These days, it’s unusual to see a studio play things by the book. Hollow Knight: Silksong finally has a release date, and it’s only days away. That’s how it should be: announce when the game is ready, instead of years of hype and endless trailers that mean everything and nothing. But even with the finish line in sight, many still wonder why it took so long. Team Cherry has an answer.
Why Silksong Took Seven Years
Team Cherry has confirmed that Hollow Knight: Silksong will launch on September 4 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, Switch 2, PC, and Xbox Game Pass.
The release date brings long-awaited certainty, but questions remain about the prolonged wait. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Ari Gibson and William Pellen, the studio’s co-founders, revealed what happened.
It wasn’t a troubled production or internal conflict. Instead, the game simply became far larger than originally planned. What began as an expansion quickly turned into a full sequel.
As Gibson explained:
“Even at that point we were recognizing that it was going to become another giant thing to rival the scale of Hollow Knight or probably exceed it. And then because of how we work, obviously the world ended up being just as big or bigger. And the quest system existed. And the multiple towns existed. Suddenly you end up six, seven years later.”
Knowing When to Stop
Another reason behind the long wait was the creative process itself. Team Cherry found themselves in sync, with ideas flowing so quickly they were almost immediately built into the game.
Gibson described it this way:
“We’re very fortunate that we have a development method that is so enjoyable. Not exactly sure how we stumbled into that. Everything comes together quickly. You can see results fast. Ideas turn into something that exist in the game almost immediately before your eyes, and that’s very satisfying. And that allows you to go off on those tangents and meet weird characters because someone’s off-handedly mentioned a weird character as an idea and the other person’s laughed, and that’s enough.”
Pellen added that while there was no pressure to release early, eventually they had to put an end to the constant stream of new content:
“You’re always working on a new idea, new item, new area, new boss. That stuff’s so nice. It’s for the sake of just completing the game that we’re stopping. We could have kept going.”
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