The Cherry is Dry, but I’m Still Milking It: Is the Six-Year Wait for Silksong Over?

Edge Magazine, Issue 354 Cover by Team Cherry

By: Frederika Skrobotova

Hollow Knight: Silksong is a long-awaited sequel to ‘indie darling’ Hollow Knight, with a release date announced after years of silence. Is the wait for Silksong over? Will the game live up to expectations? How have those 6 years of waiting affected the community? 

Hollow Knight is a beloved indie game that was released in 2017 by Team Cherry, a group of three developers based in Adelaide, Australia. It quickly rose to fame, selling 2.8 million copies as of February 2019 (or around 7-8 million today) and accumulating a large and passionate fanbase. Players cosplayed characters, spedran the game, and funded DLCs along with several stretch goals – one of which included adding a new playable character to the game. This goal was reached and funded, but as development began, Team Cherry decided that the number of ideas they had for this DLC was far too large for just a DLC. Thus, Hollow Knight: Silksong was announced — a sequel to Hollow Knight following the adventure of Hornet, a character from the original game that the stretch goal was intended for. Fans were ecstatic and eagerly awaited Silksong’s release, but were left empty-handed for over 6 years with nearly no promising news or updates, until April 2, 2025. Silksong was scheduled for a release date of the same year, and fans grew hopeful once again. The wait was seemingly over — but what caused it? Was it really over? What happened during those 6 years, and would the results of nearly a decade of development be sufficient to potentially over-expectant fans? 

William Pellen and Ari Gibson, two members of Team Cherry, mentioned in a video of a Silksong run-down that the very first idea of a playable Hornet started during Hollow Knight’s development. However, incorporating a new playable character into Hollow Knight as a DLC felt too difficult, and with the amount of ideas they had, a new game seemed like a cleaner transition into what they wanted to create. The aforementioned video, accompanying a blog post and trailer was released on the same day: February 14, 2019. It officially announced Team Cherry’s second game,which was now expected to be much larger and more unique than both a DLC and Hollow Knight itself. They frequently mention in the video the number of ideas they had and the scale of the game, saying “We just keep coming up with weirder and weirder tools until we hit crunch time.” Pellen and Gibson promised multiple areas, over 150 unique enemies, a new quest system, a beautiful soundtrack, and more to come. The trailer looked impressive and implied that a decent amount of progress had been made in the then 2 years of development. Fans were extremely happy about this news and didn’t seem to mind the wait, glad that instead of a DLC, they were getting a brand-new game. Over the next year, several more updates came, and Silksong looked like it was just around the corner.

The following update to Silksong came in a late Hollow Knight two-year anniversary blog post on March 19, 2019. In it, Team Cherry states, ‘We’re right now working double-hard to make Hornet’s big adventure the giant, sprawling, surprising journey, you deserve.’ This is paired with a reveal of several Silksong characters and a warm thank-you to their fanbase, with the next piece of news coming a few months later at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2019, from June 11-13. 

E3 2019 drew crowds of fans to Los Angeles on all the three days it lasted for one reason — a playable demo of Silksong featuring two areas, which had fans hooked. Silksong also made an appearance in 2019’s Nintendo Treehouse. Despite not knowing its release date, Nintendo mentioned Silksong was ‘coming soon.’ This was likely a result of miscommunication and was debunked by Team Cherry in May of 2020. However, fans ran with this statement, expecting Silksong to come out any day for an entire year, leaving many disappointed when it was confirmed to be false. Over time, it seemed as if the two areas in the demo weren’t an accurate representation of the rest of the game and were polished solely for E3, continuing speculation on how long development would take.

Back to E3 — on June 25, 2019, Team Cherry posted a Post-E3 Wrap blog, in which they said, ‘For Silksong we’re running on Cherry-time over here, that means both ‘When it’s ready,’ and ‘When it matches the quality and scale of Hollow Knight.’…The last thing we want to do is make promises, only to see things slide.’ In the blog post, they described all the areas in the demo as well as a few gameplay mechanics, mentioning challenges with completing all the dialogue, which could have caused some potential delays. Ending off the blog post with a promise of continued hard work, fans waited until their next update on December 13, 2019 — Team Cherry’s Holiday Sign-Off, the last update on their website to date. 

