Exploring Hollow Knight: Silksong, Team Cherry’s sharply refined sequel to a modern classic

By Jen Simpkins

Game Hollow Knight: Silksong 

Developer/publisher Team Cherry 

Format PC, Switch 

Release TBA kingdon

T

Gibson says they’ve perhaps leant slightly more into detailing combat over platforming, due to heavy Hornet’s reduced “hang time” in the air, and her natural huntress proficiencies – but we see Pellen navigate tricky crumbling platforms in our demo, and the ones pictured look as though they may move as part of a mechanism

The world is terrifying, and beautiful. In mossy, humid groves, glowing spores sway in the air; winged beetles perch on the walls like razor-mawed parrots, suckling moisture out of the lichen. Lakes of lava bubble thickly below an old town built of bone. Our footsteps ring out across a chamber lined with the husks of ancient bells – at the end of it, we spy an unfortunate creature struggling in a silk cocoon, keening softly. Eventually, we find the means to free it. And then it pounces.

To enter into Team Cherry’s twisting worlds is to enter into a kind of dance. A dangerous one: you might put your best foot forward, only to have it gleefully bitten off. And therein lies the thrill. The sharpest warriors quickly learn to accommodate a Hollow Knight world as an unpredictable partner, whose fickle moods and sense of humour make it feel as if it’s alive – watching your every move with quiet interest, and preparing its response.

This much is certain: Ari Gibson and William Pellen are modern masters of worldbuilding. The 2017 release of the now-cult hit Hollow Knight – a Metroidvania that cast you as a tiny masked bug burrowing down into a subterranean labyrinth of hidden curiosities, unlikely friends and unforgettable showdowns – very much suggested it. And, from everything we’ve seen of Hollow Knight: Silksong so far, the sequel is set to confirm it. New location Pharloom is a ballroom of possibility, and already looks to be even more sophisticated than Hollow Knight’s Hallownest.

This is a kingdom ruled by – what else? – silk and song, where weary pilgrims journey to their destination carrying bundles of the precious thread, and gates are opened through paying melodic tributes (even the language of this world, scrawled on stone tablets, is designed to look like musical notation). And this time, you’re on your way up, up, up to a shining Citadel at the very top of the world.

Team Cherry’s co-directors, from left: artist and animator Ari Gibson; game designer William Pellen

“THE CORE OF THE WORLD IS MAINLY A REFLECTION OF HORNET: HER FIGHTING IS SO FAST… THAT IT CHANGES THE WAY ENEMIES NEED TO BE DESIGNED”

ARI GIBSON

Why? Well, partly because Silksong’s heroine just needs to stretch her legs. Gibson and Pellen have always let themselves be naturally guided by the worlds they build, almost discovering them as they go: as we have discussed in Edge before, their preferred method of development is a kind of controlled scope creep, with new areas and concepts unfurling out of others to create a place that feels as if it’s grown organically. “The way we approach these games,” Gibson says, “is that they are just a web of ideas, and notions, that all pass through this filter of bugs, and caves, and ruined civilisations and whatnot.” Pellen adds: “With destinations that we’re comfortable with not knowing what they are for a while – just building up or down to them.” Gibson nods, and he’s talking about himself and Pellen when he says: “The really interesting things are the things you sort of discover along the way.” But in an unexpected twist for Team Cherry, Pharloom’s sense of grandeur and scale, and the idea of upward momentum, came from Hornet. Yes, it turns out that dance between the adventurer and the world extends to development, too. “Hornet being taller changes everything”, Pellen tells us.

Originally, Silksong was planned as a DLC for the first game; a playable version of NPC Hornet – skilled hunter, princess-protector of Hallownest and scourge of Hollow Knight newcomers – was a stretch goal on the Kickstarter campaign. But when the time came to sit down and hash out exactly what this add-on adventure would look like, even before the release of Hollow Knight, Team Cherry soon realised that they would be making a second game, and a new world. While the claustrophobic Hallownest suited the diminutive Knight down to the ground, the bigger, weightier Hornet would feel much too constrained in it. “Hornet can travel so much faster, she can jump higher, she can mantle or clamber onto ledges, she’s generally more acrobatic,” Gibson says. “So the caves around her have to expand to accommodate her height.” And so does everything else: the complexity of her animations, the scale of the creatures that live in the world – even the way Pellen would design the basics of a platforming game, he tells us. “So the core of the world is mainly a reflection of Hornet: her fighting is so fast, and she’s so competent, that it changes the way enemies need to be designed, and her nature as a character is echoed in the way the world is set up.”