The Silksong saga: Seven years of silence, delays, and a Gamescom reveal

The critically acclaimed Hollow Knight was released in February 2017 by the three-person Team Cherry studio. What started as a bare-bones concept created for a game jam became one of the greatest video games of all time, sparking a modern resurgence of the Metroidvania genre.

In 2019, a promised DLC for Hornet expanded into a full-blown sequel. Despite the initial marketing, the team went radio silent, promising that the game was in development. 

Almost seven years later, Silksong was officially announced at Gamescom 2025 with a September release date. Let’s take a look at the trailer and recall how the community descended into madness before the announcement.

All the teasing, waiting, and silence culminated in August 2025 at Gamescom, Europe’s biggest gaming expo. Team Cherry finally pulled back the curtain with a special announcement:

Hollow Knight: Silksong will be released on September 4, 2025. The game will be available for Steam, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox, Sony PlayStation 4, Sony PlayStation 5, and DRM-free on GOG and Humble Bundle. Additionally, it will be a day-one title on Xbox Game Pass.

The trailer showcased the beautiful 2D hand-drawn art style that made the first game so iconic, as it gave a sneak peek into many different biomes and environments. Silksong’s goals will be the opposite of the Knight’s journey, where instead of descending into the heart of Hallownest, players will ascend to the peak of a haunted kingdom of Pharloom.

The sprawling, interconnected map perfected in the first game returns in the sequel. Players should expect the same immersive exploration filled with loneliness and secrets. Yet, the trailer shows that there are pockets of civilisation. 

Cities with bugs set up shop and provide quests, which would perhaps tie in to the title card to “restore a kingdom’s hope”. Hornet’s journey could be less lonely because of the NPCs that she’ll interact with (that hopefully won’t be subject to tragic fates after talking to them).

Combat-wise, Hornet is much more agile compared to the first game’s protagonist. The trailer flaunts her ability to run extended distances, fighting in the air with more grace than her counterpart, and the ability to use her needle as a grappling hook. Expect parkour sequences that could prove more challenging than the first game’s path of pain.

Hornet can equip crests and craftable tools for combat and exploration. Her equipment will be useful to fight off Silksong’s 200 enemies and more than 40 bosses. Additionally, Gamescom had a playable demo that lucky attendees could try.

Hollow Knight was partially funded through a Kickstarter in 2014, but the game was first released on February 24, 2017. Hollow Knight was beloved by fans and its backers, but it was overshadowed by Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The indie darling hit breakout success because of Nintendo’s E3 2018 Direct, where they brought on Team Cherry to showcase the game on stage. Following that, Nintendo shadow dropped the title, announcing that the Switch port was available on that day, bundled with free post-launch content to date. Within two weeks, the game sold more than 250,000 copies on Nintendo Switch.

Fast forward to August 2025, Team Cherry says that Hollow Knight has cleared over 15 million copies sold, and all of these eyes were waiting on Silksong.

One of the stretch goals for the Kickstarter was adding a second playable character: Hornet. Players meet this boss turned ally multiple times throughout the game, and she is a crucial character to the game’s narrative. 

Team Cherry started work on her as a DLC character, where her adventure took place in a new land, but they quickly realised that it became “too large and too unique to stay a DLC, as initially planned”. Because of that, they announced that Silksong would be a full-scale sequel to Hollow Knight in a blog post, but didn’t mention any release window.

Silksong immediately became one of the most wishlisted titles on Steam, and fans were eager over every post and teaser from Team Cherry. At E3 in June 2019, Silksong returned to Nintendo’s showcase as a playable demo. Attendees queued for hours to try a demo, which showcased two areas, Moss Grotto and Deep Docks.

Nintendo’s Treehouse Live even streamed gameplay footage, giving the wider public an early look. Team Cherry followed up with a detailed blog post describing new mechanics and areas like the expansive Greymoor region. By late 2019, they teased that Silksong would feature 165+ new enemies and released a preview of Christopher Larkin’s melancholic soundtrack.

Team Cherry’s last blog post was in December 2019, reiterating that Silksong is in development, but “timelines have stretched a bit both to account for all that exciting new stuff and to tie up everything else”. 

The year 2020 brought long stretches of radio silence from Team Cherry, understandable, due to the global pandemic. In lieu of big announcements, one mod for the Hollow Knight Discord, Leth (responsible for marketing & publishing for the game), engaged fans with cryptic riddles on their Discord in mid-2020, which, when solved, revealed new NPC characters and short video clips of Silksong. 

Teasers trickled out, but still no release window. The cycle of hope, disappointment, looped over like a punishment from mythological gods. If you were around then, you felt it.

