Hollow Knight

Yeah I watched that whole Geoff Keighley thing yesterday in hopes of hearing something about Silksong, but nope. Apparently the pandemic hit development extra hard on this one. Still, maybe something will turn up in the coming weeks.

Speak of the devil

https://kotaku.com/hollow-knight-silksong-xbox-game-pass-team-cherry-gamep-1849051064

I sat down to watch Giant Bomb talk over the Xbox thing yesterday, and I actually *screamed* when I saw the Silksong announcement. And I never even *beat* Hollow Knight, I'm such a poser

I never beat it after the first ending, iirc, when the difficulty spikes to perverse levels (buzzsaws and boss rushes!), but I had so much fun with the game I may just play it again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_lMn6nalqM

video games are hard to make dude

If that were true, then why are there so many of them?

🤔

Eh

I mean, I’ll buy it but I can wait

This video is pretty jerky

Heh, I agree it's pretty lame. The lack of updates from Team Cherry has been equally mysterious and maddening, though, so I took it as more funny than frustrated. Personally, I kind of admire TC's restraint/radio-silence for going on four years without more than the barest of teases. The last glimpse of gameplay was ... three years ago? Is that right?

60 hours in, i’m probably almost done right? still have at least 10 charms to collect. right now the plan is to finally beat this third colosseum challenge and then go fight the final boss.

loved the experience tho, this game is really impressively deep

I don't know/remember where you are at, exactly, but I believe there is a bit more to do ...

I recommended this to a friend that likes Metroid and Castlevania and generally all points in between, but he found it too oppressively lonely to get into. I don't think he made it far at all, though, so I should pressure him to try again or follow a guide or something.

I loved almost everything about this game, but still ended up bailing after a few (?) bosses due to all the backtracking, getting lost and not knowing where I hadn't been and where I should go, etc.

Yeah I got stuck in the maze after two bosses, but fun while it lasted

I’d love to start from scratch again but there’s no point starting another big game when Zeldas out soon

For a first level boss Hornet was freaking hard a fuck

*er, as fuck

Ori: Will of the Wisps scratched all of the itches of a Metroidvania for me. Hollow Knight felt too monochrome, convoluted, and overly challenging for me and I stopped playing it after about 5-8 hours in. Loved the style, atmosphere and mysteriousness of it, though.

Both Oris are beautiful (in every sense). HK is pretty bleak, though nonetheless pretty cute in its own way.

I think I’m gonna play HK right now. Good plan!

Kind of having my mind boggled that people are calling HK monochrome and too hard when they also play From games.

I loved the bosses and the aesthetic, it was really just the way finding. I think I'm over the Metroidvania thing, it would just stress me out to go past all these areas that were obviously inaccessible until I got some upgrade, then would have to find them all again.

Feels very different from the "aha!" moment you get in a From game when you find the shortcut in a winding level and realize how everything connects.

Just got this game. Died to the first boss

But also I'm playing Ori and they feel quite similar?

I also got stuck/lost and bailed a few hours in. People do love it, but it never really clicked with me. Which is odd cuz I like From games and metroidvania stuff generally. Maybe I’ll give it another spin sometime down the line.

I don’t recall how the map and navigation system works exactly but yeah, I think that was part of what kind of threw the wrench into the works for me.

felt like the first few map areas took me forever to get through but then once i reached the city of tears, the game totally opened up for me. i started navigating and conquering the areas in much shorter times. there is very little hand-holding tho, and it's not always clear where to go (took me forever to find the kingdom's edge smh)

i still haven't mastered the nail arts (rarely use them, prob should use em more), but i've definitely progressed a lot. now i can just demolish that soul warrior guy who it took me something like two hours to beat when i first encountered him in the soul asylum lol

Reportedly Team Cherry quietly changed the "Silksong" domain, which means 6 more weeks of winter.

Been revisiting this in anticipation of whenever Silksong decides to appear. About 15 hours in, just finished Deepnest & Herrah. Is it an unpopular opinion to say this game is maybe *too* big? On my first playthrough, I clocked close to 40 hours and never even finished it, because I just burned out after a while. It makes me wonder if Silksong is going to be even more sprawling, and IDK if I have the stamina for that.

