Student Perspectives on Hollow Knight: Silksong

Key art for “Hollow Knight: Silksong,” developed by Team Cherry, an independent game studio based in Australia. Photo Credits: Team Cherry

Andrew Larsen, Staff Writer for The Powderhorn

After 6 years of delays, hype, and coping, “Hollow Knight: Silksong” is finally here. First announced on February 14, 2019, “Silksong” is the sequel to beloved indie video game “Hollow Knight,” which has now surpassed 15 million copies sold. It is one of the most anticipated video games of all time, with over 5 million people wishlisting the game on Steam, a digital distribution platform, before its release. “Silksong” centers around Hornet, a side character in “Hollow Knight,” being captured and taken to the kingdom of Pharloom. Over the course of 6 years, the game was continually delayed, leaving fans questioning its developers, Team Cherry, wondering if the game even existed, and wildly theorizing the reasons behind its delay.

“It’s been 6 years since the thing was announced, and everyone knows how infamous Team Cherry has been with their updates of the game,” said junior Micah Edgerton.

With updates few and far between, fans were left to themselves, generating even more hype. Entire YouTube channels dedicated to documenting every piece of news related to “Silksong” popped up, grasping at even the smallest shreds of information. On August 21, 2025, Team Cherry revealed the release date: September 4, 2025. With 2 weeks until the release, hype for the game reached an all-time high, bringing new players into the community.

Max Greene, a freshman, who purchased “Hollow Knight” a week before “Silksong’s” release, said, “I have had friends that have been waiting, you know, 4 or 5 years for this to release. And then I saw, hey, it’s releasing in September, and I decided that now would be a good time to play the game.”

Leading up to the release, fans had high hopes for “Silksong.” However, some fans chose to keep their expectations low.

“I’ve been making sure not to get my hype up too much because it’s just an indie team of a very small number of people, so we can’t have our hype up way too much or have high expectations,” said junior Jonah Smith. “Obviously, I do have to keep my expectations a little high because it’s been in the works for 6 years.”

This desire to not fall to the hype was a theme among gamers.

“I feel like a lot of the community has set their expectations too high to a point where their expectations will never be met,” said Edgerton. “But for me personally, I am still just trying to keep my expectations relatively on the lower side because that way when the good stuff happens, I’ll be super excited about it.”

Many fans enjoyed the movement and platforming aspects of “Hollow Knight” and were excited to see that the movement in “Silksong” would be even more expansive with these elements.

“One of the things I’m most looking forward to is the new movement options,” said Edgerton. “The whole traversal system looks a lot faster. It looks a lot more fluid.”

Other fans looked forward to fighting over 40 new bosses, a core part of “Hollow Knight.”

“I saw in the trailer, it seemed to be more double-related bosses where there’s like 2 of enemies, which is obviously a lot to keep track of, but I think that those will just be really interesting and fun,” Smith said. 

As “Silksong” was released to the public on September 4 at 10:00 am EST, fans flooded gaming platforms, leading to website and store crashes. Within the first 3 hours of its release, “Silksong” skyrocketed past 400,000 active players on Steam. As they got their hands on it, fans loved the game.

“There’s just a lot of stuff in the game, the movement, the exploration, the secrets you can find… the surprises, especially with the story of the game, it feels so good to play,” said Edgerton. “It definitely lived up to the hype.”

When comparing “Silksong” to its predecessor, some fans preferred “Silksong.” 

“It’s a difficult thing to say the sequel is better than the prequel. That’s always a difficult thing to say, but I’m not going to lie to you, it’s kind of true for this game,” said Smith.

When it came to the beginning of the game, players praised “Silksong” for improving upon “Hollow Knight’s” beginning.

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“Hollow Knight’s beginning was very confusing to understand for a newer player, whereas with Silksong, it’s a lot easier,” said Edgerton. 

“I just think that it feels a little bit more interesting to a sense,” says Smith. “‘Hollow Knight’ is definitely a fun game, but when you look at the first areas, everything is just gray. However, for ‘Silksong,’ it just starts out being nice, lush and green, so then it would draw even more people in.”

A large portion of the community complained that the game was too difficult. However, some fans disagreed and have enjoyed the game’s increased difficulty.

“Honestly, it’s hard, but I feel like it’s not too hard,” said Edgerton. “It does feel like a lot of things deal double damage that shouldn’t, but especially considering ‘Silksong’ was initially meant to be a DLC, it doesn’t feel too hard.”

Users who have some knowledge of the first game may have an advantage.

“It means the people who’ve played the original Hollow Knight will do better, but then also still people being brought in, it’s still enough of an incline to where it’s still fine,” said Smith.

Many fans have deeply enjoyed ‘Silksong,’ netting it a 91% user rating on Steam, a 9/10 on IGN, and a 91 on Metacritic. Fans loved the game so much that, despite its recent release, they could not help but give it high ratings. 

“It’s a weird thing to say initially 10 out of 10, so I can’t necessarily say that, especially since I have played it for a while, but not a huge amount of time,” said Smith. “I’m going to give it a 9.5, which is still pretty high. I feel like it’s such a good game, and I have still played for a long amount of time just like the original ‘Hollow Knight.’ I have 85% game completion, and I just hit 50 hours on the game, which I feel like is a little sweaty, judging that the game just came out, but I really like it so far.”

This rating seems common among the group.  Students appreciate the attention to detail in the programming and graphics.

“I give it a 9.5 because it’s still missing a couple of things I would like to see, but I think those are going to come with the DLC that’s going to be in the game,”  said Edgerton. “But the game is just overall amazing. The environments are amazing, and the gameplay feels so nice and smooth. They’ve really evolved on the ‘Hollow Knight’ combat systems with the availability of the different crests and the trinket system.  I feel like it all works a lot better.”