Hollow Knight: Silksong has officially buzzed across the thin red line between “entirely hypothetical object of mass hysteria” and “existing videogame that you can play on your PC”. Team Cherry’s new metroidvania is live now on Steam and GOG. You can actually buy it with your actual money. Should you buy it? Sadly, I don’t yet have a Hollow Knight: Silksong review for you, because Team Cherry have decided not to distribute any codes in advance. If you’re reading a Silksong review right now, the reviewer is either a worryingly close confidant of the developers or a filthy bloody liar or some other, totally innocent third thing.
The absence of early review code reflects the fact that Silksong already has more Hype than most messiahs, partly thanks to Team Cherry’s long silence about gameplay specifics and Silksong’s release date, after an initial flurry of publicity in 2019. Only GTA 6 has attracted this many conspiracy theorists. Team Cherry need attention from reviewers at this point like a drowning person needs a glass of water.
A lot of the Hype has arrived care of the Silksong subreddit, who are in both a celebratory and a mourning mood today. “God help me I don’t know where to start,” writes one of the founding moderators, zoravy. “Thank you everyone for the insanity and fun I never could’ve predicted when starting this place up in 2021, this has genuinely been one of the funnest places to be on all of the internet, and its been an honour to see every bit of it, from the start.”
It’s certainly been a journey. Wired have published a good piece about the meta-gaming of Silksong anticipation, with subreddit subscribers not just fomenting speculation about release details but actively making things up and trolling each other. Major events include the “sacrificing” of certain users to Silksong – that is, they were banned from the subreddit, and only permitted to return after launch. There was also a running joke about fake copies being distributed by “Snosk”, a fully manifested version of one of Hollow Knight’s hidden bosses. To this, add my own reporting about that cake.
Hollow Knight, of course, is a game of copious, wriggling lore, so all of this roleplaying is entirely appropriate. If only I could persuade the dang Final Fantasy 9 remake rumour-mongers to think this way.
We may not have a review as yet, but we do have James’s hands-on verdict from Gamescom. “It’s a little quicker, a little more dynamic, and to these fingers, a little more difficult than the first Hollow Knight,” he wrote. “But it entirely preserves that tight-as-a-drum feel of the original’s sword swishing, and deploys it against insectoid baddies that challenge and frustrate in practically identical ways.”
We also, rather terrifyingly, have the prospect of Silksong DLC. For context, Silksong itself began life as a humble Hollow Knight DLC pack, before it transcended those mortal confines and levelled up into a piece of internet phantasmagoria.
Are you buying today? Good luck to you. Let us know how you get on.
