All the waiting for the game was definitely worth it.
Waiting so long for a video game to come out, and having it turn out to be actually decent, almost immediately qualifies it for Game of the Year status, in my books. If only because the long wait leads to such lofty expectations. Headlines like “Hollow Knight: Silksong finally releases” were never on my 2025 bingo card, but on 4 September, 2025, they became inescapable.
I was among the many fans who were on hopium and copium for years
I haven’t been waiting quite as long for Silksong compared to fans who played Hollow Knight the year it launched. I only found the original game in 2020, but I fell hard for its gameplay, its characters, its strange rhythms, and its quiet cruelty. So when I learned that Team Cherry were working on Silksong, I was ecstatic. Like a lot of people, I assumed it wouldn’t be too long a wait.
We all know how that went. Year after year, showcase after showcase, and still no concrete release date. Normally, I don’t keep close tabs on games I’m excited for; I like being pleasantly surprised. But Silksong was different. Even if I wasn’t spamming every Gamescom or The Game Awards stream with “Silksong when?”, I definitely said it out loud more than once.
Five years and a career change later, in 2025, crumbs finally started to appear, and somehow, that made everything worse and better at the same time.
When a long‑told legend finally comes true
The lead-up to Silksong’s release didn’t feel like a normal launch. It felt like watching a legend slowly come back to life. When it finally arrived, it didn’t feel like a new product; it felt like a long-lost relic or legend, polished up and placed gently back into the world, waiting to be admired. And yet, along with the excitement came a very real fear: what if all that hope had been for naught?
It’s an indie game, after all. Surely, the hype was just bandwagon momentum. Surely, expectations had spiralled too far out of control. I was very wrong, and in fact, I was strangely comforted knowing that millions of others had been waiting alongside me.
Less comforting was the fact that it was already late at night, and I couldn’t even buy the game because the Steam store, and several other digital storefronts, were completely broken at launch.
When I finally got my hands on it hours later, and the title screen had booted up and melancholy music began playing, my eyes genuinely welled up. The joy was immediate and overwhelming, despite my fears that it would feel like a lesser Hollow Knight, or a retread with a few mechanical tweaks. Instead, every pixel and sound effect justified the wait. The fact that this game was made by a team of four people still feels unreal.
Every detail earns its place
Hornet is a fantastic lead, and the characters she meets along the way are memorable in wildly different ways: they're either funny, peculiar, unsettling, or unexpectedly adorable. The worlds are beautifully drawn, dense with personality, and supported by music that feels deceptively simple yet incredibly effective.
It’s hard not to keep repeating this, but knowing the size of the team behind Silksong only makes it more impressive. Every area, every track, every animation feels intentional.
Then there’s the gameplay. As someone who enjoys Metroidvanias, Silksong still managed to humble me. It’s demanding in a way that made me question myself more than once, was I ever actually good at these games, or had I been faking it this whole time?
Somehow, this became my “cosy” game
Despite the difficulty, the constant deaths, the frustrating bosses, and the long runbacks, Silksong became my go-to game by the end of the year. That shouldn't be the case, because it's from cosy in gameplay.
And yet, every time I sat down to play, I found myself thinking, “Ah, that’s the stuff,” and settling in for a long playthrough, like many would in cosy games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The game challenges you relentlessly. It dares you to adapt, react, and deal with whatever new trick it throws at you next. But it also grounds you. After a long, stressful day at work, it pulls my focus towards it completely, and makes me feel completely at home.
Like the older games I grew up with, Silksong refuses to let you quit gracefully. Even when I kept failing at certain bosses, backing down never really felt like an option. Sometimes I just needed a few more upgrades. Other times, I needed to accept the truth and git gud, and stop being so impatient.
Getting older, but still stubborn
Of course, playing games like this hits a little differently now. I’m older, and I’ve racked up more limitations. If I overdo it (the woes of being a millennial) my hands start to hurt, and executing the most demanding moves suddenly becomes harder than I’d like to admit. There were moments where I had to stop not because I was tilted, necessarily, but because my hands simply couldn’t keep up.
And yet, that friction feels like part of the experience. Silksong doesn’t soften itself for you, but it gives you enough depth, flexibility, and room to grow so that persistence still feels rewarded.
Why did Silksong have such a huge impact?
Maybe it really is the years of waiting, and the slow build of a community that kept growing, as more people discovered Hollow Knight and joined the chorus asking the same question: Silksong when? Over time, that anticipation snowballed into something shared; something communal.
And yes, the game absolutely tortures you. It doesn’t pretend to do otherwise. However, beneath that difficulty is real depth. There’s a persistent idea that meaningful stories and great games only come from big-budget, fully 3D productions, and Silksong quietly proves how wrong that notion is.
I truly felt alive while playing Silksong. The game is demanding, beautiful, infuriating, comforting, and unforgettable; sometimes, all at once.