Once again, fans were reassured that the team was still hard at work. The post mentioned some delays, saying “…our timelines have stretched a bit both to account for all that exciting new stuff and to tie up everything else…We’re not just randomly building things without an end in site.”  Other than the repeated guarantee of ongoing development, three new Silksong enemies were teased. With that, 2019, as well as the steady flow of Silksong news, came to an end.

Game updates didn’t completely die down, however. During June and July of 2020, over six months after their previous update, Matthew ‘Leth’ Griffin, Hollow Knight’s and now Silksong’s marketing manager, posted a set of riddles to be solved by fans, leading to the reveal of new characters and a bit of information about them. The community worked together to solve all the riddles fairly quickly, and enjoyed the process, eager for new information and developer communication. Team Cherry, replying to a Kickstarter backer, apologized for the lack of blog posts, explaining their preoccupation with developing Silksong and difficulties adjusting to Covid. The silence from the team, however, continued, lasting until December of 2020 when an Edge Magazine issue was released containing an interview with Pellen and Gibson. Fans got excited once more, believing news of Silksong meant an upcoming release date, despite none being mentioned in the interview. Of course, nothing came of it, and their hope slowly faded once more.

2021 had no new Silksong information, but did have a noticeable addition to the community. A new YouTube channel was created by Discord and Twitter-using fan Araraura on January 16, 2021, called ‘Daily Silksong News.’ Every day, a video was uploaded telling fans if there was news or not, and explaining the update when there was. For 4 long years, this channel has been uploading videos and still is, being on Day 1544 as of writing.

2022 had a few more slivers of news than previous years, starting with a (likely not 100% credible) Reddit moderator post in late January stating that they heard Silksong wasn’t coming anytime soon. Later in February, a PC Gamer article was published with a quote from Pellen, repeating something the fans have heard several times already: “We’re still working steadily on it, and we’re all looking forward to sharing more about it once we get closer to release”. Nothing else came until March, when Hornet’s voice actor, Makoto Koji, stated that she had finished recording her part for Silksong. However, this is likely nonindicative of the game’s status — no characters in Hollow Knight or Silksong have actual spoken lines, rather noises and sound effects that Team Cherry edits to fit events and certain dialogue, hence this statement didn’t prove any significant progress in the development.

In June of 2022, Xbox released a new Silksong trailer, getting fans’ hopes up. Subsequently, in a tweet, the company confirmed multiple games were coming out in the next year, including Silksong, which had the community overjoyed — despite this release window not being officially set in stone by Team Cherry. More and more bits of information were revealed, such as new gameplay footage releasing shortly after Xbox’s announcement and, in September of 2022, a new platform update (Silksong coming to PS4 and PS5) as well as a few more game screenshots. 4 years had gone by at this point, and fans were jumping on any news they could get, speculating what time of 2023 the long-awaited release would come. However, they were let down again on May 9, 2023 with a tweet from Leth stating, ‘We had planned to release in the 1st half of 2023, but development is still continuing…[the game has] gotten quite big, so we want to take the time to make the game as good as we can.’ After this, most fans assumed it wouldn’t be coming out in the latter half of 2023 either, and went back to waiting for new updates with no hope of a release. Nothing else promising happened in 2023, other than an uncredible fan claiming to have met Team Cherry and gotten reports of the game being rushed, but complete. This probably wasn’t true, and even if it was, the team remained mostly silent until the next year.

