My history with the game Silksong obviously started with Hollow Knight, which I completed back in 2023. I was such a big fan that I got 112% completion and beat Absolute Radiance. From there, as you might know, the small DLC to Hollow Knight with a second playable character grew larger and larger, until Team Cherry decided to make it a standalone game.
I mostly just watched from the sidelines, not really being active on the Subreddit or other platforms, knowing that the more I interacted with it, the more silksane I'd get too. However, I watched Daily Silksong News every evening as some kind of ritual. I eventually hosted my own episode of DSN, and because I wanted it to be something special, I decided to learn at least a little of Lua to write a Silksong-themed mod for Balatro to feature in the video. For this, I created a couple of custom Jokers and a "P5 AB Hitless" Challenge Blind requiring an absurd 18,406,800,000 chips that I had to defeat to get news for today. The joke, of course, was that I planned the run exactly to get the "NO" that it was all along. The file for the mod can be found here (even though I don't remember exactly how to set it up).
During the infamous "the cake was a lie" incident in January 2025, when the entire subreddit descended into madness over false hope, it got me to bake that Brooklyn Blackout Cake
.
Of course, we eventually got a release date for the game: September 4, 2025. I was able to play the demo for the game at Gamescom 2025, which made me even more excited to finally play it for real.
All in all, the wait wasn't that bad for me. However, all good things have to come to an end, and when the game finally came out, I was on vacation near Montpellier, in La Grande-Motte, France. And since I wasn't going to wait two weeks to get home, I bought the newly released Nintendo Switch 2 before traveling there (I was going to buy it eventually anyway), and played the game on the hotel balcony, with the beach in front of me and Pharloom on the screen.
Let me show you my experience with the game, and the multiple playthroughs I have completed so far.
Playthrough 1: Enter Pharloom
The first few hours were amazing, and I was having a lot of fun, even though the double damage from literally everything was a little surprising and I never really got used to the 45°-Pogo. We've been waiting for it to come out for so long, I would not rush the experience now. So, I took my sweet time and always tried to complete Wishes (Quests) right away and explored everywhere I could before advancing.
Looking back at how I felt while playing the first fifteen-or-so hours, I remember thinking the game was overly linear. This took me by surprise, because Hollow Knight was such a non-linear experience. It felt like the game seemed to push me through a specific sequence: From the Marrow to Deep Docks, Far Fields, Graymoore, Bellheart, Shellwood, Blasted Steps, and finally the Citadel. This is not true however, as you can reach almost all of these areas in almost any order you want, skipping over multiple regions and bosses if you really want to. Noticing this on repeated playthroughs is a really cool experience, and yet, my first playthrough suffered through this in the first hours. Even when writing this post, having talked to friends, and watched other people play the game, I was not alone in this feeling.
But as I advanced a bit further into Act 2, the game finally appeared to click. The critique about the game being too linear flew away, but at that time not because I realized that Act 1 could be completed in many different ways, but rather because the new movement abilities and much more non-linear quest design transform the map from a perceived corridor into a big, sprawling web. From this point on, I could go anywhere and this non-linearity persisted throughout the rest of the game. Something else that I still think of in this way today is that the game might have been designed backwards. It feels like Team Cherry tuned the character controller and the world design around a Hornet equipped with all the movement abilities. They likely optimized that late-game feel first, and then worked backward to strip abilities away for the start.
A last critique before getting back to the gameplay. In Hollow Knight, every boss felt grounded in the lore and environment, like they lived there and had a reason to exist the way they do. Something that I still feel today is that the bosses in Silksong felt much more disconnected from the world compared to that. Some of the encounters felt like they were "just there", obstacles placed in the world, lacking context or backstory. Of course, you often find out some clues by being observant enough (or later in the game) towards the meaning of the encounters, but at a first glance, many felt... weird.
But you shouldn't compare games like this, and Silksong has its own share of amazing things. Among this is the gameplay by itself: Hornet feels so good to control when you have all the movement upgrades, and some of the bosses like First Sinner and the various Lace encounters were among the best bossfights I've played in any game. I also love it when games take me by surprise, when they subvert your expectations, and Silksong is a game that does this very often. Be it the falling elevator to the Underworks, the entire Slab sequence, obtaining the Witch Crest, or, the craziest part: Act 3 as a whole. I always believed that there must exist an Act 3, but I didn't see it coming the way it did, with the void violently taking over all the land and fundamentally changing the aesthetic of the map.
