may have heard of it.
The game, a sequel to the acclaimed Metroidvania Hollonite, stars the warrior Princess Hornet as she travels through the mysterious kingdom of insect-like beings. At this location, she was captured and brought in for unknown reasons.
It’s not an easy journey – the exact opposite, and despite the gorgeous art that characterizes these dangerous places, it is absolutely cruel – but she has to fight to the top of it, in order to find a reason for her to be here or to save the people of this haunted land.
The expression of Hornet defeating steam is Nintendo’s eShop and PlayStation Store. Credit: Team Cherry.
So, but why is Silkson so popular?
The explanation sounds fascinating. However, there are many games that sound attractive. They don’t all crash retailers of online gaming. And most notably, when games do, they are rarely an Australian indie game that retailed for $19.99 (it’s 29.50 od).
So what gives?
Well, if you’ve never heard of Silkson before it was released, you need to understand the vibe around it.
When Studio Team Cherry released their previous game, Hollow Knight (2017), it was almost instantly coated with universal acclaim. Its gameplay is glaring and easy to pick up, but it is difficult to master and there are a lot of diverse challenges for players to test their mastery.
And all this was set on a background of great music, a lovingly hand-drawn environment, silky smooth animation. It was a good game, and a few years after its release, the creators added it more – nonetheless, nevertheless, they introduced new bosses and some special challenges, and added it in a series of DLCs that continued to talk about the community.
Without warning, the studio dropped the trailer for the new game they were working on in 2019. It shows Hollow Knight’s popular boss, Hornet, travelling a land that is completely unknown to even the most devoted fans. A mountain of hype soon follows, doubling the engaging art, animation and music that has characterized Hollow Knight.
It suggests that there is a new mechanic, and suggests a story tied to its predecessor mechanic (still very different). Soon after that trailer, Team Cherry dropped a demo from the live event and some art and music. It looked refined and ready to play. Everyone was hoping to wait up to 1-2 years.
No one knew it would take six years to play.
It’s unlikely that Cherry from the studio team had planned to make us wait so long, but what’s great takes time. And this is really great.
Hollow Knight is a masterpiece, so of course the same thing is needed (credit: Studio Team Cherry).
Cherry, the studio team, continued to seal her lips. We never promised an exact date. What was informed was primarily material from major platforms (like Nintendo’s director) and was drib and drib, and was by no means opaque.
Following the trailer, Silkson fans quickly pulled away from the Hollow Knight, showing off an incredible feat of flexibility through the execution of evil challenges, random risers devised with evil intentions, and truly ridiculous things. Like Speedrun trying to cut out all the grass on the huge map of the game. Or, mods that turn the entire game into a platform gauntlet are even more difficult than the game’s original and disliked platform gauntlets.
The hype for this game has become a bit of a meme in itself, joking about putting on clown make-up before Nintendo’s in-person despite the wait and lack of information (because they were clowns to expect specific news).
It was all randomly banned with the idea of carrying out a mock sacrifice modeled on the Silksong subreddit and bringing the release date closer to selected members.
I’m careful as they sacrificed the moderator two months before the actual release date. Something.
Credit: Team Cherry.
After a recent short, in-person visual from Nintendo, the studio has announced an imminent release date, two weeks apart. I think we’ll be able to see the explosion of hype again when Rockstar decides to release the GTA VI.
And it crashed all important online retailers as my friends crashed as a modest Australian studio released a demonic popular game.
Credit: Team Cherry.
Is Silkson worth a six-year wait?
I might be a bit biased, as I had to take some time to play it to write this article, but yes, Silkson is great.
It’s sometimes unforgiving to the point that it may be a little too difficult. It’s a bit inconvenient for those looking for casual play.
If you’re not yet, I’d probably recommend getting Hollonite first.
But all those years ended up making beautiful, vast games. The gameplay is smooth and the bosses are neatly diverse. The art, music and story that captured people’s imagination when the first trailer was dropped is still gorgeous. Only time can tell if it passes like Hollow Knight did, but for now it certainly lives on that ridiculous amount of hype.
If you want to buy now, there’s good news. SteamStore is backed up.
Team Cherry’s featured header image.
