Hollow Knight is a 2D Metroidvania by an indie development team, Team Cherry. It was originally released in 2017. It also happens to be my favorite video game. The game is huge especially with all its free added content packs. However, after playing it for several years and several hundred hours I kind of started wishing there was something more… Which is why I was ecstatic when it was announced that Team Cherry is developing a sequel for Hollow Knight. This new game called Hollow Knight: Silksong was announced in February of 2019, pretty much exactly three years ago. It will tell the story of an NPC from Hollow Knight called Hornet and frankly, the game looks absolutely epic based on the trailers.
So, it’s been three years since the game was announced so when will it be released? Well, that’s the thing: no one knows. Team Cherry has not announced a release date for the game or anything concerning it, really, for over a year. The fanbase of Hollow Knight is huge, not to mention very dedicated and one fan has even created a YouTube channel called “Daily Silksong News”. Every day for over a year he has made a video announcing to his followers that “there has been no news to report for Silksong today”. Thousands of people watch these videos daily. So, needless to say, people are very eager for the sequel to come out.
Why hasn’t Silksong come out yet, then? Well, Team Cherry consists of only three members so it makes sense it would take them quite a while to finish the game. However, Hollow Knight was revealed on Kickstarter in 2014 and released three years later which would indicate that Silksong might be released quite soon. And besides, Team Cherry was probably working on Silksong already before the game was announced. There has been speculation that Silksong is quite a bit bigger than Hollow Knight, though, which would cause its development to take more time. Nevertheless, this doesn’t tell us why even the game’s release date has been kept a secret.
It is likely that Team Cherry wants to take their time with the game and make sure it is as finished as possible when it comes out. If there was a release date, they might feel pressured to release the game even if it still had some bugs (haha) or some slightly unfinished parts. It’s great that Team Cherry wants the game to be as perfect as possible right from the start. Since Hollow Knight was such a huge hit, a lot is expected from Silksong. However, I think it would be nice to get some placeholder release date. This would give fans a general idea on whether the game will be released in a week, five years or something in between. If Team Cherry missed the date, that would be totally fine because we fans don’t want the game to be released unfinished either. It would just be nice to have a general idea on how long we must wait.
In the end, I do want Team Cherry to take as much time as they need to finish the game. They are under a lot of pressure at the moment and it is understandable that they want Silksong to be as flawless as possible when it is released. I also understand that they are very busy developing Silksong which is why we don’t get much news. We fans get impatient but really we appreciate Team Cherry a lot. But… maybe just a little update?