2024 was a rather insignificant year, but the community did get riled up a few times, especially when Silksong got an age rating of E for everyone. People began comparing the times between the age ratings and releases of other games, convinced Silksong, or at least a sign of a release date, was coming in a few months or days. Nothing came of it, and people were growing tired, begging developers for an update on either February 14 (anniversary of Silksong’s announcement) or February 24 (anniversary of Hollow Knight.) The community got desperate enough to threaten the deletion of the Silksong Subreddit (a large chunk of the fanbase) unless they got some form of news. It’s unclear whether this threat worked or Team Cherry simply didn’t want to leave fans empty-handed on the 14th, but Leth sent a message in the Hollow Knight Discord assuring everyone that they were still hard at work. This was enough to keep fans satisfied until 2025.

This was the year fans finally got something promising, despite a few letdowns on the way. On Jan 15, 2025, Pellen updated his Twitter account, changing his profile picture, tag, and username. Fans quickly got to work, assuming this was an ARG, similar to the riddles Leth had created for the community in 2023. Pellen’s new profile picture, updated to a chocolate cake, led to a recipe website when reverse-image searched. This recipe was last updated on April 2, making it the date that appeared first on the website — which was the date of the upcoming Switch 2 Nintendo Direct, announced the day after Pellen posted his tweet. The rest of the updates — the tag and the username could all be very loosely traced to April 2 as well, though most of it was definitely a stretch. A cryptic tweet posted on the same day, “something big is coming. keep your eyes closed tomorrow,” also pointed to that date, as when “keep your eyes closed tomorrow” was Google searched, the top two results were posted on April 2. Fans got excited, asking developers if this meant something, but were ultimately struck down when Leth reached out to Hollow Knight streamer and speedrunner fireb0rn and confirmed that this wasn’t an ARG. Something notable is that the account was mainly satire with joke posts – one that was secret before some investigating was done and it was found out that the account was Pellen’s. This could have just as well been one of those unserious posts. Despite this, fans were crushed and angry at Pellen for deciding to do what he did, knowing how much it would mean to the community — but some believed that it couldn’t be a coincidence, waiting for the Direct to confirm their suspicions. 

And in an amazing twist of events, it did. April 2’s Switch 2 Nintendo Direct showed a few clips of Silksong gameplay as well as a popup simply stating ‘2025.’ 

The community was elated, celebrating the new release year and covering all the updates they had received. Other than the potential release date, the official art for Silksong was redrawn, leading fans to speculate the long wait could have been because of artistic changes. A few days after the Direct, on April 7, new screenshots were uploaded on the Nintendo of Japan website, along with a confirmation from Leth on the same day that Silksong was coming on both Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. Fans were amazed and overjoyed, once again getting ready for Silksong. The long-extinguished spark of the fandom was ignited yet again.

Over the 6 long years of waiting, Team Cherry was heavily criticized by fans and other prominent members of the community for their lack of communication. Releasing a trailer that showed seemingly complete areas and giving consistent updates of development kept the community informed and interested, but suddenly stopping the flow of information for months and even years on end left many confused and disappointed. It was a bad move on the team’s end — fans got excited for a sequel of their favorite game, and believed the game was at least halfway close to being done (the polished trailer and demo had fans convinced a good chunk of Silksong was complete.) Going almost completely silent for the next 5 years, only with updates that led to nothing made fans lose hope and belief in Team Cherry. The community can no longer fully trust official companies and even the developers’ words, given how long the game has been in production.

Most people pointed the blame at Leth, claiming that he wasn’t doing his PR and marketing job very well — a good number of fans are upset with Team Cherry to this day, and marketing for Silksong is almost nonexistent. It’s unclear if Leth still manages Silksong’s PR or only handled it in early stages, however, regardless of who holds that duty, I have to agree that Team Cherry definitely could have done a better PR job for the past 4-5 years. Consistent assurances of hard work were all the fandom wanted and needed, but those only came after months of silence. Despite the possibility of a tight-lipped NDA, most fans were sure that something more than ‘We’re still hard at work!’ could be said — and with the community’s current behaviors and attitude, the consequences of an updated NDA would likely affect Team Cherry less than what their current behavior and attitude (or lack thereof) had been getting them. 

