Over the night of Thursday, September 4th (or over the early hours of Friday, 5th for most Aussies), massive online game retailer Steam went down. So did the Nintendo eShop. And the PlayStation Store. And it all had something to do with the release of a little Australian-made game called Hollow Knight: Silksong.
You might have heard of it.
The sequel to the critically acclaimed Metroidvania Hollow Knight, the game stars the warrior princess Hornet as she journeys through a mysterious kingdom of insect-like beings. In this place, she was captured and brought for reasons unknown.
It’s not an easy journey – quite the opposite, it’s absolutely brutal, despite the gorgeous art that characterises these perilous places – but if she wants to find out why she’s here, or to save the people of this haunted land, she’ll need to fight her way to the top of it.
In game representation of Hornet defeating Steam, the Nintendo eShop and the Playstation Store. Credit: Team Cherry.
Okay, but why is Silksong so popular?
That description does sound engaging. But there are plenty of games that sound engaging. They don’t all crash online game retailers. And, most notably, when games do, they’re rarely Australian indie games that retail for $19.99 USD (that’s $29.50 AUD).
So, what gives?
Well, if you’d never heard of Silksong before its release, you’ll need to understand the atmosphere around it.
When Team Cherry released their previous game, Hollow Knight (2017), it was almost instantaneously coated with universal acclaim. Its gameplay was snappy, easy to pick up but difficult to master, with a huge variety of challenges for players to test that mastery against – from brutal bosses to that one platforming segment everyone whines about.
And all this was set to a background of amazing music, lovingly hand-drawn environments and silky smooth animation. It was a good game, and in the years after its release, the creators added even more to it – and for free, nonetheless – with a series of DLC which introduced new bosses and some extra-hard challenges, keeping the community talking.
Without warning, the studio dropped a trailer for a new game they had been working on back in 2019. It shows Hornet, a popular boss from Hollow Knight, journeying through lands completely unknown to even the most dedicated fans. Mountains of hype soon followed, with the game doubling down on the charming art, animation and music that characterised Hollow Knight,
It even suggested there would be new mechanics, and hinted at a story connected (yet very different) to that of its predecessor. Shortly after that trailer, Team Cherry dropped a demo for a live event, plus a few pieces of art and music. It looked polished, it looked ready to play; everyone expected a maximum wait of maybe 1-2 years.
No one knew that the game would take six years.
It’s unlikely Team Cherry planned to have us wait so long, but great things take time. And this is a very great thing.
Hollow Knight is a masterpiece, and so of course we want more of the same thing (credit: Team Cherry).
Team Cherry, for their part, kept their lips sealed – never promising an exact date. What information did come through was in dribs and drabs, mostly in materials from major platforms (like Nintendo Directs), and never opaque.
In the years following the trailer, soon-to-be Silksong fans picked Hollow Knight apart, performing some incredible feats of dexterity through devious challenge runs, randomisers devised with evil intent, and also just some really silly stuff. Like the speedrun where you try to cut all the grass across the game’s massive map. Or the mod that turns the whole game into a platforming gauntlet even harder than the game’s original, designed-to-be-hateful platforming gauntlet.
The hype for this game, despite the wait and lack of information, became in itself a bit of a meme, with fans joking about putting on clown makeup before every Nintendo Direct (because they were clowns for expecting concrete news).
It all culminated in the Silksong subreddit performing mock sacrifices, randomly banning selected members with the idea that it would bring the release date closer.
They sacrificed a moderator two months before the actual release date, I will note, so maybe it worked. Somehow.
Credit: Team Cherry.
A little while after a brief visual on a recent Nintendo Direct, the studio announced an imminent release date, two weeks away. The explosion in hype felt like the type of pressure-cooking tension I think we’ll only ever see again when Rockstar decides to release GTA VI.
And that, my friends, is how a modest Australian studio released a game so devilishly popular that it crashed just about every online retailer that matters.
Credit: Team Cherry.
Is Silksong worth the six-year wait?
I had to take time out of playing it to write this article, so I may be a little biased, but yes, Silksong is great.
It’s unforgiving at times, to the point that the difficulty might be a little too much – a little too inconvenient for those looking for casual play.
It’s probably a good idea to get Hollow Knight first, if you haven’t already.
But all those years went into making a beautiful and expansive game. The gameplay is smooth, the bosses are nicely varied; the art and music and story that captured people’s imagination when the first trailer dropped are still gorgeous. Only time will tell if it cuts through like Hollow Knight did, but for now, it’s certainly living up to that ridiculous amount of hype.
If you want to buy it now, I have good news: the Steam store is back up.
Featured header image from Team Cherry.