Kingdom Come

An exclusive look at Silksong, the stylish sequel to Hollow Knight

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he world is terrifying, and beautiful. In mossy, humid groves, glowing spores sway in the air; winged beetles perch on the walls like razor-mawed parrots, suckling moisture out of the lichen. Lakes of lava bubble thickly below an old town built of bone. Our footsteps ring out across a chamber lined with the husks of ancient bells – at the end of it, we spy an unfortunate creature struggling in a silk cocoon, keening softly. Eventually, we find the means to free it. And then it pounces.

To enter into Team Cherry’s twisting worlds is to enter into a kind of dance. A dangerous one: you might put your best foot forward, only to have it gleefully bitten off. And therein lies the thrill. The sharpest warriors quickly learn to accommodate a Hollow Knight world as an unpredictable partner, whose fickle moods and sense of humour make it feel as if it’s alive – watching your every move with quiet interest, and preparing its response.

This much is certain: Ari Gibson and William Pellen are modern masters of worldbuilding. The 2017 release of the now-cult hit Hollow Knight – a Metroidvania that cast you as a tiny masked bug burrowing down into a subterranean labyrinth of hidden curiosities, unlikely friends and unforgettable showdowns – very much suggested it. And, from everything we’ve seen of Hollow Knight: Silksong so far, the sequel is set to confirm it. New location Pharloom is a ballroom of possibility, and already looks to be even more sophisticated than Hollow Knight’s Hallownest.

This is a kingdom ruled by – what else? – silk and song, where weary pilgrims journey to their destination carrying bundles of the precious thread, and gates are opened through paying melodic tributes (even the language of this world, scrawled on stone tablets, is designed to look like musical notation). And this time, you’re on your way up, up, up to a shining Citadel at the very top of the world.

Why? Well, partly because Silksong’s heroine just needs to stretch her legs.

Gibson and Pellen have always let themselves be naturally guided by the worlds they build, almost discovering them as they go: as we have discussed in Edge before, their preferred method of development is a kind of controlled scope creep, with new areas and concepts unfurling out of others to create a place that feels as if it’s grown organically. “The way we approach these games,” Gibson says, “is that they are just a web of ideas, and notions, that all pass through this filter of bugs, and caves, and ruined civilisations and whatnot.” Pellen adds: “With destinations that we’re comfortable with not knowing what they are for a while – just building up or down to them.” Gibson nods, and he’s talking about himself and Pellen when he says: “The really interesting things are the things you sort of discover along the way.” But in an unexpected twist for Team Cherry, Pharloom’s sense of grandeur and scale, and the idea of upward momentum, came from Hornet. Yes, it turns out that dance between the adventurer and the world extends to development, too. “Hornet being taller changes everything”, Pellen tells us.

Originally, Silksong was planned as a DLC for the first game; a playable version of NPC Hornet – skilled hunter, princess-protector of Hallownest and scourge of Hollow Knight newcomers – was a stretch goal on the Kickstarter campaign. But when the time came to sit down and hash out exactly what this add-on adventure would look like, even before the release of Hollow Knight, Team Cherry soon realised that they would be making a second game, and a new world. While the claustrophobic Hallownest suited the diminutive Knight down to the ground, the bigger, weightier Hornet would feel much too constrained in it. “Hornet can travel so much faster, she can jump higher, she can mantle or clamber onto ledges, she’s generally more acrobatic,” Gibson says. “So the caves around her have to expand to accommodate her height.” And so does everything else: the complexity of her animations, the scale of the creatures that live in the world – even the way Pellen would design the basics of a platforming game, he tells us. “So the core of the world is mainly a reflection of Hornet: her fighting is so fast, and she’s so competent, that it changes the way enemies need to be designed, and her nature as a character is echoed in the way the world is set up.”

