Every year, as summer approaches, I start to get worried. It's because I know that, around the world, there are Hollow Knight fans gazing across a cold and uncaring sea, daring to hope for some sign that they'll see their bugs again. Every year, I watch those hopes shatter. And every year, as those poor souls drift away muttering that Silksong could be in the Nintendo Direct, maybe, I wonder how many times their hearts can be broken.
2024's big showcase weekend is behind us and once again, Hollow Knight: Silksong didn't make an appearance. Our last Silksong sighting was at the 2022 Xbox & Bethesda showcase—all the games from which, Microsoft confidently declared would be playable over the following year. Well, a year passed. And then another. Depending on what timescale you prefer for measuring human torment, it's been 23 months, or 729 days, or 17,486 hours. For the starving Silksong seekers, there hasn't been another crumb to share.
Even by 2022, waiting for Silksong had already become something between a meme and a Sisyphean burden. At the time, our Wes Fenlon compared the purgatory of holding onto Silksong hype to the long, painful silence of waiting for Elden Ring, which like Silksong was also revealed in 2019. Considering that Yono all app in the time since, Elden Ring's DLC went through its own arc of announcement and lengthy radio silence while Silksong's remained locked away, I can't help but wonder whether Wes had knocked on a sufficient amount of wood after writing.
It's enough to make me despondent, and I didn't even play Hollow Knight. Imagine how the fans feel! Or just look at Twitter, where they're doing their grieving out in the open:
Meanwhile, on the Silksong subreddit, things have gotten a bit more dire, with users apparently so desperate for omens about possible Silksong information that they're tracking how often somebody's logging into Team Cherry's Kickstarter account:
While its fanbase resorts to ever more arcane forms of augury and divination, I should note that Team Cherry hasn't spent the last two years in complete silence. In May 2023, Matthew Griffin, who handles Silksong's PR campaign, acknowledged that Silksong had slipped out of the release window Microsoft had marked out in the 2022 showcase.
"We had planned to release in the 1st half of 2023, but development is still continuing," Griffin said. "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."
Griffin hasn't shared too much about Silksong in 2024, but he did take time to tweet in April that Silksong's Microsoft Store page went up. So, you know, that's progress! Hopefully, there'll be more Silksong news to follow before the end of the year. Until then, check in with your local Hollow Knight fan. Take them on a walk, maybe. Fresh air does wonders.