Even in Act 3, I still wanted to explore everything, so I found the Wormways to be consumed by Plasmium and Plasmified Zango, or the fourth Old Heart from the Green Prince and his lover. Seeing the map evolve like this was really cool. By the time I finished the true ending for the first time, the game had won me over. In fact, I had so much fun playing the game that I made sure to continue playing to achieve true 100% completion on that save file. Making your Bellhome, which you are offered by the residents of Bellhart for saving and helping them, a progress-tracker for optional content is such a cool idea. I had mine completely decked out with the Farsight, the Materium, the Speaker you get for finding all the Psalm Cylinders, all the Mementos, and that fourth Old Heart.
Playthrough 2: The Hunter in the Mist
But I was not satisfied with leaving the game behind just yet. After finishing that first run a few weeks after release, I finally went online to look up what the community had discovered. It was only then that I realized just how many different ways there are to actually play this game. So, for my second run, I wanted to completely change my playstyle, and I started by using the Hunter's Crest. This crest feels pretty strong once you actually learn how to utilize the diagonal pogo mechanic, and use the focus damage upgrade you get from Eva. I also deliberately never used any of the tools I relied on in the first playthrough to force myself to use the tools I never really gave a chance. This was really cool, because only then did I noticed how good some of them were.
Since I wanted to try out different stuff, I managed to completely skip fighting Lace in the Deep Docks by using the small key to directly get to the Far Fields. And instead of ever setting foot into the Blasted Steps, I traversed the Mist to reach the Exhaust Organ to fight the Phantom, allowing me to enter Act 2 from a completely different direction.
Otherwise, I once again completed the game to 100%, this time with a much better understanding of the world and the skills Hornet possesses.
Playthrough 3: Mount Fay in Act 1
If my second playthrough was about finally properly learning how to play the game, my third was about sheer stubbornness. I wanted to do as little of what the game wanted me to do as possible, while still completing at least the first ending.
I used a simple key to enter the Wormways early, which allowed me to go straight up into Shellwood. This completely bypassed the need to get the Drifter's Cloak, meaning I got to skip the early-game for now with Deep Docks, Far Fields, and Graymoore. I still had to get the Dash though, which I routed through the Hunter's March path. I even skipped the Sister Splinter boss fight using a speedrunning trick that involves luring a flying enemy further up to pogo off it. After saving Bellhart, I returned to the Wormways and got the Sharpdart from the Weavenest, which provides more horizontal movement, which will become crucial later.
My main goal for this playthrough was to mimic a video that showed a way to enter Act 2 by getting the Faydown Cloak without ever acquiring the Clawline and getting to the Underworks through the Wisp Thicket. To do this, I had to climb Mount Fay using nothing but the Dash and Sharpdart, which you can only get using a heal-stall in midair to reach the weaver door.
The hardest part was that the horizontal distance traveled when using the Clawline, and the small amount of height when hitting an enemy was missing. The solution to this is often to either brute-force your way through by mashing against the sliding slope upwards, or to intentionally die in very specific spots just so the cocoon would spawn hovering in the air. For this, I would then respawn, make my way back, and pogo off my own cocoon to make the jump. There was one specific segment about 30 minutes into the climb where failing meant trekking all the way back to a bench, dying once more to replace the cocoon, and trying the whole thing again. The entire climb took me roughly five hours of attempts.
When I finally reached the top, the feeling of accomplishment was immense. I grabbed the Faydown Cloak and was able to enter Act 2 via the Wisp Thicket and the Underworks. You are unable to take this entrance because of an invisible wall placed there that disappears when you get the upgrade, even though you could reach it with the beast crest alone.
I also added an extra layer of difficulty to this run by refusing to take any needle upgrades. I went through the entire game with the base weapon until the very end of Act 2, where the game literally forces you to upgrade in order to enter Act 3. Because I reached that threshold without ever picking up the White Quill from Shakra (Wielding Rings) or Trobbio's Red Quill in Act 2, the game awarded me the Purple Quill.
Playthrough 4: The Glitched Beast
For my fourth playthrough, I wanted to test the limits of the game with some glitches. Since I wanted to try a completely different playstyle once again, and also fittingly as to what I was about to do to the game's engine, I used the Beast Crest. It requires the player to play in an incredibly reckless style, as the healing mechanic (Binding) now requires you to actively jump towards enemies and hit them to restore your health. The more I experimented as a Beast, the more I understood how exactly you have to play to get the most out of it. For example, since the hitbox size of your attack and damage is increased during the fury, it is worth it to bind even before taking damage. This way, you can rush into a horde of enemies, slash furiously without worrying about being hit, since the hits you land on enemies will heal you back up right away. You can then use the silk gained to bind again, creating an endless loop of aggressive sustain.
