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Hollow Knight: Silksong is an entirely new game starring Hornet from the original Hollow Knight! While Hornet’s adventure was initially pitched as a DLC update for the original game, Team Cherry have gone down a similar path to the one taken by Yacht Club Games with Shovel Knight as the amount of content present has far exceeding the scope of a DLC update.
If you backed the Hollow Knight Kickstarter at $10 AUD or above, you’ll also still be getting this whole game entirely for free on your choice of PC or the Switch! If you donated enough for multiple copies all copies beyond the first will be for the PC version; the PC version grants both a Steam key and a DRM free copy.
The new content this game has to offer is significant indeed with the trailer above boasting of over 150 new enemy types, new mechanics, and an entirely new world to explore. The lack of any sort of release date makes me believe we won’t be seeing this game until 2020 at the absolute earliest, but I am extremely excited for this sequel to my favorite 2017 indie game!
The announcement trailer is filled with all sorts of hidden ( and not-so-hidden) information, so let’s dissect it a bit! I’ll be listing points by timestamp to keep things somewhat tidy below the break:
- 0:18 – The soul meter has been fitting replaced by a silk meter which looks like a spool of thread. The big circle next to your health only glows when the meter is completely full.
- 0:33 – Using long-range thread attacks expends silk, but it refills just as quickly if you land a melee hit.
- 0:34 – The thread attack Hornet has been using doesn’t have to exclusively be used on enemies. Hornet uses it on empty space here to pull herself slightly upward and to the left, making it a valuable traversal tool even if the silk cost means it can’t be used outside of combat indefinitely.
- 0:39 – Hornet can run backwards without changing the direction she’s facing, though it looks like she might not be able to attack while doing so.
- 0:40 – Charged attacks use up silk, but seem to require no actual charge time, making them closer to spells from the first game.
- 0:45 – There are all sorts of buttons and threads everywhere in this trailer, but the sheer number of ornaments here really emphasizes the silk and sewing aesthetic theme this game is going for.
- 0:56 – This boss fight might take place in an arena judging by the crowd in the background. This might be the equivalent of the first game’s Colosseum of Fools.
- 1:06 – The giant bug Hornet’s riding is the same as the one she was fighting around 0:45. Even the environment’s the same!
- 1:09 – Hornet can expend her entire silk meter to quickly refill at least three health. This is a significant change from Hollow Knight‘s system of slowly expending to slowly heal and it could result in even more intense combat.
- 1:11 – It says it right on the screen, but there are new towns and I’m putting an emphasis on the plural there. Hollow Knight had NPC’s scattered about, but it only had one true town hub while Hollow Knight: Silksong looks to have multiple, though the town initial shown off at 1:11 does seem like it’s probably the main hub and a rather large one at that.
- 1:14 – This might be the village of Dirtmouth from the first game! The general layout and color scheme mostly match, though the presence of a river suggests that it might be a different, similar town or a lot has changed. If this is Dirtmouth, the elder is very different and everything looks abandoned and covered in Geos, so perhaps a substantial amount of time has passed between games.
- 1:24 – There is a more concrete quest system this time around. We can see Hornet inspect a quest board to pull up a list of five quests which fall under the categories of Gather, Hunt, Wayfarer, and Grand Hunt.
- 1:24 – This isn’t so much a new feature, but the initial highlighted quest, Mossberry Brew by the Druid of the Moss Temple, is probably what we see being completed two seconds earlier at 1:22 given all the moss and brewing and whatnot. In other words, we have a potential confirmation of what this NPC and the Moss Temple location look like.
- 1:15 – I’m taking a step back here because the board on the right side of town here is clearly similar to the quest board displayed at 1:24, especially given that the posters on it match up with the quest colors. I wonder if each board has its own set of quests or if it’s a shared pool which can be accessed from all boards.
- 1:29 – Hornet can use her needle to grab walls and pull herself to them without expending thread. This is not the same as the aerial “attack” initial shown at 0:33 as it presumably requires a wall to function. She can also wall jump.
- 1:32 – Hornet has access to tools and there is a lot to unpack here so this will be multiple bullet points. Tools are divided into a red, a blue, and a yellow category and it looks like they might replace charms. Red tools act as subweapons and at least some of them can be used without a silk cost as they are shown off prominently in the trailer.
- 1:32 – It is unclear what the other two tool types do, though they seem rarer and their category symbols aren’t as weapon-like as the red one’s. If I had to guess, I’d say one provides passive benefits and the other either changes Hornet’s charged attacks or lets her summon allies as the red Pimpillo tool’s description says “Dangerous to friends and foes alike”.
- 1:32 – Crests are also shown off here, though more subtly. Much as tools seem to replace charms, crests seem to replace sockets. We can see that Hornet is currently using the Wanderer crest here with three slots corresponding to each of the three types of tools. However, there’s a Change Crest option in the bottom-left with a symbol that looks like the Wanderer crest plus another one with four eyes. Crests are practically guaranteed to have different slot colors and I’m assuming the number of slots might change as well. For example, maybe there’s a crest with four slots, but two are blue and two are red with no yellow slots or there might be a crest with nothing but yellow slots.
- 1:35 – Enemies drop red orbs upon death here and in a few other points in the trailer. Hornet picks them up with a brief jingling sound effect, so they are probably the currency this time around. Not every enemy killed in the trailer drops them though.
- 1:44 – The enemies here look to be from the faction which was transporting an imprisoned Hornet out of Hallownest at the start of the trailer.
- 1:55 – The boss Hornet’s fighting here seems to be identical to the one shown off at 0:54, though in a very different environment; they are probably the “rival” character for this game.
- On a final note, Hornet’s maximum health changes throughout the trailer, but the silk meter does not. This makes sense if all silk costs are percentage-based with the goal of creating even more dynamic combat where silk is constantly gained and expended instead of gradually gained and mostly used in infrequent bursts like soul was in the first game.