How 'Hollow Knight: Silksong' Fans Turned Waiting for Its Release Into a Game

Since 2021, Araraura has been a watchdog for the game Silksong. He posts daily clips on his YouTube channel, aptly named Daily Silksong News, for viewers seeking the latest on Team Cherry’s hotly anticipated Hollow Knight sequel.

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much to report.

A quick scroll of the channel’s thumbnails reveals that most feature a fat, red lettered “NO.” A few here and there offer “YES,” or “KINDA,” but the majority of videos play the same: a brief introduction, followed by, “There has been no news to report for Silksong today.” He also keeps a website devoted to answering the question “Is Silksong out yet?” (Since the game’s release announcement in August, it has helpfully offered a countdown to its sell date.)

Silksong, launching September 4, is not a big-budget, AAA title. Instead, it’s the creation of a three-man team based in Adelaide, Australia, with only two projects to their name. Team Cherry earned the adoration of fans through its award-winning debut, Hollow Knight—a 2017 2D, side-scrolling action-adventure game that’s sold more than 15 million copies.

Silksong is a sensation without even having landed, perhaps in part because of how long people have had to wait. “When you starve the fan base for so long, anything you give them will feel monumental,” says Araraura, who only wanted his online username used to protect his identity.

Discussion about the game and the content people make around it has made the community self-sustaining, he adds. “Suddenly you have people who've never done any content creation starting to create videos and art and memes, which in turn inspires more people to join in and do the same.”

Araraura is far from the only invested Silksong fan. His Daily Silksong News Discord has more than 9,200 members. Fans in online communities like Reddit have turned the Silksong news cycle—or lack thereof—into a meta game of jokes, memes, and factions. Streamed game presentations like Nintendo Directs, for example, were often plagued by fans repeatedly typing “Silksong” into the comments, while forums went into an uproar every time there was no news. On Steam, the game, which will be priced at $19.99, is currently the platform’s top wish-listed title.

Its predecessor is considered a ruthlessly difficult but charming experience. “Hollow Knight was kind of a miracle game,” says Chelsea Stark, former executive editor and critic at Polygon.

“It has the challenge and skill of Dark Souls games: You have to find your body when you die to get all your stuff back, really challenging, creative bosses.” It also “really nails” the Metroidvania formula, she says, with traversal powers that increase over time. “It’s also really distinctive in its art style that makes it welcoming, and all the bugs are so unique,” she says.

It’s a deep experience for a game made by such a small team—one that its players are finding new ways to bring to life.

Initially, Silksong was planned as downloadable content for the original game, before its creators expanded it into a full-fledged sequel. In August, when developers surprise-announced that the game would launch in just two weeks, at least half a dozen other indie developers immediately delayed their own games to clear the way. “Dropping the GTA of indie games with 2 weeks notice makes everyone freak out,” wrote Demonschool developer Necrosoft on Bluesky on its delay.

Despite a seven-year development cycle, excitement for the game never died down. Reddit user The_Real_Kingsmould tells WIRED the community has “largely kept itself afloat with its insanity and the occasional crumb of news.” The posts, the jokes—it’s all “that feeling of being a part of something,” he says.

“When [there’s no news], everyone's sad, and then everyone goes insane and starts spouting misinformation without batting an eye,” he says. “When there's news it's the happiest day of your life. There's hype posts EVERYWHERE. All your hope in Team Cherry is restored.”

Over the years, the community has passed the time by role-playing with the game’s lore. There was the sacrifice era, where a handful of prominent users were chosen as “dreamers,” a nod to characters in Hollow Knight who traded the waking world for eternal sleep, and a Hollow Knight. These community members were then “sealed away”—banned from the subreddit, as it were—and are only allowed to return after the game launches.

Other memorable moments in the subreddit include a play on shapeshifter Nosk, one of the original game’s hidden bosses. Fans began pretending they’d encountered fake copies of Silksong around the world, granted to them by “Snosk,” a version of the bug with a copy of Silksong for a head. “Pretty fast there were a lot of PSA's going around: Do not approach or attempt to pick up any copy of Silksong outdoors, or one that isn't yours,” The_Real_Kingsmould tells WIRED of the in-joke. “But there were also users trying to deny the existence of Snosks (having been "overtaken"), claiming the copies are safe and all you have to do is go outside.”

This particular campaign came to a head after moderators called for anti-Snosk fan art to “banish the Snosks for good,” he says. People began pumping out art of the subreddit specifically, not the game, he says, until it was enough: “After a short while the Snosks were gone.”

The subreddit has built its own lore over the years. Even today, users in the subreddit have flair that gives them faction labels like doubter, denier, or “beleiver,” which is purposefully misspelled because “"there is no lie in be[lie]ving.”

Stark says Silksong is fertile ground for role-playing fans because the game’s lore is so deep. “Hollow Knight on the surface kind of reads like a [Dark Souls] game, because the lore is a bit inscrutable until you get really deep into it,” she says. “It sometimes talks in riddles. It takes a long time to get to all of the pieces, and sometimes the pieces really rely on the player’s interpretation.”

The fan communities are no different. “Subreddit users together have created their own interpretations from these pieces of lore that are strange and playing in layers,” Stark says.

With Silksong’s global release imminent across Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, the communities will soon shift their attention from waiting to playing.

If the game is as dense as Hollow Knight, there will be months, if not years, of discoveries and theories for fans to tear through on Reddit. Others will enter new chapters of their own lives.

Araraura’s time tracking Silksong news with YouTube updates is coming to an end. He’ll shut down the YouTube channel: “nothing to look forward to anymore, so no new videos,” he says. He feels wistful at times about that, after getting so used to uploading videos to the channel, but he’s ready. “I think I've finally made peace with that,” he says. “Now I'm just really, really excited for Silksong.”