Hollow Knight: Silksong devs address the game's "steep difficulty" as an important part of the game

Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight: Silksong has shaken expectations, selling 3.2 million copies on Steam in under two weeks, generating 50 million in revenue, and amassing more than 5 million total players across all platforms. Yet, amid the Silksanity that continues to prevail, one complaint has dominated every review, thread, comment, and post: Hollow Knight: Silksong is too difficult.

And that’s just not newcomers complaining about the game’s difficulty; even veteran Hollow Knight players who played the original game have talked about the game’s punishing difficulty, tricky bosses, and razor-sharp platforming sections. This caused modders to take matters into their own hands to mitigate double damage from enemies.

Team Cherry’s co-director, Ari Gibson, and William Pellen noticed the complaints online and opened up about the game’s “steep difficulty curve”. They spoke at a candid panel discussion and the Australian Center for the Moving Image’s Game Worlds exhibition in Melbourne last weekend, reported by Dexerto. They stated that Silksong’s difficulty isn’t a barrier but an important thread in the game’s tapestry of player agency.

Gibson talked to exhibition co-creator Jini Maxwell and mentioned, “Silksong has moments of steep difficulty, but part of allowing a higher level of freedom within the world means that you have choices all the time about where you’re going and what you’re doing.”

It’s similar to the same philosophy explored by the original Hollow Knight, but cranks it up to eleven, as Silksong’s sprawling kingdom of Pharloom offers tons of hidden upgrades, alternative paths, and routes that can make the game easier.

Gibson continued, “The important thing for us is that we allow you to go way off the path. One player may choose to follow it directly to its conclusion, and then another may choose to constantly divert from it and find all the other things that are waiting and all the other ways and routes.”

Basically, Silksong has been designed with an alternative to every soul-crushing roadblock in the game; players have to find them. Gibson further mentioned, “The goal is to prevent players ‘getting stonewalled by a particular challenge. Players have ways to mitigate the difficulty via exploration, learning, or even circumventing the challenge entirely.”

Pellen touched a bit deeper into the game’s tweaks during the ACMI chat and stated, “The basic ant warrior is built from the same move-set as the original Hornet boss. In contrast to the Knight’s enemies, Hornet’s enemies had to have more ways of catching her as she tries to move away.”

Silksong is on track to eclipse the original Hollow Knight’s 15 million lifetime sales handily. For what it is worth for gamers looking at an easier play session, mods already in circulation that tweak enemy AI and platforming sections