These points quickly become evident as Pellen skips Hornet about the lower reaches of Pharloom, leaping elegantly between ledges (and showing off, cancelling out of mantling animations to gain height faster with acrobatic jump-spins). Unlike the purely ephemeral, god-created Knight, Gibson reminds us, Hornet is also halfbug. “And what that means is – and this perhaps happened automatically just through development – she’s much more physical, and the world as a result is more physical. So there are less glowy orb things, and magic bursts of light, and many more blades and traps.” Indeed, we see several sneakily strung-up trigger threads across the Kingdom, designed to catch out those not paying proper attention to their surroundings. Pharloom and its

“THE CORE OF THE WORLD IS MAINLY A REFLECTION OF HORNET: HER FIGHTING IS SO FAST… THAT IT CHANGES THE WAY ENEMIES NEED TO BE DESIGNED”

residents know how dangerous Hornet is, then, and are determined to be dangerous right back. “One thing that did seem to happen is that in Hollow Knight, you could essentially create a Goomba from Mario, and it was very acceptable,” Gibson says. “It fit within the complexity of that game. And this game… it doesn’t seem to allow Goombas to quite the same degree. There’s some level of intelligence even in a ‘Goomba’.”

Pellen agrees, noting that the most complex non-boss enemies in the first game tended to be the more humanoid bugs – the sword-and-shield guardians in the City Of Tears spring to mind, enemies that can block attacks from multiple angles and have more sophisticated movement patterns. “Yeah,” Pellen says, “even those were quite simple – and it didn’t matter at all at the time – in that you could quite easily lure them off platforms, or watch them chase you and they’d hit a wall and just turn around and you’d be like, ‘Well, that’s fine, it’s a videogame’. But 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.” (Or, indeed, of appearing to interact with the environment: we spot the occasional beetle flying around with a useful glowing Mossberry item clutched in its mandibles.)

We note with interest one such ‘Goomba-plus’ in the starting area with a clever trick: it’s able to disguise itself as a discarded skull before popping out to scuttle around, almost like a hermit crab, and pose a threat – but later Pellen strikes them with Hornet’s needle before they have a chance to pounce. Another surprisingly aggressive foe stampedes noisily towards Hornet, reminding us of the first game’s Moss Charger, only with more legs – except it accelerates as it goes, making its patterns harder to predict. They’re the sort of cannier, scarier foes you don’t see anywhere in the first game’s starting area, a carefully designed, but slightly bland, tutorial circuit that teaches you the basics of exploring and fighting before handing you a fireball power that opens up the rest of the world. “It’s almost a little bit sedate, and I think that can dissuade some players,” Gibson says, “but lots and lots of systems are introduced.” The unique map system, for instance, which has you exploring to find a map vendor for a rough sketch of the area that you fill in further through adventuring; the charm system that allows you to equip useful boons; the development of Dirtmouth, the hub town you begin at; the fast travel system. “It’s trying to set a pace for players to say, ‘This is a large world that you can take your time in.’”

Pellen adds: “In Silksong, I think we’re following a similar trend where we try and set the pace, and allow people to get acclimated to all of those systems again, and new systems that are unique to Hornet.”

The surroundings are immediately more varied, however, starting you off in the emerald Moss Grotto before funnelling you through the lava-moated ‘boneforest’ area – cut from the first game, and the initial starting point for the sequel’s development – which plays host to your hub town of Bonebottom, as well as a curious bell-lined tunnel that appears to be named The Marrow. The pace is a little brisker. Many early enemies (and falling hazards) now deal two hits to the segmented health bar. It’s a balancing decision, mainly, given that Hornet can heal (via Bind, a core ability that uses the silk she gathers by striking enemies to bandage wounds) slightly more quickly than the Knight, and for three masks rather than one.

It’s a decision that makes healing much more part of the flow of battle, where Bind becomes just another beat in the dance and is dictated by the player, rather than Team Cherry having your opponent obviously double over and wheeze for a bit. (“Although we do have that as well, on bosses!” Gibson laughs; we breathe a sigh of relief, as he explains its use as a method of showing players how far they are through fights, and to help tell compelling stories – players of the first game will remember one particularly heartstopping endgame boss reaction.) “It takes longer to get to the point where you can heal yourself, but you can heal yourself by more,” Pellen says. “With the idea being that you spend more time either at full health or almost dead, and the gameplay is kind of snapping between these states.” Gibson continues: “Yeah, and again, reflecting who she is as well – this character of extremes.”

“YOU SPEND MORE TIME EITHER AT FULL HEALTH OR ALMOST DEAD, AND THE GAMEPLAY IS KIND OF SNAPPING BETWEEN THESE STATES”

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o Team Cherry is not out to make a more difficult sequel, then: they’re hoping for it to be a “comparable” test of skill to Hollow Knight, Pellen says, while Gibson explains that starting with the clean slate of an entirely new kingdom with its own lore and new characters is another way in which

Silksong is designed to be “a perfect jumping-on point for new players. We’re trying to be really, really mindful that we want this to be a game that new people can come into, and experience as their first Hollow Knight game – that it sits alongside the original game, and the difficulty also sits alongside the game in that way.”

