The season of summer showcases has been and gone, and while there have been many fantastic new game announcements and updates, Hollow Knight: Silksong has been missing in action with not even a comment from developer Team Cherry in around two years. But there's nothing to worry about, at least according to a playtester, as the game is "not in dev hell" (thanks, GamesRadar!).
Graig, who has previously been referred to as "lead playtester" on Silksong, emerged on Discord to share an update with fans on Silksong. In a short message on Discord, he states: "Hi guys I literally know they are not in dev hell".
It's worth noting that Graig isn't part of the development team, so whether his comments are accurate remains to be seen. But this response is the best we're going to get for now.
Graig has also sympathised with many who are getting frustrated with Team Cherry's lack of comments, saying that (via GamesRadar) "communication should be better". But the official Silksong subreddit has been pretty desperate for news for a long time, and many expected it to show up after not showing at every single event since Xbox's 2022 Summer Showcase.
Responses to his Discord post haven't exactly been warm, however, with many dismissing his claim because of previous jokes and fun he's had with the community. Essentially, while Graig has previously been associated with Team Cherry, there's no telling just how accurate this statement is. For now, we should just cross our fingers and hope he's right.
In case you've been living under a rock, the Silksong is the highly-anticipated sequel to Hollow Knight, the 2017 hand-drawn Metroidvania that became a critical darling. The game first launched on PC before coming to Switch in 2018. Silksong was announced in 2019 — originally as DLC for the first game, but eventually as a full-fledged sequel. Updates on the game have been intermittent, to say the least.
This year, however, new listings and ratings have been spotted for the game in various countries. So the hype and desperation have reached a bit of a fever pitch.
Do you want to hear more about Silksong soon? Let us know in the comments.
[source reddit.com, via gamesradar.com]
Comments 48
Pretty much a Bayonetta 3 situation huh. Announced way too early if they were just going to refuse to show anything for so long.
"I literally know they are not in dev hell".
He's not wrong. They are not in some circle of hell reserved for developers.
As for figuratively, well, it has already been 5 years since it was announced. At this point, it has taken more time than the original Hollow Knight to launch.
That’s good to know. I will wait however long it takes for the game and I think they should take literally all the time they need on it. But the only reason people think this is (imo) because of team Cherrys lack of communication, they don’t need to say how far the game is or anything just well…anything really would be nice I literally couldn’t care what it is tbh it wouldn’t even have to be news.
However there’s a bunch of games for me to play in the meantime, the Silksong sub Reddit would make you think otherwise lol.
We're getting Metroid Prime 4 before Silksong!!!!
I got MP4 before everyone's beloved silksong. that's rich.
Maybe they're just waiting for me to actually finish Hollow Knight.
I believe this. The dev team is small, and the game scope is big, so it takes a long time. I think that's really all there is to it.
I love Hollow Knight but I'm not making myself go crazy by constantly anticipating the next game in the series.
I'm occupying myself with tons of other games, and when it's out, I'll play it. It's not like there's a lack of good games to play.
Why does people spout this stuff without proof? I've never thought it was in development hell. Just let the team make the game they want to make. It will be done when it's done
@Takoda remember when Kamiya had to come out and say "the game is well in development. Nothing is wrong. It will be released when it's done." every couple of months because people wouldn't stop with those rumors? Crazy times
Why would they not step up and simply tell people it was still in development?
Why all this ridiculousness?
It is in development hell clearly. What remains to be seen is whether or not it has been completely canned or will pick up again in the future...
While a playtester is closer to the project than the average person....they're hardly high on the list of developers.
-"Hi guys I literally know" has never been the opening line for any proper news 😂
@BenAV maybe they're waiting for me to actually start it?
The wait for Silksong wouldn’t be nearly as bad if they communicated a little bit.
It’s okay they’re just in dev purgatory.
They can take a whole century with this game if its anywhere near the quality of the first
What comes first Marvel's new Blade movie or silksong?
Team Cherry can take all the time they need for making Silksong and anything else they need to do. But what's inexcusable is the silence to the fans and backers, it's been several years since the last mention from TC. I don't understand why it's so difficult to admit more time is needed. Even a simple periodic tweet claiming game development is still progressing and needs more time goes a long way. Toby Fox exhibits an excellent example of this, where he'll do a regular 6 month-1 year brief update on Deltarune. At some point, things have to be addressed and soon, aren't some elements of Silksong tied to extended backer promises and monetization on Kickstarter?
This seems strange. Team Cherry are successful so why is a 2D game taking this long? Could you imagine if they were making a 3D game, it would take them 500 years.
So perhaps it’s even worse than hell?! What, like dead?! Silksong RIP
Considering entire AAA games have been announced and released within the time period since we heard about Silksong and furthermore, whole indie projects with smaller teams have been announced and released within said time frame, then it's fairly safe to assume that something went wrong somewhere.
We're not privy to that information and that's fine but it doesn't take a genius to figure out.
It'll release when it does. No point filling yourself with rage over it not having released yet. Plenty of other things to do in the meantime.
Hollow Knight subreddit acting like jerks over pranks? What else is new.
