The World Design of Hollow Knight: Silksong
Hello Patrons!
Here it is - my massive deep dive into the Metroidvania design of Silksong. It's an hour-long episode with lots of analysis, more than 50 custom motion graphics, and lots to learn for anyone making their own Metroidvania.
You can watch it on YouTube or Nebula, or read it on Substack.
As I say in the vid - this is my last episode of 2025. But I've got more to come for Patrons (including the end of year wrap up) so I won't say a big tearful goodbye here!
Speak soon
Mark
Comments (10)
Silksong! My absolute favourite game of the year, glad to see you're covering it in boss keys :)
Having no intention gitting gud, I will probably never play Silksong. So is this still interesting for me? I like the boss keys series in general and Metroidvanias in particular.
Eff that game
I think my biggest act 3 issue is that the heart map hints are borderline impossible to find without googling or just grinding wall checks. In particular there is no reason to think the elevator shaft in grand gate would get you down to where the icon is. The singer entrance is on the other side of a vertical shaft you already checked, and it’s not obvious at all that you’re gunna be able to find a path that crosses through there from the left.
Great deep dive on a truly great game, difficulty and all. From your analysis here, I can see that my path to completing Act 3 was not typical and I greatly "benefited" from the non-linear structure. Which is to say that I wandered around a lot and locked into some seriously difficult, seriously tangential challenges -- I see now how painfully inefficient my route was. But regardless, the game let me wander, poke, and prod the map. I'll just consider that as the "scenic route." Best of luck during your paternity leave; that's a difficult new challenge all its own. ;)
Hm... I'm 12 hours into the game... tryin to decide how much I care about the spoils...
Let's f**king go. Can't wait to dig in
Just finished last week, and I’m so excited to watch this one! 👍🏻
Can’t wait to watch this… as soon as I finish Silksong! So… (checks calendar) 2027 it is! 🤣
Same, except I didn‘t even buy it yet 😅