Opinion: Playing Silksong In Co-Op Was A 2025 Hivemind Highlight

We lost track of the amount of times our friend Ibby tried to convey his love for the gorgeous Choral Chambers theme from Silksong, asking us to listen to this bit or the flutey bit, or another haunting, melancholic bit we couldn’t actually hear because of GameChat’s music-muting tech.

We did, however, hear a heated debate he had with his Mum (it really does catch them voices!), which wasn’t the kind of environmental storytelling we were going for, really. It turns out you can selectively lower the volume for different friends (and their Mums) in the chat - useful!

Stories abound. For a period this year, Silksong and GameChat was like a pub to me and some friends. Whereas previously of an evening there might be memes or Smash Bros. smacktalk in the WhatsApp chat, suddenly the group was quiet. But I could turn up to the Switch about 9pm and reliably get a notification toot (after that slightly exciting anticipation lag) that three friends were online and there was a GameChat invite. Click that 'C' button!

Four of us had bought Silksong (only two of whom had finished Hollow Knight) and embarked on its punishing, rewarding, sprawling journey together. Smash aside — I main as Corrin — I'm not really one for online multiplayer or co-op, and don’t know the pleasures of being a sun-praising Soulslover who summons others to duet a boss (and I’ve only played Dark Souls 2, sorry!).

But playing Silksong as a Silkchorus was a 2025 highlight, a single-player journey but shared through GameChat, with new (or new to Nintendo) possibilities suddenly enabled.

I never watch Twitch but now found myself flicking across GameChat screens of an evening like channels on the telly.

Now we had live fight analysis for some bosses, like the time Ibby was struggling trying to beat First Sinner, that frantic, fantastic, optional boss found in the Slab prison, fwoomp-ing in and out of the arena like Nightcrawler amidst a relentless barrage of lacerating silk and the music swells with violin violence.

But watching his screen, I noticed he wasn't making use of the hookshot — I don’t think it’s called a 'hookshot' — to gain that crucial horizontal distance and safety between threads. And so I told him, and he did, and bit by bit he began to make progress.

Though still not enough - there was a phase two. Just one more go before calling it for today, we agreed, and I watched his last run, the clean control and last-hurrah focus, and now it was phase two but I was keeping silent so as not to jinx it. Then I erupted as the Sinner went down.

At other times it was more rally-style co-driving, like when Sunny fought Disgraced Chef Lugoli in Sinner's Road, the screen busy with putrid globules and sideways bum barges, all of us chipping in to offload the overwhelm with shouts of "Cogflies Cogflies!" or "Heal heal heal!" at just the right moment.

(In theory. The chef went down later.)

An underrated effect of all this screen-sharing is that we’d get to repeatedly experience generational leaps in gaming, acclimatising to the fuzzy 10fps jerkiness of someone else's Pharloom, then — cool platforming section over — going back to our own game in gloriously rich, high-fidelity, full-screen wonder. In handheld especially, you get that shocking, popping clarity that looks like print, like a storybook given life. Silksong remastered!

So I started to really enjoy this Silksong TV. I never watch Twitch but now found myself flicking across GameChat screens of an evening like channels on the telly. And because of the game’s commendable open-ness — and tough-as-nails-ness — everyone would be somewhere different. There were rumours of a new area above west Greymoor, or a magical dice in the Blasted Steps that is needed, bro. Party members scouting out and reporting back with what the different key doors unlocked, telling each other to open our maps and leave waymarkers for secrets at places of interest we hadn’t even got to yet. This was our new version of the fabled playground chatter of yore, a co-created web of Silksong strategy (instead of whispers of a naked Lara cheat).

And for the record, we played plenty ourselves, too. I am, after all, primarily a solo, in-conversation-with-myself-and-the-game kind of player. But even then, there was that nice background awareness of a wider conversation, of having people to whom we could later recount the things we’d seen and done.

Now hear me out - would it be a stretch to call all the actual chatting a game mechanic, too? Not just because of the shared intel and coaching, but because of that sort of side-play headspace you sometimes get into whilst chatting, like the long car drive catch-up where you barely notice the journey. We’d tap into the automaticity and free reps of working a section on repeat (that Bird’s Nest gauntlet owes me hours) whilst chatting life nonsense that kept the difficulty and seriousness just off the boil enough to get the details down. Then go off chat to lock-in and finish the job, sharing a video from the Nintendo app the next morning of you finally beating the Savage Beastfly.

(These posts were weirdly expressive of the different ways we’d all play. It was watching Mozo’s clean AF performance on Beastfly that taught me the usefulness of short-hop hits, even though he didn’t seem to do the badass last-minute ground dodge like Gothmog in Return of the King.)

Anyway, I got more engrossed than most and ploughed through straight to the end of Act 3 and its gloriously exacting final battle, feeling the patterns out on repeat, going off chat for the final few goes, then re-entering and trying to act nonchalant when I'd beaten it. I’ve played it again since and it’s almost just rhythm action pattern matching now. Power in progress.

But the other guys fell off a bit after Act 2. New Hades had come and provided some lighter respite, and another’s family member had begun some medical treatments. Just a small Silksong break, but it never picked up again. And so that specific pub made of joint momentum and shared moments had closed.

What a lovely place, though. What a cool Switch 2 time. Bring on the Sea of Sorrow.