People were getting worried that Team Cherry was setting a bad precedent for indie games and companies. Concerns of many unsatisfactory behaviors being indirectly promoted were rising  — such showing a trailer extremely early on in the development, ignoring their community, and handling PR and communication in a way that left fans disappointed. However, this is commonplace with many developers, with Silksong being brought up and judged more often by expectant fans.

Although I do believe Team Cherry needs to be criticized and held accountable for some of their choices, the fanbase isn’t entirely innocent either, often going too far and crossing a line.

Posts criticizing Team Cherry’s work ethic are frequent, with some far more passionate than others. People have raged on about how Team Cherry doesn’t deserve the respect of their fans, saying “only those who enjoy being teased and deluded are left to support them…I’ve seen poor developers accused of death threats for much less…they have proven to be liars and announce false dates, active only in selling puppets and t-shirts.” This is extremely out of line — Team Cherry, despite significant flaws in communication, is made up solely of three indie developers, and insinuating they deserve death threats, calling them liars and labeling them as cash-grabbers won’t make the game come out any faster. None of the predicted release dates were lies — more so estimates that ended up being wrong. The line between genuine criticism and unnecessary negativity is faint, and the way this fandom manages to cross it so many times is extremely problematic. This behavior has become common and even acceptable, qualifying as a form of harassment with the number of posts degrading Team Cherry. While it’s valid to be upset with the team, fans have no right to assume their intentions were bad and insult them for it. Prominent members of the community have spoken up about this behavior, such as the aforementioned streamer and Hollow Knight speedrunner fireb0rn. On June 11th, 2024, fireb0rn released a video titled ‘Silksong Fans Have Gone Too Far’ in which he discussed a very frequent commenter on his videos slandering Team Cherry with every posted comment. Fireb0rn states, “John (alias given to the commenter) would explain in great detail why no one should ever support Team Cherry…John did this for months…In John’s comments, he wrote ‘If Team Cherry cared about their fans, they would hire more employees and finish the game faster…The only reason why Team Cherry didn’t hire a new team of employees is so they could hoard all the profits for themselves to satisfy their lust for money.’ To be honest, I don’t really follow. If Team Cherry wanted money above all else, what they would’ve done is release Silksong.” This is a great point and a sad showcase of how someone became so invested in Silksong that they would take time to comment on every single one of a streamer’s videos (until ultimately banned.) Many fans similar to John have gone overboard in their comments and posts, however, there have been times where the fandom as a group has gone too far.

As briefly mentioned before, fans threatened to delete the Silksong Subreddit if not presented with news on either February 14 or 24. Although talked about as a joke, many people did take it seriously as the dates drew nearer. Things were said like, “Y’all realise what a statement it would make if we ACTUALLY deleted the sub?…I think it’s such a good idea,” and “…lets delete it, we HAVE to do this…Only such an act would motivate the developers.” People believed that deleting a large portion of the Silksong community would help Team Cherry get motivation to work on and release the game —if this isn’t a form of harassment towards the developers, I don’t know what is. Rather than encouragement, something that, clearly, more commonly fuels motivation, fans decided that their last resort was a threat to remove part of the community. It’s unclear whether the threat worked, but as stated, the Subreddit stayed due to a message from Leth confirming their continued development. This situation was repeated leading up to April 2, 2025 –- not on the same scale, but Reddit users E1331, TomNook5085, Fantastic_Post_741, and likely many more decided to delete their accounts if no news was received on the Switch 2 Nintendo Direct. A few users even revisited the thought that if the Nintendo Direct didn’t reveal anything, the Subreddit should be deleted. This was less serious and probably more satire than anything, but didn’t look good with the fandom’s track record regardless. Thankfully, the community’s distress was put at ease with the recent Silksong news.

