kingdom come
Game Hollow Knight: Silksong Developer/publisher Team Cherry Format PC, Switch Release TBA
The 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 ’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 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”, Pellen tells us.