What’s dev hell anyway?
I really think the developers need to communicate a LITTLE better at the very least. But eh. They're really cherry picking their announcements I guess.
@toadfishman It's the punishment world the feminists dish out to you if you die while naming yourself with a username ending with 'man'" 😂
Rarely when games take this long do they live up to expectations. Unless they're doing something wildly different than the first game, it seems like this should have been quicker.
They can take as long as they want. Maybe it’ll give me enough time to actually beat the game. I’ve started it multiple times and quit because I kept getting lost, to the point it was incredibly frustrating. I hate using guides so I didn’t want to look anything up. The game is great, don’t get me wrong, but maybe not for me. I do want to give it another shot since it has received such high praise, and Silksong looks amazing.
I’m not too worried about this game in particular, but I think the trend towards very very long development cycles is not good. It’s bad for AAA studios and it’s equally bad for indie studios, for a number of reasons but principally because it makes every game very high risk.
@Axecon I totally agree with this. I have no problem with a long dev time. But the communication has been truly horrible
@toadfishman it's a term used for when a game is having troubled development causing many internal delays and changes to the game. Examples of this would be Final fantasy 15, kingdom hearts 3, and beyond good and evil 2. That last game hasn't even released yet
Man some of the takes from people make me wonder how people can be so ignorant and dumb..
All I’ll say on Silksong is this:
This game (as far as we know) is being made by only THREE (f@*king) people!
Hollow Knight had many elements that were sacrificed just to get it released and they literally crunched for years to get it done because they didn’t have the money to continue development.. With the success of Hollow Knight, they can take as long they want if they want.
It actively pisses me off that people spout nonsense when they literally have no idea what the f@ck is going on… “Dev Hell” … Coz they’re not crunching. Coz they’re taking their time to create magical…
smdh 🤦♂️ and I haven’t even played Hollow Knight!
@NintndoNik it actively pisses me off when someone gets so mad over someone’s speculation because they think their speculation is correct. How dumb and ignorant can people be. You’re actively being a hypocrite. Have a great day !!!!!! Or don’t who cares.
@MSaturn I mean, at least Metroid Prime 4: Beyond had justification for its 7 (coming on 8) year development cycle. COVID-19 hit at the worst time, their team was pretty small after the pandemic so they had to start hiring people…
The fact that Retro Studios plowed through anyway despite the dumpster fire of a development cycle is just incredible.
Doesn't matter, at this point. It might as well be.😅
@NintndoNik Silksong is still part of the Kickstarter rewards for the original game. Meaning, Team Cherry is obliged to tell backers (and only backers) about the progress of the game often and consistently because backers donated money to them in good faith (this is quite literally what Kickstarter tells backers and creators). They are NOT obliged to tell the public anything.
I suppose it is possible that backers are being made aware and everyone is being tight-lipped, but I highly doubt it.
Yes it is, dont let a play tester fool you 🙃
Team Cherry can take their time. For now I'm hyped for the japan-style Hollow Knight called "Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus" which looks amazing and will be out July 17th 😍
@Takoda This happens more often than not, unfortunately.. Metroid Prime 4, Mass Effect 4, Elder Scrolls VI.. Like, honestly. Only announce a project if it's a year, maybe two years, away.. not four or five :/.
A rushed Silksong is bad forever.
A delayed Silksong will never come out at all.
Imagine if this is finally released and it’s revealed it took so long because it’s just absolutely HUGE. Properly gigantic with multiple playable characters and hundreds of optional bosses.
I don’t know if that would be a good thing actually.
Personally, never thought it's in "dev hell", but at the same time I can't completely blame those thinking so when Team Cherry's communication is so lacking - something à la Toby Fox (as @Axecon also mentioned) would be perfect for them and heck, even Nintendo had better communication when it comes to Prime 4 considering they announced that they had to restart development and at least the game always showed up in their reports!
Could it be in dev purgatory? Or maybe it's developed as a stadia exclusive and they didn't manage to break the contract yet.
Regardless, it will definitely launch before Star citizen.
I believe they’re just trying to make it the biggest, best, most polished game they can. Kinda like Prime 4.
Success (and continued success) of the first game has likely given them all the time they could ever want to make Silksong. There’s no rush, aside from maybe some timeframe stipulated by Microsoft for Game Pass (though maybe they’ll just get paid that money when it’s ready to launch). There’ll be droves of people buying it whether they launch tomorrow or years from now so from their perspective, why not take the time to make it the best game they can possibly make?
I get it’s frustrating to wait but just like with Prime 4, unless they say otherwise, it’s coming. Play the countless other great games that release all the time while you wait.
Are there no other games to play in the meantime? Gaming is a buffet; go get some salad while you wait for the steak.
I haven’t finished Hollow Knight, so I’m not really paying too much attention to this. But this seems like a perfectly reasonable amount of time they’re taking.
@PinderSchloss the problem is at a previous Xbox event we were told all games shown would come out in next 12 months and silksong was one of them and missed that deadline and limited communication since.
@Bobb I think it was later revealed that there was no real development progress on Bayonetta 3 when it was announced, aside from the logo. XD
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