Where Is Hollow Knight: Silksong?
It’s been over two and half years with barely any news – where is Silksong?
In February 2019, we finally got a look at the long-awaited Hornet DLC for Hollow Knight, with a trailer that not only blew the minds of hardcore fans but also revealed that the DLC had morphed into a new full-length game. With only one more gameplay reel at E3 2019 and no other footage since, Silksong has all but gone under the radar, leaving many fans frustrated and confused. So where is Silksong, and why is it taking so long?
An Indie Team
Team Cherry is an incredibly small team, even by indie standards. Ari Gibson, William Pellen and Jack Vine make up the entirety of the company and are responsible for almost everything in Silksong, barring the soundtrack. Another thing that’s unusual about Hollow Knight, and almost certainly Silksong, is just how much content is in the game. Reaching the true ending took me 65 hours on my first playthrough, and when you compare that to the length of an average indie metroidvania game (about 10 hours), it’s easy to see just how much of a task developing Silksong is.
Not that Team Cherry aren’t up to it, quite the opposite, with Ari Gibson stating that they enjoy adding more content to their games, even embracing the ‘scope creep’ that plagues so many indie projects.
Scope Creep
Scope creep is a famous problem amongst indie devs – the curse of an ever-expanding list of additions to the game, spiralling out of control until the game reaches a point at which it can never be finished by such a small team. Instead of avoiding it, Ari, William and Jack instead relish scope creep, building their games outwards constantly whilst making sure that at any time they could take what they have, iron out the bugs, and ship the game. This is why Hollow Knight is so damn large, and why even after release, a mountain of free bonus content was continually added to the game.
There’s no doubt that Team Cherry will carry on this workflow during Silksong’s development, and it’s probably the biggest factor in the game’s now 3 year long period in the oven.
Success
The development of Hollow Knight was a rough one. The team struggled financially, eating poorly and being propped up by those closest to them. Even whilst suffering through dire financial straits, Team Cherry took 3 years to develop Hollow Knight, most likely working at mach speed to finish and ship the game. Now that Hollow Knight has sold over 2.8 million units (as of February 2019), it’s needless to say that Team Cherry won’t be feeling any financial pressure to get Silksong on to the shelfs. If Hollow Knight took 3 years to develop, even with this pressure, how long will Silksong take? Four, five, six years?
Trust In Team Cherry
Team Cherry deserves our trust. Hollow Knight is a shining star of what indie games can be, and we should expect that Silksong will be the same. The team have proven themselves as one of the most talented small teams in the industry, and they deserve to take Silksong’s production at their own pace. Maybe we will have to wait another year or two for Silksong to finally come out, but as the meme says:
“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” – Shigeru Miyamoto
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