And so handy Hornet has her own more narratively apt version of charms, called tools, with which she’s able to supplement her combat abilities. These are crafted or replenished at benches

(Hollow Knight’s checkpointing system of choice, which delights in popping up in unexpected places or tripping up players with cheeky tricks – something which will very much continue in

Silksong, we’re told) using Shell Shards gathered from slain enemies. Her Pimpillo bomb deals an area-of-effect blast; Sting Shards, the traps she uses against you in her second boss fight in the first game, extend spikes in mid-air or when struck with a weapon; the throwable Straight Pins function like kunai, dealing speedy attacks from a distance. The latter can even be modified to become Tri-Pins, letting her throw three at once. Hornet will learn these useful tools and their modifications from the residents of Pharloom, Gibson tells us: “Part of the fun of her toolset, particularly her offensive toolset, is that Hornet can develop new tools based on the stuff that she encounters in the world.” You might meet an enemy throwing a pin at you like a javelin, for instance, and Hornet will pick up on the idea for herself – even adding a personal touch. “All of Hornet’s versions of those tools get a little bit of her style, which is why Hornet’s [version of that pin] has a little red rope around it,” Gibson smiles.

In true Team Cherry fashion, such small details tell us so much about the way this world functions – and in the sequel, who this character is and how she thinks. If the Knight was very much a blank avatar (an idea covered in the first game’s lore), then Hornet is a strong personality, a clear role to be played. She speaks, for one thing. “She’s able to express her aims and intentions and stuff,” Pellen says, “which then means that you can’t really hide her intentions or objective from the player. So there’s still heaps of mystery, but the player will really quickly – even if you haven’t played Hollow Knight – get a basic idea of who Hornet is, her attitude, and her starting goals.”

Both veteran players and newcomers, Team Cherry hopes, will be compelled to discover more about this strange little creature, who alongside the many pilgrims of Pharloom – the sad corpses of whom you may stumble across on your journey – is making the long climb up to the Citadel. And

Game Hollow Knight: Silksong Developer/publisher Team Cherry Format PC, Switch Release TBA

Gibson says they’ve perhaps leant slightly more into detailing combat over platforming, due to heavy Hornet’s reduced “hang time” in the air, and her natural huntress proficiencies – but we see Pellen navigate tricky crumbling platforms in our demo, and the ones pictured look as though they may move as part of a mechanism

Team Cherry’s co-directors, from left: artist and animator Ari Gibson; game designer William Pellen

Silksong’s world is bigger than the first game’s, if only because Hornet’s height and speed means Team Cherry must create larger environments. Even the camera had to change. “It took me maybe a year and a half to realise just how profound an impact her height was having,” Pellen says

“Magic is a more distant thing in Pharloom,” Pellen tells us. But there are still curious things happening: the pilgrims appear to be engaging in some cult-like behaviour in transporting silk to the top of the kingdom – even attacking each other along the way, one NPC tells us. And music has real power: here, Hornet serenades a friend

On the right, foes wait to snip Hornet out of the sky. She’s carrying a boomerang-type tool, which can be thrown regularly but will also change trajectory. when hit in certain ways. There are many ‘sub-reactions’ programmed into different weapons “to keep them interesting and give you that extra bit of mastery,” Gibson says

This is a simpler form of rest bench, but we’re shown a ‘holy bench’ surrounded by bells. It rises out of the floor automatically when approached, and you’re able to string up rosary bead currency at a built-in station. These save spots – inspired by Castlevania and Metroid’s save rooms – have always been a chance for Team Cherry to play with player expectations. But it can never stop at just “one impressive bench,” Gibson says: “Unsurprisingly, we ended up with, like, 100 different benches”

The flamboyant butterfly boss on the right is Trobbio. “The idea, narratively,” Gibson says, “was something like ‘The hero enters’.” He steps onto the stage, utterly convinced of his own brilliance – and proceeds to “do a lot of stupid things”, set to a gloriously goofy accompaniment from Christopher Larkin. He’s affectionately named for – and voiced by – “the one game developer [we] know”, Hacknet creator Matt Trobbiani