I was once like the rest. I hungered for a video game that seemed at the edge of reality. It was a promise of joy, of delight, of challenge, and its seemingly ephemeral nature as an actual release only added to its mystique. For years, I yearned for this sequel.
Yet, now that it’s here, I have no desire to play Hollow Knight: Silksong. And that’s okay. If you too are not planning on playing this year’s big bug game, I want you to know that you’re not alone.
A Match Made in Hell
Here at The Punished Backlog, we occasionally use the summer as an opportunity for backlog challenges. The warm months typically lack a lot of big releases, and buoyed by the outside being too hot, it’s a great time to be inside binging video games. Sometimes, we all (try to) play the same game: In 2022, we all played Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and the next year, we did Signalis. Whether it’s the summer or New Year’s challenges, we as writers also assign ourselves games individually that we’re interested in trying to get through. The editorial team sometimes offer prizes for how many games we complete and write about.
In 2022, I challenged myself to play Hollow Knight. Here’s what I said in our Summer Backlog Challenge:
Hollow Knight came out five years ago, and ever since then, trusted gamer friends have been telling me to play it. I’m not a big platformer so I’ve always had an easy excuse in my back pocket. But with all the excitement around Hollow Knight: Silksong being officially on the horizon, the time is now. I’ve started playing, and all I can say is that I would do anything to reunite those lost little worms with their dad.
Fueled by the accountability of our group summer challenge, I played dozens — hundreds? — of hours of the popular 2017 metroidvania. My gameplay culminated in pushing myself yet again, but this time editorially: to rank all 105 named NPCs in the indie darling. I sort of lost my mind writing that list (may I direct you to entries 102, 94, 61, 59, 57, 52, 50, 43, and 7).
To be honest, Hollow Knight was a truly difficult game for me. I’m not great at platformers; I am aggressively impatient and bad at timing precise jumps. I also don’t love roguelikes; losing my resources in any game makes me deeply anxious, and this happened to me often in Hollow Knight due to difficult fights and tricky level design. Furthermore, I don’t really play metroidvanias either as I enjoy exploring the map for a first time but circling back makes me feel trapped, annoyed, confused, and bored. So, overall, Hollow Knight was a tough one for me for multiple reasons — but I appreciated the challenge. I left my playthrough in a state of both admiration and relief.
I felt like I had finally boarded the Hollow Knight hype train at just the right time. I was thrilled to know that Silksong was real and coming. However, three years later, it’s out but so am I. There are three main reasons why.
Why I’m Not Playing Hollow Knight: Silksong – The Real Reasons
1) I just don’t want to.
I cried at least three times playing Hollow Knight because it was so difficult. I simply did not enjoy the platforming (the spikes in Greenpath should burn) or relentlessly tough battles. I found the world-building, art, and music to be absolutely incredible, but the gameplay was punishing in a way that I did not enjoy. And the simple truth of it is… I’ve moved on, both as a person and as a gamer.
I no longer want to play video games that are so un-fun for me that I literally cry. And it wasn’t just sadness. I consistently got angry playing Hollow Knight; I would spend hours, late at night, hunched over like a gremlin with tense shoulders, furiously clicking buttons and sighing heavily. Even though I wasn’t yelling or anything like that, my energy was so negative that my husband would leave the room to avoid being around me. And that’s when I’m supposed to be relaxing! And it sounds like Hollow Knight: Silksong is even harder!
Sure, there were moments where this difficulty paid off. It felt great to win a battle after trying a dozen times or to finally make it to my destination after many harrowing jumps. But a lot of the time, I just felt bad playing Hollow Knight. It didn’t make me feel like I was “a good gamer,” which then made me spiral into being extra self-conscious as a girl gamer in the midst of “git gud” culture, so I’d force myself to try again to prove (to myself?) that I was good at it.
There was a time in my life when I felt excited to challenge myself this way. But now, I’m trying to do other things, like write a novel and take better care of my body and, I don’t know, just survive in America. I’m not afraid of doing things that are hard, but I feel that I am tangibly older and not in the mood for things that don’t bring me joy if I don’t have to.
I don’t have to play Hollow Knight: Silksong just because other people are obsessed with it. I’m happy for them. Really. And what’s more, I’m happy not playing it.
2) It took too long to come out.
I’m glad Team Cherry cooked! It sounds like they did a great job. I’m really happy for them and everyone who’s enjoying the game. There was a time when I was RAVENOUS for Hollow Knight: Silksong, buoyed by my highs of playing the first game. But for me, Silksong has just taken too long to come out. When I look back on my memories of Hollow Knight, I’m no longer reminded of any fun I had — I only remember how unhappy I was playing it.
Over the years that have passed, I have forgotten the joy I experienced playing Hollow Knight. My tolerance for bullshit — from other people, from society, from my hobbies — is significantly lower than it used to be. A lot of bad shit happened to me in 2023, and I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself since then. For the past few years, I’ve been making an effort to be better to myself and just be better, period. As a result, my desire to push myself (to tears?) by playing the highly anticipated Hollow Knight sequel has lapsed.
Games have also continued to release in the vacuum of Silksong. I even organized a list last year titled 13 Metroidvanias to Play While You Wait for Hollow Knight: Silksong. Developers have built on the formula and experimented; times have changed. There have also been new forays in the “difficult indie” world that have pushed the envelope of what we can expect with gaming, like Balatro (2024) and Blue Prince (2025). Bigger titles continue to inspire, too — Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025) changed my entire perception of parrying.
My interest in what gaming challenges I’m willing to face has changed since Hollow Knight, and that desire to play it (or games like it) doesn’t seem like it’s coming back, especially with other unique adventures available.
3) I don’t care about the hype any more.
