Hollow Knight Silksong Watchlist

Silksong is the highly anticipated follow up to 2017’s Hollow Knight. Originally slated as DLC for the original Hollow Knight, Silksong has grown in scale and scope and now will stand alone as a Hollow Knight Sequel. It’s a cross between Metroidvania and souls-like and is one of my most anticipated games of 2021.

Hornet replaces the Knight of the first game and Silksong starts when Hornet is imprisoned in the depths of the haunted kingdom of Pharloom. Hornet has to escape the prison by scaling the Citadel on her way to freedom. Hornet has a different set of abilities when compared to our Knight of the first game. Hornet’s bigger and also much more agile. Team Cherry recently gave an exclusive interview to Edge Magazine where co-directors Ari Gibson and William Pellen revealed some crucial details about the upcoming sequel.

“Hornet can travel so much faster, she can jump higher, she can mantle or clamber onto ledges, she’s generally more acrobatic. So the caves around her have to expand to accommodate her height.”

We can expect enemies to present more of a challenge. For example in Hollow Knight you could trick enemies into falling off platforms, however, Pellen reveals this about the upcoming Silksong: “The characters in this game, they’re kind of one step beyond that, where it doesn’t quite feel right for them to be that simple. Like, they have to have surprising ways of chasing you, keeping up with you, or evading your attacks.”

Hornet’s abilities are related to the Silk she can produce. Hornet gathers silk by hitting enemies, much like Knight from the first game gathers Souls. Hornet can also use her silk to heal, and she can do this much faster than Knight could. The silk takes centre stage in terms of attacks with Hornet’s abilities allow for traps and other tools to take down enemies in clever ways.

As well as a more advanced attack system, the quest system looks like it’s getting a thorough overhaul too, with quest logs and guides for Hornet to Hunt down Legendary Monsters, find lost treasure and more.

We don’t have a confirmed release date for Silksong, but then after a quiet 2020, the details seem to be leaking out more often with a recent big interview with Edge Magazine. Team Cherry has said the game will come out “when it’s ready” and no doubt 2020 took its toll on development. It was at E3 2019 when they showed off 20mins of gameplay at Nintendo’s event, and since then details have been very few and far between.

Team Cherry’s Matt Griffin has given small clues as to the current state of the game by saying recently on their Discord: “You could say ‘we’ve finished all the content of the game and are in final testing but even that doesn’t say anything about release schedule – my own personal philosophy is that you should not announce a release date until you have a build that could be released, and then you’re just giving yourself some time to fix additional bugs and market a game.” It’s likely we’re in the final stages of the game, but given the situation, we’re in at the moment testing and making sure the game is at it’s best is no easy feat due to the global pandemic.

There is a trailer out there which was originally released in 2019, which features Hornet being captured and taken to the Kingdom of Pharloom. There are snippets of fighting, with Hornet looking much more agile and quick compared to Knight. One of the comments I keep reading about the game and its feedback is the game looks harder, quicker and much more developed than the first game – which is no small task given Hollow Knight is often quoted as one of the best games of the modern era with it’s smooth and responsive gameplay and gorgeous, yet dark environments.

There’s plenty to look forward to when it’s comes to Hollow Knight: Silksong, and given Team Cherry’s dedication to their craft and what they managed to produce with the first game, hopefully we’ll see it in 2021 and it could very well be a game of the year contender.