Review

Hollow Knight: Silksong

The sequel to Hollow Knight puts Hornet in the lead as she climbs through Pharloom, a new kingdom ruled by silk and song. Combat is faster and more acrobatic, with tools and crests that change how you fight, and the world is large and dense with quests and secrets. The difficulty is high from the very start. Is it your kind of game?

MetroidvaniaAcrobatic combatVery hardXboxPlayStationPCSwitch

Games like Hollow Knight: Silksong

9/10

Game Avant verdict

A massive, gorgeous metroidvania whose punishing difficulty is also the reason every victory in it means something.

Read the full review

By GameAvant · Published Sep 29, 2026 · Updated Oct 9, 2026 · 13 min read

Screenshots

Choose what matters to you

Is this your kind of game?

Every question is optional.

Challenge

How do you feel about a tough game with lots of retries?

Exploration

How do you like to find your way?

Playing

How do you want to play?

Based on your choices

Pick what matters to you above and the result shows up here.

IGDB

91%

509 ratings

Steam:

89%

387,544 reviews

Fits you if

you loved Hollow Knight and want an even bigger challenge.

Skip it if

you want an accessible metroidvania with a gentle difficulty curve.

Availability

Where to play

Steam

$19.99

Buy

Facts

Platforms: Xbox · PlayStation · PC · Switch
Release date: September 4, 2025
Length: About 52 hours
Difficulty: 5/5 (estimated)
Genres: Platform · Adventure · Indie
Themes: Action · Fantasy
Perspective: Side view
Modes: Solo only
Languages: 3 languages
Text in your language: Yes
Steam Deck: Verified
Microtransactions: None

More about Hollow Knight: Silksong

Hollow Knight: Silksong spent close to six years between its 2019 announcement and its actual release on 4 September 2025, and the finished game plays like a studio that used every one of those years deliberately rather than apologetically. Team Cherry, the small Australian studio behind the original Hollow Knight, built a sequel that keeps almost nothing of the first game's patient, exploratory pacing intact. In its place is something faster, sharper, and considerably less willing to meet you halfway. The mute, wandering Knight is gone; in their place is Hornet, a character with an actual name, an actual voice, and visible, specific fury about being handed a needle and sent back into danger she thought she had already survived. The setup fits in a sentence, and Team Cherry treats it that way. Hornet, once Hallownest's princess-protector, is captured by insect cultists called Choirbugs and dragged to Pharloom, a kingdom she has never set foot in, meant to be delivered to a figure called Grand Mother Silk at the top of a distant Citadel. She escapes before she arrives, and the entire rest of the game is the climb back up through Pharloom on her own terms, working out why she was taken in the first place and what is actually waiting at the top. Team Cherry does not wrap any of this in a tutorial or a quest log explaining what to do next. Hornet gets a needle, gets dropped at the bottom, and the kingdom's own geography does the rest of the explaining, the same philosophy that made the original Hollow Knight's Hallownest feel discovered rather than toured. What changes most from the first game is the combat's temperature. Hornet moves faster than the Knight ever did, strings together needle combos that reward aggression over caution, and gets a wider kit of tools and abilities to work with as Pharloom opens up. The kingdom itself matches that energy: Silksong rarely eases up, and punishing difficulty runs through nearly every system, from platforming sequences that demand precision to boss fights that assume you have already mastered what came before them. This is a bigger, denser metroidvania than the original in almost every dimension, map size included, and Team Cherry built it to reward the players willing to meet that difficulty rather than smooth it out for a wider audience. That difficulty is also, unambiguously, the point. Every genuine victory in Silksong means something precisely because the kingdom gives you nothing for free, and the game's scale, its art direction, and its refusal to pad itself with filler content put it near the very top of what the genre has produced. This is one of the densest, best-fought metroidvanias to come out in years, built by a studio that clearly used its long development window to push every system further rather than simply polishing the same ideas the first game already had.

The thing you'll love. Or hate.

A needle that rewards aggression

A world with no hand-holding

Currency that stays tight

Not quite for you?

Three alternatives, one line each on why.

Shorter

Similar, but noticeably shorter.

With co-op

Similar, but playable together.

Cheaper or free

Similar, for less money.

Frequently asked questions

How long is Hollow Knight: Silksong?: About 52 hours to finish the main story.
Which platforms is Hollow Knight: Silksong on?: Hollow Knight: Silksong is available on Xbox · PlayStation · PC · Switch.
Does Hollow Knight: Silksong have co-op?: No, Hollow Knight: Silksong is single-player only.
Does Hollow Knight: Silksong run on Steam Deck?: Verified
What does Hollow Knight: Silksong cost?: $19.99 on Steam.