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How did Hollow Knight: Silksong become the most eagerly awaited indie game of all time?

4/9/2025

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Hollow Knight is one of the most successful indie games ever. Its sequel is the most requested game on Steam. Where did this creepy-crawly hype come from?

Over five million people have Hollow Knight: Silksong on their Steam wishlist. That’s more than any other game on the platform. The sequel to the one-of-a-kind hit from 2017 could become the most successful indie game of all time and outshine even Baldur’s Gate 3.

The inconspicuous Metroidvania title about the iconic white bug already had a large following at launch. However, it only became an exceptional hit two years later. After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014, Hollow Knight was released exclusively for PC in 2017. A year later, Australian two-man studio Team Cherry ported it to the Switch. Nintendo’s console was quickly becoming the most popular platform for indie games alongside PC.

Over the years, Hollow Knight has become one of the best-selling indie games of all time.
Source: Team Cherry

In its first two years, Hollow Knight sold 2.8 million copies. A considerable number, and undoubtedly a success for any indie studio. But this was just the beginning. In 2019, Team Cherry announced the successor, Silksong. What was originally planned as an extension took on ever-larger dimensions. Co-founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen decided to turn it into a fully-fledged second game.

It was the starting signal for steadily growing hype. In the following six years, sales figures for Hollow Knight rose to a ludicrous 15 million.

The perfect hype train

Hollow Knight’s success can’t be tied to a single event. Rather, it’s a series of events that have been driving its popularity to this day. These include well-known YouTubers such as MatPat and his channel The Game Theorist. In 2019, he released a Deepdive on the protagonist, who’s simply called The Knight in-game. The video has been viewed over seven million times. Even if hardcore Hollow Knight fans like mossbag struggled with MatPat’s video, it contributed to the popularity of the game. Hollow Knight’s cryptic world is full of secrets that still keep fans busy to this day.

Team Cherry regularly provided the game with extensive updates, even years after its release. This generated additional attention and further shot up playing times. Although the game can be finished in under 30 hours, many fans put in over 100 hours to turn over every last stone.

The reverse style of play was also very popular. Today’s speedrun record stands at 30 minutes and 49 seconds. The white knight was a regular guest at events such as Games Done Quick.

With Covid-19, 2020 was a bad year for the world generally, but one that did give the games industry a massive boost. While many things came to a standstill, games were booming. This also included Microsoft’s game subscription service Game Pass. And that’s exactly where Hollow Knight ended up in the same year. While this had no impact on sales figures, the fan community continued to expand.

If you want to uncover all secrets in Hollow Knight, you’ll be playing for considerably longer than 30 hours.
Source: Team Cherry

With every new platform, every new update and every new announcement about successor Silksong, Hollow Knight gained more attention. The barrier to entry is low, even without Game Pass and regular sales. The game costs just 15 francs/euros, after all. And thanks to 96 per cent positive reviews on Steam and an average rating of 90 on Opencritic, it regularly ended up on best-of lists across gaming sites. At some point, critical mass was finally reached: Hollow Knight and Silksong became an integral part of the zeitgeist.

But legions of fans were put to a tough test of patience.

A long but smooth development cycle

On 4 September 2025 at 4 p.m., Swiss time, Hollow Knight Silksong was released for PC and consoles. Eight and a half years had passed since the release of game one. What might sound like a turbulent development period was in fact the complete opposite. «It was never stuck or anything. It was always progressing. It’s just the case that we’re a small team, and games take a lot of time. There wasn’t any big controversial moment behind it,» Ari Gibson of Team Cherry explained to US finance and media magazine Bloomberg.

The two studio founders William Pellen (left) and Ari Gibson.
Source: Team Cherry

Despite selling millions of units, the studio had barely expanded. Only one additional developer and one composer as well as a few freelancers had joined the team. Nor had much else changed. The working style and office furnishings including an undecorated avocado green wall were still the same as during the development of Hollow Knight.

This relaxed approach was possible because sales of Hollow Knight made the small team millionaires. This provided peace of mind, especially for Pellen with his two children and a third on the way. For Gibson, on the other hand, little has changed. He lives in a simple two-room flat. But the days when his father would occasionally slip him 20 dollars and he’d treat himself to a coffee are over. There was no more pressure to release a new game as soon as possible.

Hollow Knight: Silksong looks set to be bigger and more ambitious than its predecessor in every respect.
Source: Team Cherry

Initially, Team Cherry published regular updates on the status of Silksong. However, they became increasingly scarce. For a long while, the last sign of life including new images was the Xbox Showcase 2022 trailer, including a promise that Silksong would be released within a year. Then, in 2023, shock: with a simple post on X, the team announced that the game would be postponed. Indefinitely.

From then on, Silksong degenerated into a meme. Fans speculated and hoped for new information at every showcase. But Team Cherry remained silent. Until they finally showed signs of life again to start 2025, the scheduled release year. This time for sure: «Feels like we’re going to ruin their fun by releasing the game. Because all we could really say is, ‘We’re still working on it’,» Gibson told Bloomberg.

The many new enemies should once again provide plenty of nervous fights.
Source: Team Cherry

Finally, Team Cherry reached a point where they had to turn into the home straight. «I remember at some point I just had to stop sketching. Because I went, ‘Everything I’m drawing here has to end up in the game.’ You realise, ‘If I don’t stop drawing, this is going to take 15 years to finish’,» Gibson said.

In the end, they only needed half as long. And we’ll all find out together whether it was worth the wait today. No review codes were sent out. Among other things, because Team Cherry found it unfair to Kickstarter backers if others were allowed to play Silksong before them. Anyone who keeps an eleven-year-old promise simply has to be a cool person.

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Philipp Rüegg

Senior Editor

Philipp.Rueegg@digitecgalaxus.ch

As a child, I wasn't allowed to have any consoles. It was only with the arrival of the family's 486 PC that the magical world of gaming opened up to me. Today, I'm overcompensating accordingly. Only a lack of time and money prevents me from trying out every game there is and decorating my shelf with rare retro consoles.

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