Hollow Knight: Silksong began life as a DLC expansion, but then developers Team Cherry decided the concept was “too large and too unique”, and upgraded it into a full game. They spent six years working on the thing in almost total silence, while fulminating legions of the terminally online quietly drove themselves bonkers hunting for release date clues. We now have a Silksong release date – it’s just two weeks away – so in theory, the nightmare is over. Except, oh dear – Team Cherry are planning post-launch content for Silksong, and they’re already calling it “ambitious”.
All that’s from this week’s breakout interview with Press X To Jason Schreier, the person who considerately does all the investigative reporting in games journalism so that humbler souls like myself can spend our days taking the piss out of him. According to Schreier, “they’re already making big plans to add extra content to Silksong in the months and years to come.” Then there are some snippets from Team Cherry’s founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen.
“Launching it is obviously quite exciting,” Pellen said. “What comes after for us is equally as exciting.”
“The most interesting thing now is what can we add to it next,” interjected Gibson. “We got a plan. Admittedly, some of the plans for that stuff are kind of ambitious as well, but hopefully we can achieve some of it.”
Those monsters! I look forward to revisiting this post in 2030, assuming RPS hasn’t been turned into sausages by then, while writing up the latest rumours about Hollow Knight: Polyestertune or Satinmelody or whatever they end up calling the third one. In fairness, Hollow Knight did get actual DLC expansions before Silksong that launched at a regular rate.
In any case, the DLC tease is perhaps better interpreted as show of kindness. Earlier in the interview, Gibson and Pellen fret that by actually releasing Silksong, they’re spoiling things for players for whom the real Silksong is speculating endlessly about the release of Silksong.
“It’s nice that people are passionate about the game, and that they’ve obviously formed their own strange or very exciting communities around it,” said Gibson, diplomatically. Added Pellen: “Feels like we’re going to ruin their fun by releasing the game.” I guess their tantalising talk of “ambitious” post-launch material is a bid to keep the dream alive, then.
