Despite all of the hype, little is known about what’s actually in Hollow Knight: Silksong. Developer Team Cherry has been confidently tight-lipped about all of the secrets hiding inside it’s latest Metroidvania Soulslike. But a list of achievements and trophies for the sequel hints at just how much bigger than the original game it might be. The short answer: a lot.
Before even playing the game you can look at a list of Silksong‘s achievements (or trophies on PlayStation 5). One in particular provides an interesting clue about the larger scope. As Game File‘s Stephen Totilo pointed out on Bluesky, the “speed completion” achievement requires players to hit 100 percent completion in under 30 hours. A similar achievement in the first Hollow Knight only gave players 20 hours. Does that mean Silksong is roughly 33 percent bigger than its predecessor?
Maybe!
Mind you, the above achievement is effectively for a 100 percent speedrun, not an average playthrough. Most players have taken around 27 hours to beat Hollow Knight‘s main campaign and up to 64 hours to defeat every boss and find last secret. Assuming Team Cherry is keeping the completionist achievement in Silksong just as difficult to get, we might expect it to take, on average, 10-30 hours longer to do everything there is to do in the game.
While just a speculative guesstimate, the assumption aligns with some of what Team Cherry hinted at in their first and only pre-release interview. When explaining why the sequel took seven years to make, the developers said part of the reason was that they just couldn’t stop themselves from continuing to add new things to Silksong: more towns, NPCs, boss fights, and seemingly many more secrets.
Of course, if you’re a world record Hollow Knight speedrunner like Kyle “LoLNebula” Dodson, you still might be able to 100-percent Silksong in just a few hours. That includes collecting all of the upgrades, charms, and improvements, and fighting lots of bosses multiple times. In fairness Dodson, like lots of other Hollow Knight superfans, has had over eight years to practice.