Hollow Knight Silksong is the sequel to one of the most successful 2D indies of all time that now seeks to consolidate
At a time when newly minted metroidvania were already blatantly defying traditional ones, what Hollow Knight proved as the one who does not want the thing in 2017 is that surprises with capital letters were still possible in this type of game. There were clues to anticipate it: with the phenomenon of crowdfunding on Kickstarter quite consolidated, Team Cherry had launched a campaign -in 2014- that made it clear in its stretch goals that its project aspired to the top, but could not wait that long. The game came out on Steam and what happened next does not surprise us, since Hollow Knight is the best example that we have seen in recent years, in the entire industry, of a video game that hides much more than meets the eye, waiting for whom want to dive. The funny thing is that that Kickstarter was a half success in which all those objectives that pointed to a huge game at the content level were not achieved. Luckily, the team did not care and continued to take care of their great project – taking advantage of some sales that they accompanied from the beginning – expanding and polishing the edges of their creature. We find that same team now carefully timing the release of a sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong, which we already see on all of this year’s most wanted lists, and not just among indie.
Quite a surprise
Hollow Knight was the big surprise of 2017. Until its launch, who more who less among those who follow two-dimensional games with the passion of always had already seen something about the project. The truth is that the title always looked like a safe purchase for this type of player, but no one could even imagine the magnitude of what was hidden under the ghostly city of Dirtmouth. What seemed like a humble independent project, destined to offer ten or fifteen hours of Metroid-style gameplay, began to expand more and more, leaving sensations that had not been experienced for a long time, until catching up as the best of the great projects of that time. year. A video game that sold for 15 euros grew in interest due to its peculiar atmosphere practically every half hour of play, and it did not allow you to leave the controls until you had played forty or fifty hours, if you wanted to explore the entire map calmly. Once completed, the game that seemed nice to see, but not much more, left a residue that no one would have imagined when starting it: that of having played one of the best metroidvania ever, if not the best.
Hollow Knight’s success, selling about three million copies, was simmered. Its launch, coinciding in time with the recently released Switch and Zelda: Breath of the Wild, did not make too much noise or generate a large number of reviews in the international press, although it was striking how positive they were all. Specifically, from these pages we were among the first to point out it as the masterpiece that it is, but the thing came to more for some of our colleagues, who came to postpone Breath of the Wild because they were totally obsessed with this game or they said that their band sonora had caused them sensations that they had not experienced since Star Wars. Very thick words for a game that was going on sale, we insist, at fifteen euros.
Three years later, several aspects have been shown to be key in a game that is already unanimously considered a masterpiece, leaving aside the amount of content added after launch. They are precisely those facets that we want to see more expanded in this next expansion that ended up becoming a full sequel. On the one hand, its artistic section was much closer to that of Ori and the Blind Forest or Rayman Legends than to the typical minimalist indie, no matter how much its characters bet on caricature in their characters. On the other hand, its difficulty and the mechanics learned from Dark Souls were applied with a masterly level of internalization, resulting key in the immersion. Finally, the sensation of mystery that surrounded everything we did, the idea of creating our map as we could buy it in installments that were not exactly in sight, gave the game the exact ammunition to distinguish itself from many other similar titles that already was on the market.
With the barbarity of copies sold, the prestige of Hollow Knight and Team Cherry, apparently made up of five people, has not stopped growing all this time, especially as their influence has been felt in other games. Special mention for an Ori and the Will of the Wisps that has borrowed both the fictional languages of its characters and the purchase of maps to guide us. The two-dimensional gaming landscape has had enough fancy guests since then, but Hollow Knight is present in all of them in one way or another.
A sequel under the magnifying glass
Team Cherry has already more than demonstrated that it is a team with an extraordinary capacity for work. He has also made it clear to us that his projects go on sale when they are sufficiently polished, which they take quite seriously since almost two years ago we saw the first trailer of this future Silksong. Based on the twenty minutes of gameplay taught at E3 2019, Silksong has earned the expectation, but also raises some questions to those who immersed themselves the most – and were lost at some time – in its first installment.
It is clear that everything in Silksong revolves around its new protagonist character, the deadly Hornet whom we already know from the first game. In fact, her presence as a playable character was one of those unsuccessful stretch goals from the Kickstarter campaign, but now that we’ve seen her in motion we understand why she hasn’t entered any of the later DLCs. In a recent interview with Edge Magazine, the team tells how the movement of the new protagonist – heavier, with less pronounced jumps, but at the same time much more acrobatic – did not work with the environments of Hollow Knight: you had to create a new world around it. Both the trailer and the gameplay that we have already seen have an unapologetic impact on this idea: Hornet can do cartwheels, propels himself between enemies in the air and will surely be able to do a thousand things that we have not seen yet, so he needs more verticality. In the E3 gameplay, Silksong gives the feeling of coming out quite polished and without the performance problems that its predecessor dragged in its beginnings, so its goal is ambitious: to stay at the top of an indie scene now that it is an indie scene. triple A.
A metroidvania of sensations
Hollow Knight embroidered many things, but we are going to summarize them in two: how well the combat was planned – and the mobility of the character – and how wonderful there was in the feeling of being a tiny little character lost in a world that could barely cover: a world that, to top it all, kept expanding without always being clear where to go. These are two of the questions that most eyes will settle on when we have this second part with us, treating as they do indelible memories for those of us who make the most of the first. Regarding combat, the truth is that things look pretty good in what has been seen: Hornet and his needle seem guaranteed fun, since the patterns of the enemies again resemble those of countless classic games, again executed with the success of a team that has shown an expert hand in precisely that. On the sensations that caused the moments of loss, however, we have many more doubts with this sequel. It is true that there were some somewhat exaggerated in the first game and that finding the way could get desperate at times, but it is also true that Hollow Knight was a game that based its impact on its difficulty, and that loss was a very good component. integrated.
There are many examples of great games that lose steam in some of the facets that have made them great at the first turn. Without going any further, the sensational Ori and the Will of the Wisps is not as tough as its first installment at the difficult platform level, but it supplements it with other new things and is not at all short of additional challenge. With Silksong, what we hope the most is that those sensations from the first game will once again have sufficient specific weight and will not be diluted with a navigation that can be excessively guided, because that would greatly diminish the personality of the game, however evident that the expectations are they crazy or that the team wants to address an even larger audience. Fortunately, everything seen, heard and perceived at the controls seems to be on the right track. The sensational Christopher Larkin falls in love again with his music, and the protagonist seems to more than justify his rise to main character. We will soon find out if the obvious recycling of resources or the declared eagerness to be accessible to new players does not end up diluting some of the greatness of Hollow Knight. Whether it happens or not, what is evident is that that indie project that seemed nothing special in 2017 has thousands of people sighing for its sequel after it has become a cult game, and that is great news for the 2D projects that need new references after the sensational Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Hollow Knight: Silksong could very well be your next big step.