In December 2020, Silksong was the cover story in EDGE magazine. The issue featured exclusive screenshots and fresh details, including interviews with Team Cherry’s co-directors Ari Gibson and William Pellen. 

This feature was the first substantial update in nearly a year, and it would be the last update on Silksong for years to come.

If 2020’s updates were already sparse, 2021 had no crumbs left. Team Cherry went completely silent on Silksong news throughout the year. No trailers, no events, and no blog posts emerged, despite speculation that the game might appear at showcases like The Game Awards or E3. 

Fans hyped themselves up for every major showcase, waiting for news about Silksong, and every time, they were disappointed.

During this prolonged info blackout, the fan community grew restless to the point of self-parody. On the Hollow Knight and newly-formed Silksong subreddits, devotees began referring to their anxious mental state as “silksanity.” Without official news, fans entertained themselves with memes, wild theories, and good old-fashioned Silkposting (which is often about spreading wild misinformation on the game).

One dedicated fan launched a YouTube channel called “Daily Silksong News” in early 2021, not to deliver actual news, but to post daily 30-second videos noting that no news had been announced. Incredibly, he kept this up for over 2,380 consecutive days, a Sisyphean satire of the long wait, until Silksong was finally revealed.

Others thought Silksong was a fever dream, a mass hysteria seen from an alternate timeline. Others thought it would be the indie equivalent of Half-Life 3 and GTA 6, mythical games that were eternally coming soon. 

The community was kept alive on pure speculation, increasingly unhinged posting, and ritualistic ban sacrifices, in the hope of conjuring a release date. While most of it was in good humour, some bad actors took it to the next level, lashing out at fans and developers. 

Silksong finally resurfaced in June 2022 during Microsoft’s Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase. A new gameplay trailer came with a tantalising promise. Microsoft announced that every game shown in that presentation was expected to be released within the next 12 months. 

By extension, fans took this to mean Silksong should launch by June 2023. Xbox’s social media even reinforced this implication. 

Shortly after, Sony announced the game would come to PlayStation as well. By late 2022, Silksong was lined up for basically everything hinting at a coordinated, all-at-once launch. Or at least, that’s how it looked.

As 2023 began, fans braced themselves for Silksong’s release by June. But month after month passed with no update from Team Cherry. In May 2023, Team Cherry’s marketing rep, Matthew Griffin (aka Leth), finally broke the silence with an announcement no one wanted:

By now, Silksong’s protracted development had become a bit of a running joke. Why was a game with millions of eager fans receiving zero marketing or status updates for years on end? Team Cherry’s silence was controversial and hurt the goodwill they earned.

Yet, Silksong remained one of the most highly anticipated games in the world. It camped at the top of Steam’s wishlist charts and picked up Unity’s Most Anticipated Game twice: 2021, then again in 2024. Hollow Knight’s legacy was strong enough that players were willing to wait, even if begrudgingly.

On the fourth anniversary of Silksong’s reveal (February 2024), Griffin posted a brief Discord message acknowledging the milestone. He added that the team was “still hard at work”. It wasn’t much, but it indicated the project was alive.

On April 2, 2025, a Nintendo Direct broadcast provided the first official Silksong update in ages: in a quick sizzle reel, Nintendo reconfirmed that Silksong would be released in 2025. 

Microsoft’s reveal of the new ROG Ally handheld prominently featured Silksong gameplay on the device’s screen, albeit blurred on purpose in the background. Shortly after, Matthew Griffin took to Discord yet again to clarify Team Cherry’s intentions: Silksong would “release before the holiday season of 2025” and was “not tied to any console release”.

Finally, without any further delays, Hollow Knight: Silksong’s release trailer was shown on a special announcement livestream. As of writing this piece, the trailer has racked up more than 3.2 million views in less than 24 hours.

The seven-year development timeline took as long as the team needed to make the game they wanted to make, with no controversy behind it. Pellen even mentioned that they could have kept on going for much longer.

Regarding their lack of updates, Gibson said that talking about continued updates would sour their fans on the game, as “all we could really say is, ‘We’re still working on it.’” Team Cherry really believed that Silksong could come out much sooner, but the project kept expanding until years passed by. 

Announced in 2019 as a sequel to the wildly successful Hollow Knight, Team Cherry has been tight-lipped on Silksong. After seven years, Silksong is no longer a rumour or a fever dream; it’s a real game that’s releasing on all platforms on September 4, 2025.

Silksong won’t be handing out review codes to critics and reviewers, meaning there will be no reviews on launch day. This is generally considered a bad move for consumers, and players should still exercise caution, regardless of the hype. 

Skongers have waited seven years; they can wait for one more day for first impressions. No spoilers allowed!