But what about the glitches? I basically wanted to enter Act 2 while the game still thinks I'm in Act 1. I didn't come up with this, but basically, I used a glitch named Storage Launch. To do it, I used Bench Storage (activated by sitting down on a bench, but quitting to title before Hornet's butt touches the bench), then switched Crests while hitting something to store the hit, leading into a Map Slide at a specific location in the Slab to get out of bounds. From there, you can slide into the loading zone of the one-way gate that separates the Citadel from the Slab and do the glitch again to be teleported back into bounds.
Using this glitch, I was able to slide out of bounds at the Slab and enter Act 2. I skipped the mandatory story triggers in Sinner's Road and the giant crevice between Blasted Steps and Shellwood. The catch was that because of the glitch, the game's internal logic thought I was still in Act 1, so I never even got the Act 2 title card.
This broke the quest progression entirely and led to some interesting situations and paradoxes. For example, when I fought the Cogwork Dancers, my UI was still displaying the main quest objective from Act 1. I ended up fighting Lace's second encounter in the Cradle first. Lace then apparently forgot that she was playing dead just now, when she appeared to give her grand introduction dialogue in the Citadel. Since the Citadel was already woken up at this point, the regular enemies were still there trying to kill me while she talked, and I was able to move about freely! Then, I walked back to the Deep Docks and fought her first encounter, since we were both apparently racing down from the top of the Citadel to meet there again.
Here are some more screenshots and videos from plain, good ol' Beast Crest gameplay. Did you know that in an update not long ago, Team Cherry changed the hits in fury mode to pierce enemies' defenses? You can do some fun stuff with that and just slash on without worrying about the defensive state of an enemy.
My desire to see all the dialogue also led me to make something of a "cruel" decision during the third act. To progress the main story, you need to collect three of the Old Hearts. I had actually already collected three of them, because I went out of my way to find the secret Green Prince heart. Because I had that secret heart, I did not actually need to collect the Hunter's Heart from Skarrsinger Karmalita. But I fought and killed her anyway, just to see what would happen. Without her presence, the entire environment around the Skarr would begin to wither away and die. When I returned to Gilly, who cares deeply about that ecosystem, she was absolutely devastated and demanded to know why I had done it. The game made Hornet tell her: "I had to practice my skills". It is an incredibly egoistic and cold reason, but I absolutely loved it because it highlighted the distinct difference between playing as the blank Vessel in the first game and playing as Hornet.
Another thing you may not have known is that in order to get to Act 3, you only have to talk to Sherma when you reach Songclave; he is capable of making it up there on his own! And, that you can shred enemies and get their organs from just using the regular Beast Crest pogo. Maybe that will make you give it a try?
Playthrough 5: The Steel Soul Speedrun
My fifth and final playthrough so far was my attempt at the Steel Soul mode and the speedrun achievement.
It did not go well at first: I was roughly three hours into my first attempt when I ran into Trobbio. His boss fight is a nightmare of visual clutter; I lost track, died, and lost the run. I almost expected it to go wrong at some point, so I started my second attempt right after and managed to not only survive, but finish the game fast enough to get the speedrun achievement.
The main reason for me trying out this crazy mode was to finally unlock the exclusive Steel Soul items and the questline "A Vassal Lost" given to you by Steel Seer Zi. This culminates in a tense boss fight against a void entity known as the Summoned Savior.
A Gallery of Curiosities
When you spend this much time breaking a game apart, you are bound to run into some strange things. Here are a few of the funny physics bugs, weird enemy AI behaviors, and random oddities I managed to capture during my five playthroughs.
Looking back, Hollow Knight and Silksong are very different games, and I enjoy them both for different reasons. I still prefer the deep world-building, the lore progression, and the bosses lore of the first game. However, Silksong features incredibly tight gameplay once it opens up, and the new Wish system makes the world feel alive. The sheer amount of freedom you have to explore the world out of order and tackle objectives in your own way is staggering, even if the game doesn't make it obvious at first. I still haven't even tried every single Crest combination or Tool yet. With the "Sea of Sorrow" DLC already announced, which I strongly suspect will revolve around Lifeblood and Plasmium, I am more than ready to return to Pharloom.