In this week’s newsletter: the long-awaited release from the three-person Team Cherry studio has crashed gaming storefronts and put indie developers back in the spotlight
Just one game has been dominating the gaming conversation over the past week: Hollow Knight Silksong, an eerie, atmospheric action game from a small developer in Australia called Team Cherry. It was finally released last Thursday after many years in development, and everybody is loving it. Hollow Knight was so popular that it crashed multiple gaming storefronts. With continual game cancellations, expensive failures and layoffs at bigger studios, this is the kind of indie triumph the industry loves to celebrate at the moment. But Silksong hasn’t come out of nowhere, and its success would not be easily reproducible for any other game, indie or not.
If you’re wondering what this game actually is, then imagine a dark, mostly underground labyrinth of bug nests and abandoned caverns that gradually yields its secrets to a determined player. The art style and sound are minimalist and creepy (though not scary) in a Tim Burton kind of way, the enemy bugs are fierce and hard to defeat, your player character is another bug with a small, sharp needle-like blade. It blends elements of Metroid, Dark Souls and older challenging platform games, and the unique aesthetic and perfect precision of the controls are what make it stand out from a swarm of similar games. I rinsed the first Hollow Knight and I’m captivated by Silksong. I’ve spent 15 hours on it in three days, and it has made my thumbs hurt.
Continue reading…
In this week’s newsletter: the long-awaited release from the three-person Team Cherry studio has crashed gaming storefronts and put indie developers back in the spotlight
Just one game has been dominating the gaming conversation over the past week: Hollow Knight Silksong, an eerie, atmospheric action game from a small developer in Australia called Team Cherry. It was finally released last Thursday after many years in development, and everybody is loving it. Hollow Knight was so popular that it crashed multiple gaming storefronts. With continual game cancellations, expensive failures and layoffs at bigger studios, this is the kind of indie triumph the industry loves to celebrate at the moment. But Silksong hasn’t come out of nowhere, and its success would not be easily reproducible for any other game, indie or not.
If you’re wondering what this game actually is, then imagine a dark, mostly underground labyrinth of bug nests and abandoned caverns that gradually yields its secrets to a determined player. The art style and sound are minimalist and creepy (though not scary) in a Tim Burton kind of way, the enemy bugs are fierce and hard to defeat, your player character is another bug with a small, sharp needle-like blade. It blends elements of Metroid, Dark Souls and older challenging platform games, and the unique aesthetic and perfect precision of the controls are what make it stand out from a swarm of similar games. I rinsed the first Hollow Knight and I’m captivated by Silksong. I’ve spent 15 hours on it in three days, and it has made my thumbs hurt. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian