Hollow Knight: Silksong, Team Cherry’s full-scale sequel to Hollow Knight, launched on September 4, 2025, about eight years and six months after the original game reached PC. Its English-language Steam reviews are strongly positive. This article cannot give you a verified count of what 42 individual people think, though. We could not confirm who those people are, how they were chosen, or whether their comments were solicited or taken from public posts, so no opinion is attributed to any of them here. What follows separates the verified timeline and review figures from the questions a reader should ask about any reaction roundup.
The verified timeline
Three dates anchor the story. Team Cherry’s own announcement and the Steam listing are the primary sources for each.
| Date | What happened | What it does and does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| February 24, 2017 | Original Hollow Knight launches on PC. | Team Cherry says its earliest Silksong work came together after this release. This is the starting point for the headline’s count. |
| February 14, 2019 | Team Cherry reveals Silksong. | The studio says the project had been growing for “well over a year” by then and describes itself as a three-person team at that point. Its current team size is not stated in the sources reviewed here. |
| September 4, 2025 | Silksong releases, according to its Steam listing. | Steam lists the game as single-player. |
From planned DLC to standalone sequel
Team Cherry’s 2019 reveal describes the project’s scope change directly. “Almost from the very start, Hornet’s adventure was intended to take place in a new land, but as we dove in, it quickly became too large and too unique to stay a DLC, as initially planned.” The studio calls Silksong “the second game by Team Cherry” and “the full-scale sequel to Hollow Knight.”
The premise is simple. Hornet is captured and taken to an unfamiliar land, where she battles foes, solves mysteries and climbs toward the kingdom’s peak. Because the announcement describes a project that grew out of an add-on rather than a formal start date, no single official development length exists to quote.
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#1 Best Overall
![Hollow Knight: Silksong Standard - Nintendo Switch [Digital Code]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51mOgOC8xEL._SL160_.jpg)
- Discover the fallen insect kingdom of Pharloom! Explore mossy grottos, gilded cities and misted moors as you ascend to the shining citadel at the top of the world.
- Engage in lethal acrobatic action! Wield a huge suite of deadly moves as you dance between foes in swift, beautiful combat.
- Craft powerful tools! Master an ever-expanding arsenal of weapons, traps, and mechanisms to vanquish your enemies and explore new heights.
- Solve shocking quests! Hunt down rare beasts and solve ancient mysteries to grant the wishes of the downtrodden and restore the kingdom’s hope.
- Face over 200 ferocious foes! Beasts and hunters, monsters and knights. Defeat them all with bravery and skill!
Why the headline says 8.5 years
The figure is an elapsed-time calculation: from the February 24, 2017 PC launch of Hollow Knight to the September 4, 2025 release of Silksong, which comes to roughly eight years and six months. Team Cherry did not publish an 8.5-year figure itself.
That calculation measures the gap between two launches, not the length of a continuous development effort. Work on the sequel began at some point after 2017 and was already underway when it was announced in 2019. Readers who want a precise development duration will not find one in the official material reviewed here.
Rank #2
- Hollow Knight: Silksong is the epic sequel to Hollow Knight, the award winning action-adventure.
- Journey to all-new lands, discover new powers, battle vast hordes of bugs and beasts and uncover secrets tied to your nature and your past.
What the review score does and does not show
Steam’s English-language summary for Silksong has read “Very Positive,” with 93% of reviews positive from more than 145,000 reviews. Those figures change as reviews are added, and they describe one storefront and one set of languages. They are not a poll of all players and they are not a measure of what any particular group of people thinks.
Treat the score as a snapshot of Steam reviewers, and check the live listing before quoting it.
Rank #3
- Classic side-scrolling action, with all the modern trimmings.
- Tightly tuned 2D controls. Dodge, dash and slash your way through even the most deadly adversaries.
- Explore a vast interconnected world of forgotten highways, overgrown wilds and ruined cities.
- Forge your own path! The world of Hallownest is expansive and open. Choose which paths you take, which enemies you face and find your own way forward.
- Evolve with powerful new skills and abilities! Gain spells, strength and speed. Leap to new heights on ethereal wings. Dash forward in a blazing flash. Blast foes with fiery Soul!.Equip Charms! Ancient relics that offer bizarre new powers and abilities. Choose your favourites and make your journey unique!.An enormous cast of cute and creepy characters all brought to life with traditional 2D frame-by-frame animation..
Reading a reaction roundup on its own terms
A list of reactions from a set number of people can be useful, but only if its method is visible. Before trusting any roundup of responses to Silksong, check the following.
- Selection: Were the people chosen as creators, as random public posters, or because they answered a call? Each choice produces a different kind of sample.
- Solicitation: Were all respondents asked the same question, or were quotes picked after the fact to fit a narrative?
- Source and date: Each comment should link to its original post, with a timestamp. Screenshots and search snippets cannot stand in for a person’s words, and opinions about a game often shift in the months after launch.
- Balance: Are positive and negative responses reported in proportion, and are players who stopped playing included?
- Scope: Does the roundup say which platform, region and language its respondents came from?
If a roundup meets these tests, the most useful way to read it is by reason rather than by tally. Code each response against the questions players most often raise about this kind of game:
Rank #4
![Hollow Knight - Nintendo Switch [Digital Code]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51nXCF+sf5L._SL160_.jpg)
- Classic side-scrolling action, with all the modern trimmings.
- Forge your own path! The world of Hallownest is expansive and open. Choose which paths you take, which enemies you face and find your own way forward.
- Evolve with powerful new skills and abilities! Gain spells, strength and speed. Leap to new heights on ethereal wings. Dash forward in a blazing flash. Blast foes with fiery Soul!
- Equip Charms! Ancient relics that offer bizarre new powers and abilities. Choose your favorites and make your journey unique!
- An enormous cast of cute and creepy characters all brought to life with traditional 2D frame-by-frame animation.
- Difficulty and boss challenge
- Exploration and world design
- Comparison with Hollow Knight
- Whether the eight-year wait raised expectations
- Whether the strengths justify the time it demands
These are the axes a fair reading should cover. They are not findings about what players overall concluded, and no single one should be assumed to dominate without reviewing the full set of responses.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where to play
Team Cherry’s official Games page lists Silksong on PC, Mac, Linux, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Availability and pricing differ by region and storefront, so confirm the current listing for your device and country before buying.
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Updates since launch
In a December 15, 2025 update, Team Cherry said that more than seven million people had purchased the game. It also said that millions more were playing through Xbox Game Pass, but it did not give an exact Game Pass player count. The same update announced a free expansion for 2026. Its contents and release timing are not confirmed in the material reviewed here, so check Team Cherry’s site for the current plan.
Quick Recap
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