For a while, I felt compelled to play big new video games just because other people were playing them. By writing here at The Punished Backlog, I started following the fervor of new releases simply by talking to other gamers. For example, in 2022 and 2023, I challenged myself to play as many new games as I could so that my “top 10” list would be a truly comprehensive look at the year.
However, something in me has changed over the past few years, and I simply no longer feel like I have to buy into the hype train any more. My Game of the Year list in December 2024 was just one game: Thank Goodness You’re Here, a weird little British platformer with lots of jumps that made me much happier than Hollow Knight’s leaps ever did. I can play Assassin’s Creed Shadows and have fun with it, even if it got some tepid reviews and no one else on the site was playing it. I know I’m never going to play Donkey Kong Bananza but I’m really excited that other people (especially Sam) loved it. I played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 because I wanted to, not just because other people were.
I don’t have to play Hollow Knight: Silksong just because other people are obsessed with it. I’m happy for them. Really. And what’s more, I’m happy not playing it.
Why I’m Not Playing Hollow Knight: Silksong – The Bullshit Reason
Okay, I’ll admit it. There’s actually one more reason I don’t really want to play Silksong.
In addition to our backlog challenges, we have another content series here at The Punished Backlog called Fantasy Gaming. It’s similar to Fantasy Football but instead we draft video games and tally up their Metacritic scores in the hopes of having a winning team at the end of the year. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to keep up with friends about new releases. We cover this series both in writing and on The Punished Podcast where it’s a lot of fun to yell and argue and applaud.
In its current iteration, we are in our third season. Both of the other editors — Sam Martinelli and David Silbert — have won. I have not. And, for both of those first two seasons, I drafted Hollow Knight: Silksong.
Riding high from my playthrough in 2022, I was desperate to support Team Cherry even in name alone. However, years passed with literally zero news about Silksong. Its absence became a widespread internet meme and the subject of countless articles. From a PR standpoint alone, the silence was astounding. By the time we got to the Waiver Wire in Season 2, both Sam and David urged me to drop the Hollow Knight sequel from my team for my mental health if nothing else. I had been holding on, desperately. I wanted to believe.
I lost in 2023 with a tiebreaker. In 2024, I used my first pick of the draft of to select Hades II, another highly anticipated indie sequel. At least with Hades, I actually truly loved the first one (see #21 here) and developer Supergiant had planned an Early Access release for that year. (I had surprised everyone by picking Baldur’s Gate 3 late in the 2023 draft based on its successful Early Access — and it went on to be Game of the Year — and I hoped the same strategy would pan out for me.) However, I again lost in 2024, but this time by a landslide after scrambling to draft two replacements when two major indie sequel picks of mine — Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades II — were nowhere to be seen on the release board.
In 2025, we added three new players, as well as a new “bench” mechanic to make it a keeper league where games could potentially be brought over to next year’s team. Since this was our first year doing this system, my legacy indie picks didn’t carry over. That’s fine. I was over it. I’ve moved on. I’ve been spending less time on toxic people in my life and more time on me. I’m choosing me! I’m prioritizing my own goals! I’m loving me! Etc., etc.
In a desperate bid to win, I chose games from a variety of genres, focusing on what was actually coming out. David ended up picking up both Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades II, and at the time, I felt honestly grateful that my obsession was taken away from me before I could choose them both again. Besides, in January 2025, there was no news about any potential release date from either of the games’ developers (Team Cherry or Supergiant Games, respectively). On the podcast episode in which we recorded our 2025 draft, David and Sam both applauded me for moving on.
Cue August 21, 2025, and this absolute bullshit. Hollow Knight: Silksong finally, suddenly, gets a release date of September 4, 2025. Hades II is rumored to come out in Q4 as well (and would later be confirmed for a September 25, 2025 1.0 release).
I crossed my fingers. Maybe Silksong would be bad.
But it’s not; IGN just gave it a 9/10.
It is deeply frustrating.
David cannot help but rejoice in this victory (as well as the promise of Hades II), both in the newest podcast episode and in our Discord chat. And you know what, as annoyed as I am about the whole thing, I can’t blame him. If Silksong was on my team after I’d held onto it stubbornly for three years, I’d probably be absolutely unbearable about it.
But as it is, it’s not. And like I said. I’m over it. I’m moving on.
Bugging Out About Shitsong*
And so ends my true story of why I’m not going to play Hollow Knight: Silksong any time soon. If I want the story of Silksong so bad, I will be content to watch a compilation of clips online whereas I used to feel I had to “earn” plot myself. I have my own Silksong story, even without having played it.
If you too have suffered at the hands of Team Cherry, you are not alone. We will get through this.
(This is meant facetiously. I’m okay. Seriously. I’m fine. I mean I know just wrote a whole piece about how I’m not fine. But I’m fine.)
* Thank you to fellow writer Ben Rashkovich for suggesting this humorous title but I truly mean no shade to the game. Also shout-out to another great title from Gary Wilson which made me lol but is too aggro for me to publish. I wrote this piece in response to a text from Ben asking, “Why are you not playing Silksong?” I hope this answers all questions. I cannot bear to be hurt by Hollow Knight any more.
Amanda Tien (she/her or they) loves video games where she can pet dogs, punch bad guys, make friends, and have a good cry. She started writing for the site in 2020, and became an editor in 2022. She enjoys writing about mystery games, indies, and strong femme protagonists.
Her work has also been published in Unwinnable Monthly (click here to read her cover feature on Nancy Drew games), Salt Hill Journal, Poets.org, Litro Magazine, Public Books, and more. She was the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Columbia University's Culinarian Magazine, and served for two years as the Managing Editor of Aster(ix) Literary Journal.
She recently graduated with a MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Her writing, art, graphic design, and marketing work can be viewed at www.amandatien.com.
She does not post a lot on social, but you can find her on X and on Instagram.