Also I learned recently that there is now a fan-made full voice acting mod, which I just do not understand at all. The gibberish voices are already perfect! I can *kinda* get it from an accessibility standpoint, but from an aesthetic standpoint...meh

I burned out too, the thought of all the Metroidvania backtracking began to feel like a chore. But I really loved the look and feel, and the boss fights, so I'm kinda hoping Silksong will be a tighter experience? Although after all this time I suppose they're going to want to deliver something really big.

i finally got access to the white palace, once i clear this, i think i'm finally ready to fight the knight.

i am def sympathetic to the "too big" feeling, but i have a tendency to completely bury myself in games, so the bigger the better imo. i've clocked close to 100 hours, ready to stop just in time for zelda to take over my life.

Hey gang, just a quick update about Silksong.

We had planned to release in the 1st half of 2023, but development is still continuing. We're excited by how the game is shaping up, and it's gotten quite big, so we want to take the time to make the game as good as we can.

Expect…

— Matthew Griffin (@griffinmatta) May 10, 2023

*gang gets sad*

Ok I'm psyching myself up to get back into this. Curious if it will be possible to get back in the swing of things on my old save, given that I have no memory of anything.

That's sort of a weird waking nightmare I have, that I will be mostly through a challenging game and then get distracted by something else, and by the time I get back to it I have forgotten how to do anything.

Haha. Ok, it took a few bumbling deaths and accidentally selling something for a few hundred currency units and dying again, but I'm back in! Apparently I'm at the Royal Waterway, and I've found two bosses there.

Lol, yesterday I beat the infamous Dung Defender, then in the next area I threw all of my money in a fountain just before running into the map seller and the paid bench unlock for the area. I guess I thought it might function like a bank? That one is really on me.

i love the dung defender

I'm fully committed now, but I've seldom had less idea where I'm supposed to go in a video game.

I've got the super dash and the double jump so now we're fully ready to wander.

I accessed the 'dream nail' version of one of the bosses (Broken Vessel/Lost Kin) for the first time, did you all do those? Is it worth it? I like the boss battles but I'm not especially compelled to repeat them, but maybe it's something you do later on when you're fully powered up?

It's been too long to remember the details, but I don't recall a clear incentive to do all the dream nail battles. But I didn't do all the post-game/deep endgame stuff, either, so maybe it has something to do with that?

Lol, yesterday I beat the infamous Dung Defender, then in the next area I threw all of my money in a fountain just before running into the map seller and the paid bench unlock for the area. I guess I thought it might function like a bank? That one is really on me.

― Random Restaurateur (Jordan), Thursday, May 11, 2023 3:08 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

If put 3000 geo in it gives you a vessel fragment, which I only discovered after looking at a guide and trying to figure out how I'd missed so many upgrades

I'm currently playing on the Switch which I'm convinced has some control issues over the PC version, I've played both now and I don't think it's just me. It just feels like something is slightly off and they aren't tight enough to pull off certain moves with confidence every time. I find I'm constantly ending up diving straight into the ground when I should be going left/right, and it feels the game only randomly decides when you've successfully pulled off a downstrike or not leading to some sections just being absolute misery. Trying to obtain the vessel fragment in Deepnest is the worst so far, total hell.

Supposedly there's been some movement on the Silksong front. Has there ever been a game that missed an entire console generation between announcement and release?

duke nukem forever was announced in 1997 and released in 2011. and wow was it worth the wait!!!!

Def the Chinese Democracy of games. That Bethesda game that came out last year was under dev for at least 10 years, but apparently only announced 5 years before it came out.

When did half life 3 come out again?

When it finally drops, I'll be curious what the story was that drove development to take so long. I don't care if they're a small studio, the first game took a small handful of people only 3-4 years to create. 7+ years is a long time for this genre, even if a solo developer was putting it together. I'd be willing to bet the pandemic and lockdown had a huge negative impact.

Though perhaps it will be like 2-3 times the size of the first game; an Elden Ring style expansion over DS3?

I assume they calculated their days-cash-on-hand and decided to blow up the scope

Delays are understandable, but I wonder what accounts for Team Cherry's near complete radio silence?

They don’t owe you shit is what

For sure. That's why they don't *have* to do it. But they do have a web presence - twitter, facebook, youtube, website - just not one that's updated. At this point I'm honestly more worried for the team than anxious for a new game.