With that being said, what could have taken so long? My first theory is that Team Cherry was simply too ambitious at the start. Pellen and Gibson’s Silksong run-down focused on the scale and complexity of the game, mentioning the number of ideas Pellen and Gibson had for the sequel. They also describe a large soundtrack for the game, all composed by one person — Christopher Larkin, which was definitely going to take a while. The team could have taken on more than they could accomplish, leading to difficulties in scheduling and a need for extended time to fit everything into the game. Another theory is that 2020’s COVID-19 hindered Silksong’s development, due to stated challenges adjusting to new pandemic protocols. More recent theories wondered if the reason Silksong was in development for so long was because of changes in art style, evidenced by new screenshots showing certain areas looking significantly different than older game footage. Team Cherry may have also been stuck in ‘development hell’ — essentially meaning Silksong was a project being trapped in its early stages due to issues in technology, art, or legality. Games enter development hell for many reasons, sometimes because developers were too ambitious at the start and realised that their game would take a lot more time than expected — hence the first theory. The 2019 trailer looked amazing, and several areas seemed to be complete in the 2 years Silksong had been developing, hence making the dev hell theory more believable — Team Cherry likely hit a problem that paused their progress, and needed time to work it out. A few other plausible reasons for the long wait include adjusting to new platforms, such as the Switch 2 (which was my theory for a bit). There is no confirmed answer as to why the game took 8 years to develop while Hollow Knight only took around 5, so the only thing fans are left to do is to speculate the reason and wait for Team Cherry’s answer.

To finish off — after nearly a decade of development, will the game be good and meet fan expectations? Based on the trailers, footage, screenshots, art, and revealed soundtrack of the game, many people, myself included, think Silksong will be fantastic. However, the delays could mean many things — either the game was being worked on, keeping its shown quality and being polished in necessary areas, or the game was simply too big and was being rushed by Team Cherry to get something out. Fans still have extremely high standards. They may need to, once again, prepare to be disappointed. 

Part of the community is doubting the validity of the release year, worried another statement would come out announcing a delay and letting fans down for the thousandth time. However, a majority of people are still hoping and waiting for Silksong. The community is excitedly filming videos, calculating possible release dates (a likely one is April 29!), joking around, creating art, and celebrating the game they had waited for 6 years. One thought kept the community going — maybe it wasn’t last year, or the year before that, or the year before that, but maybe it was going to be this year. Maybe, 2025 would finally be the year that Silksong is removed from its #1 spot in Steam’s Top Wishlists, and relocated to a #1 spot in Best of 2025.

Below will be a gallery of game screenshots, promo art, and more. 🙂

Works Cited

Hollow Knight: Silksong, https://hollowknightsilksong.com/. Accessed 8 April 2025.

Team Cherry Games, https://www.teamcherry.com.au/. Accessed 8 April 2025.

Alder, Dan. “How many copies did Hollow Knight sell? — 2025 statistics.” LEVVVEL, 22 May 2024, https://levvvel.com/hollow-knight-statistics/. Accessed 10 April 2025.

“The Entire History Of Hollow Knight: Silksong – Every Development Update & News So Far.” YouTube, 14 February 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbimu4WqIdY. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“Every Reason Why Hollow Knight: Silksong Is Coming Soon.” YouTube, 24 March 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaQ7DwoN6FY. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“Hollow Knight by Team Cherry — Kickstarter.” Kickstarter, 25 June 2019, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/11662585/hollow-knight. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“Hollow Knight: Silksong Coming In 2025! – News.” YouTube, 2 April 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5qjwRcDHCU. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“Hollow Knight: Silksong – Details from Team Cherry.” YouTube, 14 February 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv6CRPqkpuU. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“Hollow Knight: Silksong (Discussions).” Steam, https://steamcommunity.com/app/1030300/discussions/0/4361243264658748531/. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“New Silksong Screenshots from Nintendo (Day 1543).” YouTube, 7 April 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObCRErMU9e4. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“r/Silksong.” Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/Silksong/. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“Silksong Fans Have Gone Too Far.” YouTube, 11 June 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=810VmZYYm14. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“Silksong Timeline.” GitHub Pages, https://gmpranav.github.io/skong-timeline/. Accessed 8 April 2025.

“Team Cherry Hints At Silksong News Coming Soon (See Description).” YouTube, 16 January 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jpNkt_v0jM. Accessed 8 April 2025.